Dent & Whitehead Managing Professional Identities Knowledge Performativity and The New Professional

Managing Professional
Identities
The old divisions between management and professionals have all but disappeared. In an
age when managers seek and expect professional status, and professionals are increasingly
required to be managers, ‘being professional’ has become the leitmotif. The contributors to
this volume argue, however, that the ‘new’ professional that emerges out of this conflation
does not have a straightforward identity.
The contributors present an international range of work, asserting that the ‘new’
professional identity is subject to pressures relating to gender, status, trust, knowledge,
accountability and regulation. With organisations increasingly rendered insecure in the
global marketplace, the status of this identity relies upon continued success in a perfor-
mance-fixated work culture.
The introduction defines key concepts such as ‘performativity’, ‘discourse’, ‘identity’,
‘autonomy’ and ‘accountability’. Following this, the twelve chapters are divided into three
sections:
• Section one: emphasises the regulatory character of professional/manager identities,

focusing on trust, the audit society, regulation and masculinity.
• Section two: examines how professional/management identities are negotiated by
organisational members in work sites such as the US Navy, alternative medicine,
business consultancy and higher education.
• Section three: provides empirical and discursive explorations of the globalised, hi-
tech professional, together with the resources they draw on to acquire the elusive
sense of grounding and status.
This book will be essential reading for those studying organizational behaviour and the
sociology of work.
Mike Dent (Staffordshire University) has been researching the professions for over twenty
years. Much of his writing has been on the issue of accountability (‘Professional Judgement
and the Role of Clinical Guidelines and EBM’, Journal of Inter—Professional Care). His current
research is on European hospitals, NPM, medicine and nursing. European Health Care
Organisations will be published in 2002.
Stephen Whitehead is Lecturer in Education at Keele University. He is the author of

Transforming Managers (with Roy Moodley, UCL Press, 1999), The Masculinities Reader
(with Frank Barrett, Polity Press, 2001) and Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New
Directions (Polity Press, 2002).
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Edited by Paul L.Robertson
Managing Professional
Identities
Knowledge, performativity and the
‘new’ professional
Edited by
Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead
London and New York

First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
© 2002 Editorial selection and material, Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead,
individual chapters, the authors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Managing Professional Identities: knowledge performativity and the ‘new’
professional/edited by Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead
p. cm includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Professional employees. 2. Professional ethics. 3. Personnel management. 4.
Knowledge management. I. Dent, Mike. II. Whitehead, Stephen
HD8038.A1 M36 2001
658.3 044–dc21
ISBN 0-203-46709-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77533-3 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-415-23120-5 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of contributors vii
1 Introduction: configuring the ‘new’ professional 1

M I KE D E NT AN D STE P H E N WH ITE H EAD
PART I
The professional under scrutiny
2 Trusting the professional: a managerial discourse for uncertain

times 19
BA R BA R A A . M I S Z TA L
3 Aspects of the ‘Audit Society’: issues arising from the colonization

of professional academic identities by a ‘portable management
tool’ 38
DAV I D JA RY
4 Medical professional autonomy in an era of accountability and

regulation: voices of doctors under siege 61
M A R I LY N N M . RO S E N T H A L
5 Managing the ‘professional’ man 81

D E B O R A H K E R F O OT
vi Contents
PART II
Performing and negotiating professional identity
6 Speaking professionally: occupational anxiety and discursive

ingenuity among human resourcing specialists 99
TO N Y WAT S O N
7 Amateurism, quackery and professional conduct: the constitution

of ‘proper’ aromatherapy practice 116
VA L É R I E F O U R N I E R
8 ‘The romance of lonely dissent’: intellectuals, professionals and

the McUniversity 138
M A RT I N PA R K E R
9 Gender strategies of women professionals: the case of the

US Navy 157
F R A N K J . BA R R E T T
10 Omega’s story: The heterogeneous engineering of a gendered

professional self 174
AT T I L A B R U N I A N D S I LV I A G H E R A R D I
PART III
Maps and knowledges for the ‘new’ professional
11 ‘New age’ religion and identity at work 201

CAT H E R I N E C A S E Y
12 Writing professional identities: (in)between structure and agency 217

DA M I A N O ’ D O H E RT Y
13 Life on the verandah: colonial cartographies of professional

identities 235
D O ROT H Y L A N D E R A N D C R A I G P R I C H A R D
Index 252
Contributors
Frank J.Barrett is Associate Professor of Management at the Naval Postgraduate School

in Monterey, California. He is also Visiting Associate Professor of Applied Economics
at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has published extensively on men,
masculinities and organizations, drawing in particular on his research into the
experiences of women and men officers in the United States Navy. He is also Faculty
Member in Human and Organizational Development at the Fielding Graduate
Institute in Santa Barbara, California.
Attila Bruni is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Trento,
Italy. He is part of the Research Unit on Cognition and Organizational Learning
and has just finished a research project at the Venice International University on
Communities of Practice as systems of distributed knowledge. On gender and enter-
preneurship he has published a recent book (All’ombra della maschilità, Guerini e
Associati, 2000) co-authored with Silvia Gherardi and Barbara Poggio, forthcoming
in English by Stanford University Press.
Catherine Casey teaches at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She holds a Ph.D
from the University of Rochester, New York, and is author of Work, Self and Society:
After Industrialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) and numerous articles.
Her current research interests are in the social analysis of work, and organizations,
and in critical social and cultural theory.
Mike Dent is Professor of Health Care Organisation at the School of Health, Staffordshire
University. He has been researching the professions for over twenty years and many
of his publications have been concerned with accountability within health care, not
only in the UK, but across Europe. His current research is on European hospitals,
New Public Management, medicine and nursing. His latest book, European Health
Care Organisations, will be published in 2002.
Valérie Fournier is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at Keele University. Her

research interests centre around critical perspectives on management and
organizations, and in particular on subjectivity at work. She has written about the
construction and disciplinary effects of professionalism and career discourse, as well
as about identity work in small family businesses. Recently she has been interested
in exploring the types of identities and social relationships available in ‘alternative’
professions and organizations.
viii Contributors
Silvia Gherardi is full professor of sociology of organization at the Faculty of Sociology

of the University of Trento, Italy, where she co-ordinates the Research Unit on
Cognition and Organizational Learning. Areas of interest include the exploration of
different ‘soft’ aspects of knowing in organizations, with a peculiar emphasis for
cognitive, emotional, symbolic, and linguistic aspects of organizational process. To
the theme of gender and organizational cultures is devoted her last book (Gender,
Symbolism and Organizational Cultures, Sage, 1995).
David Jary is Research Professor at Staffordshire University and Visiting Professor at

the University of Birmingham, where he is Sociology Co-ordinator at C-SAP, the
Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and
Politics. He was previously Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Graduate
School at Staffordshire University and has also taught at Salford University and
Manchester Metropolitan University. His most recent writings include The New
Higher Education (1998) (edited with M.Parker) and The Contemporary Giddens: Social
Theory in a Globalizing Age (2001) (with C.Bryant). He is a co-editor of the journal
Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning and book reviews editor for the journal
Sociology.
Deborah Kerfoot is lecturer in Organizational Behaviour at Keele University. Her research

interests are in the sociology and critical study of management, empirical research
on employment, poststructuralism, and gender and sexuality in organizations. She is
Book Review Editor for the Journal of Management Studies and co-editor of Gender,
Work and Organization.
Dorothy Lander acts as faculty adviser to students in a self-directed, distance learning

Master in Adult Education programme at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX), Nova
Scotia, Canada. Before her academic appointment in 1998, she managed residences,
conferences, and food service at StFX. Her current autobiographical research maps
the ‘service’ ethic constituted in the trans-generational language practices of women’s
social movements and associated non-profit organizations.
Barbara A.Misztal is senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Griffith University, Brisbane,
Australia. She is the author of Trust in Modern Society (Polity Press, 1996) and Informality:
Contemporary Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2000), and co-editor (with D. Moss) of
Action on AIDS (Greenwood Press, 1990) and many articles on social issues in
postcommunist societies. At present she is working on a book entitled Theories of
Social Remembering to be published by Open University Press.
Damian O’Doherty is a lecturer in Organization Analysis in the Manchester School of

Management, UMIST. His research interests are often difficult to define. Damian
has published a number of papers in the areas of human resource management,
labour process theory and organization studies. At the moment he is writing on
conflict and disruption in organization, but his major intellectual preoccupation is
with what has been called the ‘disintermediation’ of madness in organization.
Martin Parker is reader in social and organizational theory at the University of Keele.
He holds degrees in anthropology and sociology from the Universities of Sussex,
London and Staffordshire and previously taught sociology at Staffordshire. His writing
is usually concerned with organizational theory and the sociology of culture. His
Contributors ix
most recent books are Ethics and Organization (Sage, 1998), The New Higher Education
(with David Jary, Staffordshire University Press, 1998) and Organizational Culture and
Identity (Sage, 2000).
Craig Prichard is employed by Massey University, New Zealand, to undertake teaching

and research work. Currently this explores the linkages between management,
organization and communication. The Open University Press recently published
some of this research in a book he authored titled Making Managers in Universities and
Colleges.
Marilynn M.Rosenthal is a professor, medical sociologist and director, Program in Health

Policy Studies, University of Michigan in Dearborn. She is Associate Director, UM
medical school’s Program in Society and Medicine, co-ordinating the UM Health
Policy Forum. Her primary research interests are physician self-regulation. Her grants
and honours include Danforth Fellowship for Women, University of Michigan
Hopwood writing award, Swedish Visiting Scholar award, British Kings Fund Grant,
Fulbright Research Award, U-M Faculty Recognition Award, Distinguished Faculty
Research Award. Her publications include eight books and over forty articles. She
has been Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, University of Oxford and Visiting
Lecturer at Harvard School of Public Health.
Tony Watson is Professor of Organizational and Managerial Behaviour in the Nottingham

Trent University. He teaches, researches and writes on industrial sociology,
organizations, managerial work, strategy-making, and HRM. His books range from
The Personnel Managers (1977) to In Search of Management (1994/2000), Sociology, Work and
Industry (1980, 1987, 1995), The Emergent Manager (1999) and Managing and Organizing
Work (2001).
Stephen Whitehead is Lecturer in Education at Keele University. His teaching and

research interests mainly concern education management, gender identity, and the
sociology of masculinities. He is the author of Transforming Managers: Gendering Change
in the Public Sector (with Roy Moodley, UCL Press, 1999), The Masculinities Reader
(with Frank J.Barrett, Polity Press, 2001), and Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and
New Directions (Polity Press, 2002).
1 Introduction
Configuring the ‘new’ professional
Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead
The social and cultural assumptions that surround the term ‘professional’ have
never been subject to so much question as they are now. These debates reflect an
era when the certainties, divisions and assumptions which held true through most
of the twentieth century are no longer available to us. They no longer provide us
with a secure sense of place and grounding. There is a new and rigorous scrutiny
abroad, a social polemicism driven by the urge to deconstruct and subvert all
comforting ideologies, beliefs, heroes and myths. This may well be a healthy state
both socially and individually, it may even be a sign of a mature society, but it
comes at a price. The price is a loss of faith, trust and sense of order, an increased
perception of risk. As we search for new meanings and signposts in our
constructions of reality, we are increasingly denied recourse to those statuses that
have long anchored cultural, class and social difference. One of the anchors of
order has been ‘the professional’: someone trusted and respected, an individual
given class status, autonomy, social elevation, in return for safeguarding our well-
being and applying their professional judgement on the basis of a benign moral or
cultural code. That professional no longer exists. They have gone, swept aside by
the relentless, cold, instrumental logic of the global market, and with it the old
order has been upturned. There are many who will welcome this quiet but
fundamental revolution. There are others who will mourn the passing of the old-
style ‘professional’. But whatever one’s perspective, it is evident that in this new
era we are all expected to be professional, to perform professionally. In losing its
exclusivity, being professional has become the leitmotif of the postmodern age.
As the notion of professionalism has become reconfigured, emerging as a
ubiquitous, compelling icon for all organizational players, so has the ideology/
discourse of managerialism risen to ascendancy. The subsequent blurring of the
boundaries between professionalism and managerialism has been profound across
both the public and private sectors, leading to a significant slippage of identity for
those professionals who previously saw themselves as exclusive and privileged
and, thus, somewhat removed from the messy business of managing resources.
Now there is no area of organizational life unsubjected to increasingly sophisticated
regimes of accountability. Whether in the public or private sector, the professional
has no escape from being managed nor, indeed, from managing others.
2 Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead
In such uncertain times, the ability to trust in professional judgement, despite

being a key aspect of social cohesion, becomes an elusive quality, misted by
contingency and disrupted by market pressures (see Chapter 2). To be sure,
professionals are still trusted—to an extent they have to be—but that trust is
increasingly mitigated through the process of being managed, inspected and
audited by external actors and systems (see Chapters 3–4). The exclusivity,
protection and autonomy which professions such as medicine, academia and
law once enjoyed is now replaced by a culture of performativity: the belief in
the veracity of apparently objective systems of accountability and measurement,
rather than in the subjective judgement and specialized knowledges of an
individual (Lyotard 1984). Whatever trust and respect is accorded the
professional now has to be earned through their ability to perform to an
externally given set of performance indicators. For the public sector professional,
such quantifications are given added piquancy in that they are applied in a
climate of continuous ‘efficiency’ measures; where increased demand must be
met, but with diminishing resources. Professionals can no longer consider
themselves ‘above’ the market-place. Indeed, the ‘new’ professional must execute
their duties while maintaining good ‘customer relations’ with an increasingly
questioning client group. Deference is no longer automatically given to the
doctor, judge, teacher, lawyer, lecturer, politician or accountant. Any deference
is now limited to those at the top of a particular performance ‘league table’;
those who can perform their market-orientated professional tasks, and do so
with an entrepreneurial flourish.
Despite the important shifts now apparent in notions of the professional, and
relationally, managerialism—little has been written that connects these two
discursive regimes and does so through a critical study of changing forms of
organizational identity. Debates surrounding the professions have, in the past,
been concerned with professional projects (Larson 1977), autonomy (Freidson
1970), legitimacy (Clarke and Newman 1997), control (Witz 1992), ideological
practice (Thompson 1983; Elliott 1975) and various forms of inclusion/exclu-
sion (Crompton 1987). Yet while these debates have made important contributions
to our understanding of professionalism ‘in action’, they have been less insightful
in illuminating the increasingly complex dynamics and contesting pressures under
which professional as an identity is experience, enacted and validated. The aim
of this volume is to redress this imbalance. In so doing, the book connects with
the increasing number of studies now concerned to explore how self and identity
processes are experienced and managed across diverse work and organizational
sites and management cultures (see Casey 1995; du Gay 1996; Parker 2000;
Gherardi 1995; Watson and Harris 1999; Hetheringon and Munro 1997; Knights
and Willmott 1999).
While the term ‘professional’ has been subject to significant cultural and social
disruption and redefinition, its underpinning association with privilege,
specialism, autonomy and trust has not been totally removed. It would be
altogether too simplistic to suggest that professional status no longer bestows a
degree of social elevation on those who wear its mantle. Recognizing this, the
Configuring the ‘new’ professional 3
term ‘professional’ remains a much sought after label for those agencies and
agents seeking wider recognition and value of their particular knowledge
specialism (see Chapter 6). By contrast, the term ‘amateur’, once a noble, unsul-
lied designate, now carries with it the air of the dabbler and dilettante. To be
labelled an amateur is to be condemned as lacking competence and useful
knowledge; not a serious player in today’s competitive marketplace. So by stealth,
accident or design all workers can be expected and required to aspire to a
professionalism. The new professional that is given birth is identified by the
discourses that usher it into existence. These discourses speak of the flexible,
reflective practitioner, the teamworker, lifelong learner, a person concerned to
constantly update their knowledge and skills base, to be market-orientated,
managerial, if not entrepreneurial (see Chapter 7).
But what are the implications for individuals as they submit to the gravita-
tional pull towards what increasingly appears as a largely undifferentiated
organizational mass? Well, if ‘we are all managers now’, as we are often told (see
Grey 1999 for discussion), then having a professional identification is one means
by which the individual might raise themselves up above the hoi polloi. This signals
the increasing urgency, we suggest, behind the differentiation signifying the status
of the ‘new’ professional. For in the corrosive, competitive but seductive culture
of performativity, it seems that the constant search for advantage or edge is essential
if one is to keep a step ahead of the pack, to avoid the ever-present threat of being
‘left behind’ (Sennett 1998). Moreover, as Tony Watson suggests in Chapter 6,
being marked as a ‘professional’ may, for some, signify a greater status beyond
mere ‘manager’.
Despite the allure of professional status, the pressures driving this new identity
formation are clearly not entirely benign. Indeed, in recognizing its seductive
capacities for those workers increasingly rendered insecure through continuous
audit cultures of performativity, the quest for professionalism reveals significant
disciplinary tendencies. Valerie Fournier (1999), for example, argues that while
there are tensions within the new managerialism/professional configuration(s),
professionalism can be understood as a new disciplinary technique, one largely
exercised through the discursive properties contained in the label ‘professional’.
In the same way that no one wishes to be deemed incompetent, thus privileging
the idea that given competencies are essential for a successful career, so no one
wishes to be labelled unprofessional. Fournier argues that workers will work
harder and be more conscientious in the interests of the company if they believe
themselves to be acting professionally, rather than as subordinates. Thus ‘being
professional’ appears to act in the interests of all concerned and so doing becomes
a universal mantra. But where does that leave the ‘true’ professional?
The simple answer is that there no longer is a ‘true professional’, for that
identity configuration is increasingly subsumed now under the dominant culture
of a globalized managerialism, where ‘customer orientated’ values and
expectations come to displace the privileged knowledges and practices of the
old elite. Consequently, the professional must find new privileged knowledges
and practices, that is if they are to retain or acquire some degree of status and
associated protection. A new contested organizational terrain opens up in this

transient knowledge space, where professional identification seeks to take root
in a global, high-tech economy. It is a place where whatever status and protection
is available is more likely to be awarded to those, not only exhibiting the relevant
knowledge capital (Reich 1992; Rifkin 1995), but, importantly, able and willing
to experience their ontological identifications imaginatively and radically within
an increasingly hyper-real world (see Chapter 12). For only in ‘managing’ the
‘pandemonium’ of contemporary organizational life (see Burrell 1997) can
individuals hope to ‘prosper’. In these unstable, if not chaotic, corporatist
environments—worlds without any set boundaries (Chapter 13)—those who do
‘succeed’ can expect to enjoy the material comforts of their particular enclave.
However, these enclaves of professional privilege, these Super Cannes (Ballard
2000) of the private sector, offer no larger order or cultural belief system to
comfort and signpost the new professional. The only anchor, such as it is, is
one’s worth as measured through endless performance appraisals and inspections;
one’s value when weighed in the market. A consequence of this measurement
culture, and the inherent instability it both generates and feeds off, is that
personal—professional allegiances are, despite corporatist rhetoric, temporary:
through his/her commodification so the new professional, likewise, comes to
recognize fealty as a pragmatic quality.
The knowledges and identifications which reify the new professional are to
be judged worthy, then, not against modernist definitions of professional
judgement, but in the context of performativity, that defining characteristic of
the ‘post-modern condition’ (Lyotard 1984). Thus, what comes to be considered
‘true’ and of ‘value’ will be that which is considered to ‘work’ in the so-called
‘real world’. However, as countless organizational actors are only too well aware,
the ubiquitous ‘real world’ against which they and others are appraised often
turns out to be at best elusive, and at worst a fiction sustained in part by their
own silence and complicity. In short, the ‘real world’ exists as a discourse within
our imaginings, yet with the capacity to discipline or seduce organizational
members to the rules of the larger corporate club. The first rule of membership
of this club, for professional players, is that they must never speak of the
emptiness, absence of foundation and paucity of purpose at its heart, for to do
so puts all at risk.
Rather than confront the gaping existential black hole at the heart of post-
modern organizational life, and thus of themselves, professionals/managers appear
to be increasingly taking solace in hitherto marginalized knowledges and practices.
Examples here include astrology, meditation, graphology, spirituality and new
age religious expressions. The multiplicity, fragmentation and disorientation which
characterizes the Western postmodern age materializes through revived ‘New
Age’ laicized religious practices now emerging across corporate sites and elsewhere.
Somewhat in tension with the technocratic rationality of performativity, the
‘unchurched spiritualities’ of multinational corporations, so fascinatingly revealed
in Catherine Casey’s research (Chapter 11), signal the erasure of boundaries not
only for organizations, but crucially also for individuals and their identities.
If we look closely at this new professional/managerial configuration, it is possible

to see certain dichotomies still at work: entrepreneuralism displaces rule-bound
bureaucracies, pragmatism displaces paternalism, diversity displaces uniformity,
and instability displaces stability in the (quasi)market cultures of the public and
private sectors. Yet even these dualisms, while fundamental, are not so
straightforward. There is no simple division, no uncontested demarcation across
organizational fault lines. Some are more protected than others. Some are more
exposed than others. Yet while it cannot be stated with any certainty that there is
an ensuing wholesale ‘crisis’ amongst professionals, what is clear is that previous
assumptions now no longer hold true. And here we speak from personal
knowledge, not only, or merely, as academic researchers. For the world of academia
which we and many others, not least this book’s contributors, are privileged to
inhabit, is seared by contesting pressures around the notion of professionalism.
As academics we hanker for the protection, autonomy and exclusivity which
professional status bestows, yet we can no longer be sure of our right to this label.
There is certainly no automatic right. We are not even certain what it now means
to be professional in academia. Does it mean success in an entrepreneurial,
performative-orientated work culture, or does it mean adherence to a personal/
principled position as enlightened, critical, educationalists (see Chapter 8)? For
those individuals seeking to manage this tension, there is no uncontested ideological
position to which they might retreat. Increasingly, we are each left to our own
devices as we attempt to navigate our way through new, unmapped globalized
territories of professional identity (see Chapter 13).
The complications and ambiguities that such negotiations suggest for the
individual are further complicated by the inherent contingency of individual
identity. Here a sense of self and ontological grounding is achieved only by endless
engagement in those signifying practices at our disposal and which purport to
name us as ‘individuals’ (Butler 1990). If we understand ‘professional’ as a
discursive subject position (Mouffe 1992), we can see how it might help legitimate
the otherwise transient, fragmented self exposed through postmodern and post-
structuralist analysis (see Lemert 1997; McKinley and Starkey 1998; Sarup 1993).
Being professional becomes more than a means by which the individual navigates
the increasingly choppy waters of organizational life. Being professional suggests
a ontological location, whereby the lawyer, judge, lecturer, human resource
manager, banker and so on is existentialized through the particular narratives
and discourses which accrue with and around that identity position. In short, the
individual in pursuit of professional identification has more at stake than material
loss or gain. For to be denied professional identification is to be denied access to
the narratives that reify it (Ricoeur 1991). The ‘I’ cannot talk with the authority
of a professional, cannot give an account of itself as a professional, unless the
discursive association is prior held and legitimized in the eyes of others.
But this necessary legitimation is not only denied or accessed through
educational achievement, class or cultural association, or, indeed, innate skill
and ability, there is the additional dimension of gender. To be born into the
gender category of man is to be given a head start in the material and power
accumulation stakes. For the label professional never was, and is not now, gender-
neutral. Like many of the privileged labels and associations that configure
organizational life, the notion of the professional suggests an embodied discursive
subject which is not woman/female, but is, indeed, man/male/masculine (Chapter
5). So, for aspiring women professionals, there is the added complication of
having to negotiate, assume or where possible dismantle, sets of masculinist
knowledges, beliefs and assumptions around their sexuality and gender (Chapter
10). For all those positioned as the ‘Other’ in white male-dominated work
organizations, be they women, gays, lesbians or people of colour, the taking up
of professional identification is a process constrained by numerous gates, most
of which remain formally and informally ‘manned’ by white male gatekeepers
(see Chapter 9).
The complexities surrounding the processes of organizational identification
become apparent once we study in depth the configurations which have hitherto
been seen if not experienced as largely uncontested social statuses and which
are now subject to change and question. One such status is the ‘professional’.
In this context, the contributors to this book are not offering straightforward,
monolistic models of the manager/professional and accompanying notions of
professionalism. Nor are we attempting to predict the future. We would save
simplistic models of organizational life, and futurology, for those whose business
it is to peddle such wares. What the contributors to this volume are concerned
with is change, dissonance, movement and patterns, and how these might
connect with an individual’s subjective experience of being ontologically located
across two key organizational signifiers: the professional and the manager. These
two identities have been both manifest and often in tension across work sites.
We suggest that they are less so now. The discourses that have, until recently,
reified these two subject positions have become blurred and indistinct while at
the same time becoming omnipresent across the organizational landscape. Simply
put, the manager has become professionalized, the professional has become
managerialist. We suggest the ideology/discourse of performativity to be the
central driver or tool in this degrading—or uplifting—of the manager and the
professional. The new professional that emerges arises out of the rigid
bureaucratic, industrial, Fordist landscape, now largely consigned to history, but
not entirely disappeared. Yet he/she cannot fully take their place amongst the
increasingly global, high-tech professional/manager location unless they are
prepared for the following: first, to constantly associate themselves with the
shifting knowledges that serve to validate this position; second, to immerse
themselves in the masculinist culture of endless competitiveness and instrumental
measurement; third, to accept the inherent contingency of whatever
organizational identification is bestowed upon them; and finally, to suspend some
sense of reality or, more likely, change their sense of reality so as to at least
give the appearance of believing in the continuous, pseudo-objective audit and
accountability which purports to measure their (personal)/professional worth.
The implications for the identities of such knowledge workers are compelling,
fascinating, and the subject of this book.
Key concepts
As will be evident from this brief introduction, the book takes certain concepts as
given in its interrogation of professional/managerial identifications. Beyond notions
of professionalism and managerialism there are four key concepts informing the
writings in this book: performativity, discourse, identity and accountability. In
this section we will offer a working definition of each of these.
Performativity
There are currently two prominent concepts of performativity within the social
sciences. The first, and possibly earliest, is that utilized by Lyotard (1984) in his
examination of the rise of postmodernity and the accompanying demise of grand
narratives as a signifier of this new philosophical epoch. Basically, for Lyotard,
performativity is complicit in the commodification of knowledge and the legitimization
of science over subjective knowledge forms; narrative knowledge having lost credibility
to scientific knowledge in the postmodern age (see Sarup 1993 for discussion). The
second concept of performativity is offered to us by the feminist post-structuralist
theorist Judith Butler (1990). Butler takes the term performativity from linguistic
theory and utilizes it within feminist theory as a tool to theorize belonging as a
process of being and becoming an individual (see also Bell 1999 for discussion).
While most of the chapters in this volume draw primarily on Lyotard’s understanding
of performativity, it is fruitful to utilize Butler’s concept of performativity in any
interrogation of the ways in which the production of self connects with the discursivity
of (gendered) professional identifications. Indeed, as Atilla Bruni and Silvia Gherardi
reveal in Chapter 10, such an exploration is particularly valuable for exploring how
gendered visual and textual (masculinist) identifications are connected and contested
as signifying practices of professionalism and the professional.
Both Lyotard’s and Butler’s concepts of performativity are rooted in a
philosophy of language, though where Lyotard uses the concept to explore
philosophical and knowledge shifts, Butler is concerned with the ‘performed’
character of (gender) identity and the implications this has for agency, resistance
and subjectivity (also McNay 1999). The notion of language games is evoked in
both understandings of performativity, though to a greater extent with Lyotard,
who locates his theory more directly with Wittgenstein. The key aspect here is
legitimization. That is, for Lyotard, science knowledge has always existed in tension
or competition with narrative knowledge, each unable to legitimize the other,
thus each always seeking legitimation on its own terms. As Sarup puts it:
The main difference between scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge

requires that one language game, denotation, be retained and all others
excluded…it is therefore impossible to judge the existence or validity of
narrative knowledge on the basis of scientific knowledge or vice versa: the
knowledge criteria are different.
(Sarup 1993:136)
Thus, what we have here are two prominent knowledge forms vying for the
privilege of presenting the world as ‘it truly is’, while each corresponds to quite
different representations of what is ‘real’. In this contest or language game, Lyotard
suggests that scientific knowledge currently holds sway over narrative knowledge.
We can see that this emergence of scientific knowledge within the post-modern
age denotes a challenge to the subjectivities and epistemological forms that have
hitherto served the professional in his/her search for, or justification of, personal/
professional legitimization and status. The new discourse of truth about the world
which emerges with scientific knowledge is one which brooks no challenge from
narrative knowledge, for within this language game narrative knowledge becomes
delegitimized as ‘primitive, underdeveloped, backward…composed of opinions,
customs, authority, prejudice, ideology’ (Lyotard 1984:27). Thus for professional
status to be legitimized, it has to be based on ‘scientific’ knowledge, and/or validated
by ‘scientific’ knowledge. In other words, the professional must succumb to the
pressure to be measured against so-called ‘objective’ criteria in scientific mode,
that is before they can assume their elevated position. The professional’s account
is no longer sufficient of itself and must be measured and inspected against external
criteria or targets of performance, all of which purport to be ‘scientific’ and thus
accurate and dispassionate, not open to question or doubt as models of ‘truth’.
Although they may well be utilizing science as a research tool or area of
knowledge and expertise, science becomes deployed on the professional as a
disciplining system through such performance measurements. In other words,
no matter what the professional’s knowledge specialism, there is no escape from
performativity. Lyotard argues that the legitimization of scientific knowledge,
and its deployment as a disciplining mechanism, reflects the pursuit of wealth
accumulation and the desire for ‘efficiency gains’ by nation-states. Education and
training play central roles in these quests, with the state increasingly seeking to
direct control over the training of the people under the name of the nation, justifying
ensuing policies as necessary responses to the exigencies of the global market.
The ‘mercantilization’ to which knowledge is subsequently rendered commodifies
learning, learners and the learning process. For the question is no longer asked,
‘Is it true?’, but rather, ‘What use is it?’. ‘Use’, in these terms, meaning ‘Is it
saleable?’ and ‘Is it efficient?’ (Sarup 1993:139; see also Usher and Edwards
1994 for discussion). Consequently, in an era when knowledge itself has become
the new capital (Handy 1994), certain forms of (professional) knowledge come
to have more ‘buying power’ or investment potential than others. Lyotard’s theories
alert us to how scientific knowledge corrodes not only the status of some
professionals, while possibly uplifting others, but also promotes empiricism and
technology, indeed substantiates the very basis of post-industrial information
society in a competitive global marketplace.
In sum, Lyotard’s concept of performativity signals and defines the current
obsession with ‘efficiency’ and the concern to ‘objectively’ subject this efficiency
to empiricist means and measures to test its worth. While it can be argued that
efficiency itself is not a new thing, what is new is how narrative, subjective
knowledges and accounts have become marginalized, delegitimized and subjected
to critical scrutiny in pursuit of this aim. Following this, the professional’s account
is no longer sufficient. It is no longer trusted absolutely. It must now be measured
against external criteria and scientific models: systems presented as objective,
value-neutral, cold and accurate. It is within this scientific knowledge order that
the new professional must take their place.
Discourse, power, knowledge and identity

