Professionalism: The Third Logic - Couverture rigide

Freidson, Eliot

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0226262022 ISBN 13 : 9780226262024

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2001

Synopsis

This work explores the meaning and implications of professionalism as a form of social organization. Eliot Freidson formalizes professionalism by treating it as an ideal grounded in the political economy; he presents it as a third logic, or as a more viable alternative to consumerism and bureaucracy. He ask us to imagine a world where workers with specialized knowledge and ability to provide society with an important service can organize and control their own work without being told what to do and when, from management or the influence of free markets. There is then an appraisal of the status of professionalism that explores how traditional and national variations in state policy and organization are influencing the power and practice of such professions as medicine and law. Freidson looks at those who are obscuring the social value of credentialism and monopolies, saying that the institutions that sustain professionalism are too useful to both capital and state to be dismissed.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Eliot Freidson has written the first systematic account of professionalism as a method of organizing work. In ideal–typical professionalism, specialized workers control their own work, while in the free market consumers are in command, and in bureaucracy managers dominate. Freidson shows how each method has its own logic requiring different kinds of knowledge, organization, career, education and ideology. He also discusses how historic and national variations in state policy, professional organization, and forms of practice influence the strength of professionalism.

In appraising the embattled position of professions today, Freidson concludes that ideologically inspired attacks pose less danger to professionals′ institutional privileges than to their ethical independence to resist use of their specialized knowledge to maximize profit and efficiency without also providing its benefits to all in need.

This timely and original analysis will be of great interest to those in sociology, political science, history, business studies and the various professions.

Revue de presse

"This work is the capstone of Eliot Freidson′s extraordinarily distinguished career as a medical sociologist and student of the professions. The book summarizes a wide range of literature within Freidson′s innovative and profound theory of professionalism as a "logic" of institutions different from (and in conflict with) the logics of the market and of bureaucracy. It should be required reading for anyone concerned with the vital issue of the importance of – and contemporary threats to – the social values intrinsic to professionalism." Robert Alford, City University of New York

"As learned and tightly argued as any work in the Weberian tradition, this book develops an ideal–type analysis of professionalism that transcends the particular circumstances of specific occupations. Freidson′s distinctions between professions, technical occupations and crafts are likely to inform all subsequent discussions. Everyone who studies the professions will need to take this important book into account." Steven Brint, University of California, Riverside

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0226262022
• ISBN 13: 9780226262024
• Reliure: Relié
• Langue: anglais
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible