Personality and Professionalism in a Norwegian District Council

Abstract

A great deal of current planning literature is concerned with the behaviour of public sector planners and their roles within organizations. What is lacking, however, is a more nuanced understanding of what ideas or concepts people use to think about their roles in organizations, and how their very personalities have become tied into the creation of professionalism. This article looks at the dilemmas for public servants in a Norwegian municipality and shows how structural dilemmas may be internalized by individual employees. The emic concept of ‘loyalty’ is shown to symbolize attempts to individualize such dilemmas and render them subject to personality, rather than recognize them as conceptual problems.