While the contributors to the book do offer slightly different slants on professional
identification processes, one commonality is their understanding of identity as a
social process rather than something rooted in an essential, founding sovereign
entity. As such, the writers draw on the concept of discourse to connect knowledge
and power with identity configurations. The notion of discourse being used here
is one which owes much to Michel Foucault (1980, 1984). For Foucault, discourses
are the languages, representations, communications and practices which are
available to us in historically, spatially and temporally specific subject positions
or fields of knowledge. A subject position might be manager, footballer, lawyer,
doctor, nurse or politician (Mouffe 1992; Henriques et al. 1984). A field of
knowledge might be an organizational or professional site wherein such subject
positions are manifest. Both subject position and field come into existence by
virtue of the languages and practices which enable their presence to be
distinguishable and visible, and through which dominant knowledges about the
world come into play. For example, nurse and lawyer will both have some
professional identifications, though how these are manifested in language,
representation and practice will be quite different. To become a lawyer or nurse it
is necessary for the individual to take up those discursive practices which posit
and signify that particular identity to self and, vitally, others. Likewise, the
discourses surrounding the field of knowledge of accountancy practice will be
somewhat different from those surrounding a fast-food restaurant. Those who
work in these fields are required to learn and understand these knowledges and
discourses, though in the process they may very well embellish or alter them to
some effect (see McKinlay and Starkey 1998; McNay 1994).
Discourses operate throughout the social web, indeed, in Foucauldian terms
they enable the social web into existence. They are not, however, free-floating
unencumbered expressions, for they are sites of struggle and contestation, there
being multiple knowledges and ways of knowing the world. It is through emersion
in these discursive regimes that the individual is enabled into existence and by
which the individual comes to (re)present certain truths about the world. The
extent to which this is subjecting the individual to an embodied regulatory effect,
or whether the individual is drawing, more agentically, on these knowledges to
constitute themselves as ‘works of art’ is one of the contested interpretations of
Foucauldian theory. McNay suggests that this process can best be understood as
‘an ‘unperceived’ process in which individuals are complicit, in the sense that
they neither submit to a material constraint nor do they freely adopt dominant
values’ (McNay 1994:109).
Whatever the agency/structure tensions, it is clear that the individual in this

understanding is one that does not exist prior to discourse, but only emerges as
an individual through taking up or being inculcated by discourses. In Judith
Butler’s terms, performing the characterizations or signifying practices which
surround that subject and which become available to that subject. These will
include, but not be exclusive to, factors of ethnicity, gender, age, embodiment
and, not least, work and organizational identifications. For example, when we
talk of woman we are immediately plunged into a myriad of ways of thinking
about that gender and the dominant and subordinated representations which it
speaks to, similarly with man. To utter the term ‘doctor’ (particularly in the
medical sense) is to likewise make an identity statement that can only be
understood across the social web by virtue of its prior association with a set of
signifying discursive practices; commonly accepted knowledges and truths about
what a ‘doctor is’.
Discourses are not, then, neutral, for they specify or suggest what is valid
or invalid knowledge, what is truth/non-truth, and what it is possible to speak
of in a particular place and time. In this respect, discourses have certain
disciplinary properties and power production possibilities in that they produce
truths about the world which the discursive subject then takes up both as a
means of identity validation and as a form of ontological location. As
Foucault puts it:
We must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted

discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and
the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive strategies…Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and
exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possibe to thwart it.
(Foucault 1984:100; quoted in Ramazanoglu 1993:19)
As this quote indicates, the power/resistance possibilities and properties contained

within discursive practices are a central element of the Foucauldian concept of
discourse. As Foucault states; ‘we cannot exercise power except through the
production of truth’ (Foucault 1980:93), and that ‘there are no relations of power
without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are
formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised’ (Foucault
1980:142).
At this point it becomes immediately apparent that Foucault sees power not as
hierarchically fixed, held or absolute, but as a circulatory enabling energy through
which subjectivity is engendered (see Sawicki 1991). Foucault emphasizes the
point that knowledges and truths, no matter how dominant, never go unresisted,
a fact which is immediately apparent in the debate about contested notions and
identifications of the professional and manager. The discourses that now speak
to these identifications have changed and are continuing to do so, resulting in
important identity implications for the individual. Yet these discourses are not
unresisted, as several of the writings in this book reveal.
In terms of identity, it is important to note that the individual does not have
one singular identity or set of discourses available to them and which they may
take up. We occupy multiple subject positions and shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate
within and across these. From this, we can see that the discursive subject is riven
with contradictory pressures, contingencies and contested representations. Identity
is neither stable, nor a final achievement. It is a process, never-ending and only
fixed in that it exists and draws its meaning and ontological anchor in relation to
the ‘Other’; that which it is not, or which it does not desire to be (Shotter and
Gergen 1989).
To summarize, within a Foucauldian, poststructuralist understanding of the
discursive subject, meaning and membership of categories of discursive practice
are likely to contain ‘ambiguous and contradictory meaning’ (Clegg 1998:29),
the signifiers of self not having the benefit, if you like, of a prior biological or
essential root. Consequently, as the discursive subject moves into or through a
field of practice, for example as an emergent or stated ‘professional’, they can
only achieve legimitation through taking up those signifying practices available
and offered to them and which are located within that field of knowledge prior to
their entry. In short, whatever power the professional or manager might be able
to exercise, it is only enabled through them engaging in and reproducing those
dominant truths about how professionals and managers should be, though these
truths and knowledges are not themselves fixed, and are subject to influence and
change. To exercise power the individual must present an almost seamless
association with the dominant discourses reifying the subject position of their
particular professional field. In so doing, the discursive subject becomes that
professional identification, but only so long as that association is maintained and
exercised.
Accountability and autonomy

