Professionalism, the Third Logic: A summary

In Professionalism, the Third Logic, Eliot Freidson explores the implications and meaning of professionalism as a form of social organisation. Professionalism is formalised and grounded in the political economy, and the concept is presented as a third logic, a more feasible alternative to both bureaucracy and consumerism.

In summary he argues that professionalism has come under assault and that new developments linked to ethical practice need to be developed, to safeguard and restore professionalism to a more prominent position. Professionalism here is defined as the occupational control of work, from an ideal-typical model of institutional circumstances and occupational control. In the last two chapters (chapter 8 and 9), Friedson arrives at the analysis and synthesis of his previous research.

 

In chapter 8 Freidson describes how health care in America evolved from the 1950s into today’s system of health care services and medicine. Here Freidson explores how American health care became a market-based system, built on neoliberal ideology and principles of consumerism. However, the powerful human appeal as well as the administrative value of medicine for state policy are too important and prevalent to perceive an endless decline in the status of medicine. The profession has not lost all control of its work and the institutions of medicine can be said to still resemble those of the ideal type, if less closely today than at the middle of the previous century. 

 

Because of financial pressure to reduce the cost of services to the state and to consumers, loss of public trust is shared by all major professions in the US. Influence of private capital now extend into major professions in western industrial nations, though not yet to the same extent as in the US. 

 

In chapter 9 Freidson analyses and discards the common criticism of professions and professionalism. He argues that critics often overlook the fact that professions are a disciplinary coherence in an organised division of labor – a form of social organisation, not just a bureaucratic and economic collective agreement of privilege and monopoly. Furthermore, without social closure (Weber) there can be no disciplines, and a form of economic monopoly of professions reduce the risk of diluting disciplinary knowledge and skill. Credentialism is the device that sustains monopoly and social closure, and even though the concept has come under radical and neoliberal critique, it must be restored to avoid corruption and social exclusion.     

 

Freidson ends the chapter by arguing that the assault on professionalism through charges of credentialism, monopoly and elitism, must be met by expanding and restoring trust in and the ethics of professional work. The spirit of ideal-typical professionalism must be safeguarded through professional values transcending time and place, as well as the higher goals of serving society. 

In summary it's worth noting that modern privatisation and consumerism poses a threat to professionalism in education and what Friedson calls the ideal type. Here it is possible to underline the implications of financialization, individualisation and fragmentation of the educational sector. In detail the consequences of practical implementation of neoliberal systemic reconfiguration will, after reaching a breaking point, enable new perspectives on professionalism, undermining the concept of professionalism as a form of social organisation altogether.  

 

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Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism: The third logic. University of Chicago Press.