Professional accountability and autonomy are twinned concepts. Certain organized
occupational groups (i.e. professions) have been able to claim autonomy from
extensive external controls by providing expertise not accessible to direct
managerial control. At the same time the professional organization will claim to
be responsibly autonomous by providing formal guarantees that they will hold to
account any members within their jurisdiction for mistakes and misdemeanours.
This model of accountability contrasts to the direct control embodied within
Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy. Here the official (manager) controls and is
controlled within a hierarchical, rule-governed, system of accountability. Within
this universe managers are not professionals and professionals are not managers
(Parsons 1954; Scott, 1966). In reality, the distinction between the two identities
has always been more complex. International law and accountancy firms, for
example, long melded corporate managerial controls and professional expertise,
as has the newer professions associated with information systems (Abbott 1988).
Within the Weberian tradition Larson (1977), for example, has distinguished
between the ideal types of ‘autonomous’ and ‘heteronymous’ professions in order
to discriminate between different types of autonomy and accountability. While

the first enjoyed full autonomy, the second were answerable (accountable) to
some degree to a ‘third party’. Examples here would include schoolteachers and
social workers. In these cases it is the state that is the powerful ‘third party’.
Abbott (1988) has effectively extended the notion of heterogeneity with the concept
of professional jurisdiction in which the monopoly of certain work processes
within the division of labour will limit the autonomy of other occupational groups.
A good example here is that of medicine and nursing.
The emergence of post-bureaucratic, flexible and networked organizations,
however, has undermined our assumptions concerning professional accountability
and autonomy Whereas, it was principally if not solely the (professional) producer
who defined and policed the disciplinary systems (Freidson 1970; Johnson 1972;
Larson 1977; Witz 1992), now there are new managerialist forms of audit that
are now performed in the name of the client, customer, or patient (Power 1997).
Foucault’s concept of governmentality is particularly useful here. This disciplinary
discourse refers to the means that ensure, more or less, the formation of obedient
subjects (see also Foucault 1977). Gane and Johnson (1993:9) pointed out the
role the notion of professionalism plays in ensuring an alignment of the personal
aspirations and collective objectives within society, government and, by extension,
work organizations. Valerie Fournier has also appropriated the concept to explain
the ‘new softwares of control’ or ‘responsibilization of autonomy’ (i.e.
accountability):
Re-imagining labour as offering ‘professional service’ serves to construct

an image of quality and reliability appealing to the allegedly increasingly
discerning and demanding customer; it also opens up some imaginary space
within which self-actualizing employees can strive for continuous fulfilment
and improvement.
(Fournier 1999:299)
Managerial and professional practices have seemingly become blurred. The

discourse of (professional) accountability and autonomy has been reconfigured.
The language of (professional) expertise is applied to managerial and administrative
work and that of (managerial) audit (accountability) to professional labour.
Outline of the book

The book is organized into three parts: ‘The Professional Under Scrutiny’,
‘Performing and Negotiating Professional Identity’ and ‘Maps and Knowledges
for the “New” Professional’. Part I problematizes the very notion of professional
identity. Part II, through a series of case studies, explore the day-to-day realities
of constructing and maintaining professional identity. Part III offers a vision of
alternative futures of the ‘new’ professionals.
The four authors in Part I examine issues of trust, accountability and autonomy.
Barbara Misztal’s chapter (‘Trusting the Professional’) explores how trust became
the buzzword in managerial discourse in the 1990s. This was a consequence of

broader economic and organizational changes that had undermined previously
accepted conventional wisdoms. One key outcome of the increasing uncertainties
of the new technologies and the global economy is an increasing emphasis on
‘informalization’ and ‘professionalization’ in management. Trust has come to be
seen as the new social lubricant of organizational effectiveness and efficiency,
although Misztal questions the naivety of any simplistic interpretation. She points
out that relations based on professionalism assume a basis in accountability and
transparency which appropriately leads us to the next two chapters.
In his detailed and forthright interrogation of the ‘Audit Society’, David Jary’s
focus is on the specifics of teaching and research audits in British higher education,
although the conclusions are intended to have wider application. Governance is
a common challenge to all professional organizations and with that goes the
question of when to trust and when to audit. In the chapter, Jary draws particularly
on the work of Michael Power and Marilyn Strathern to argue for the possibility
(but not necessarily the probability) of a ‘utopian realist’ alternative to the non-
reflexive and, as some would argue, ritualistic process of following audit trails.
In Chapter 4, Marilynn Rosenthal introduces a fascinating human dimension
to the issues and debates discussed in the previous two chapters. Her stories of
medical professional autonomy, or lack of it, arise from interviews with three
medical chiefs in three countries: the UK, Sweden and the United States. Unlike
managers, these professionals have been subjected to increasing demands for
accountability—and cost effectiveness. Drawing on her extended interviews,
Rosenthal allows these senior professionals to speak for themselves, and what
they tell us is of a profession experiencing a loss of influence on policy and
managerial decisions. However, this cannot be read as any straightforward de-
professionalization or proletarianization. Physicians in North America and Europe
and elsewhere still enjoy high status and are organized well enough to ensure that
systems of accountability are likely to be substantially defined by themselves.
While professionalism presents management with an ambivalence of self-
seeking versus trustworthiness, this is only half the story. Professional identity
also has gendered dimensions, in particular around codes of masculinity. In her
discussion of the ‘Professional Manager’, Deborah Kerfoot introduces and explores
this often unseen relationship between professional identity and dominant notions
of masculinity. Her post-structuralist argument is that gender is a cultural
performance, one made particularly explicit in the world of work (see also Chapter
10). The dispassionate quality of professionalism, underpinned by claims to
theoretical knowledge and technical expertise, genders it masculine as does its
dominance over other workers within the division of labour. Kerfoot argues that
being ‘professional’ may, for masculine subjects, entail paying the price of elevating
one’s work identity above all other aspects of selfhood.
In Part II, the complex dynamics surrounding being and becoming ‘a
professional’ are further explored through a series of case studies and, in some
cases, the author’s own reflections on experiencing some of the ambiguities
surrounding ‘new’ professional identity. In Chapter 6, Tony Watson explores
the notion of professionalism as a discursive resource for personnel or human

resource management in the UK. He does this through comparing the
professionalizing strategy advocated by the Director General of the Institute of
Personnel Management with the scepticism of a particular practitioner. Watson’s
conclusion points to a discursive ingenuity on both sides in respect of
pragmatically forcing a ‘fit’ between professional identity and specific managerial
responsibilities.
Valerie Fournier interrogates the discourse of professional identity via a personal
case study on the aspirations of aromatherapy practitioners and drawing on ideas
of performativity developed by Butler and Lyotard. Aromatherapy is a set of
practices that lend themselves to the possibility of quackery and amateurism, and
it in this context that professionalism offers a means of legitimation—particularly
in relation to orthodox medicine—and establishing and protecting their market
position. This chapter neatly exposes contested character of professional
identification, together with its increasing association with managerial and
entrepreneurial discourses.
Martin Parker’s chapter on intellectuals, professionals and the McUniversity
explores the interconnections between intellectuals and professionals and the
implications for the modern university. Drawing on the classic writings of
Mannheim and Gramsci, Martin asks whether modern academics can still claim
the status of ‘socially unattached’ intellectuals when universities are being subjected
to state rationalization and demands for ‘external’ accountability. At the same
time Parker attempts, with some success, to avoid the elitism (and romance)
implicit in the defence of the ‘lonely dissent’ of the intellectual but, in so doing,
finds he has to settle for a personal position that is less ideologically distinct.
The next two chapters are case studies concerned with the gendered nature of
the professional self. Frank Barrett examines the richly textured case of the US
Navy in order to identify and explore the strategies women employ to
accommodate, avoid and overcome the resistance of the masculine hegemony of
the service. Each of these are discursive and gendered strategies: ‘masculinizing’
avoids resistance by adopting a masculine identity; ‘accommodation’ seeks
acceptance by emphasizing the feminine; acting the ‘professional’ is the degendered
strategy intended to overcome the opposition. The effectiveness of these three
strategies are discussed, drawing on the accounts of women and men within the
service.
Attila Bruni and Silvia Gheradi’s theoretically rich case study draws on post-
structuralist and actor network theory to examine the social construction of the
gendered professional self. The ‘Omega’ of the chapter’s title is a female graduate
recruit to a management consultancy organization in Italy. The work is male-
dominated, and this presents Omega with particular problems of identity
construction: how can she be ‘professional’ when not a male? Drawing on
heterogeneous engineering, the authors explain Omega’s increasing competence
in the gender switching necessary to the maintenance of her professional identity,
while revealing the ontological dilemmas such engineering poses for women
especially.
The final part of the book explores the new ways of constructing the professional
identities, against the technocratic and masculinized models presented in the second
part. Here, alternative possibilities and ways of being are suggested. Catherine
Casey brings to light the diverse religious and related practices drawn upon by
professional and managerial employees of large corporations. Closer examination
of these irrational practices point to the possibility that they meet quite rational
objectives of appealing to the consumer while harmlessly (from corporate
management’s point of view) providing a sense of neo-professional identity. Casey
suggests that it is through these new ‘unchurched spiritualities’ of the (postmodern
corporation that the new professional comes to acquire some sense of place and
purpose.
Damian O’Doherty’s innovative—and experimental—chapter ostensibly on
banking professionals, utilizes postmodern writing and ethnography to
deconstruct the models of organization drawing on emotional management, the
management of meaning and the manipulation of corporate identity through
culture, myth, signs, including symbolic artefacts. In the process, he
imaginatively explores that key, but highly elusive, space between structure and
agency.
The final chapter, with the innocuous title of ‘Life on the Verandah’, provides
a substantial treat. This is a playful piece with serious intent. In the guise of the
email messages between two academics, one in Canada and the other in New
Zealand, the chapter unfolds into a review of postmodern writing and debate on
professional identity and gender in this global and post-colonial world of academe.
In narrating their professional/personal identities through space and time, Dorothy
and Craig conjure up a world we all inhabit, but which we seldom take time to
critically reflect on.
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Part I
The professional under

scrutiny
2 Trusting the professional
A managerial discourse for uncertain
times
Barbara A.Misztal
Introduction
The current transformation in managerial practice and theory can be seen as
signalling the end of the so-called ‘organizational man’ (Whyte 1956) and heralding
a new type of entrepreneurial professional manager. While the organization man
was the prudent, caring, risk-averse, autocratic, obedient, security conscious, status
and rule-oriented traditionalist, the new professional managers have little loyalty
to institutions. The loyal, moderately paid and secure organization man has now
been replaced by the highly paid, overworked, insecure and job-hopping
entrepreneurialist. These new professional managers are self-interested,
adventurous and seeking change (Leinberger and Tucker 1993:367). The
managerial discourses that mark the terrain of this new professional reveal the
languages and practices of the post-industrial entrepreneur, someone enabled by
the macro-economic processes surrounding globalization and new technological
forms of communication.
Traditional loyalty to the organization, the value of unreflective, role-bound
and role-obedient conduct have been undermined by the growing need for flexible,
organic and decentralized structures, seen as necessary to shift organizations into
this post-industrial, post-Fordist era. These trends have resulted in the emergence
of fluid organizational networks, replacing dated hierarchical structures. Key
extrinsic rewards, such as job security, status and hierarchical career progression,
are now weakened in this new era. Effective competition in the changing political
economy now requires, on the one hand, the release of the dynamic determinants
of growth by breaking free from bureaucracy, tradition, loyalty and fixed culture.
On the other hand, in order to be successful in this new global context, companies
need to enhance their employees’ opportunities for flexibility, creativity and
cooperation. In other words, the very changes to the work environment which
facilitate managers’ capacity to detach themselves from any particular alliance
also increase organizations’ demand for managers’ commitment. Ironically, then,
the growing importance of cooperative relationships takes place in the wider
context of the erosion of trust production. Consequently, as companies try to
release the dynamic determinants of creativity and growth, managers come to
‘revel in ambiguity’ (Mintzberg 1994:313).
20 Barbara A.Misztal
The change to managers’ organizational attachment and their market situation

has altered managerial discourse, which, like the present day employment
relationship, seems to consist of a confusing mixture of incoherent prescriptions
and changing ideologies of control. Apart from nostalgic preferences for
predictability and order, which are still expressed by those technocrats who idealize
‘the old-time organization man, the clean-cut manager with a clear career path’
(Posterl 1998:20), managerial discourse incorporates normative, rational and anti-
rational visions of employment relationships. Today, as managerial strategists
proclaim innovation as the central wealth-creating process in the new economy,
new entrepreneurial managers are presented as creative risk takers. Since, however,
innovation depends upon winning employees’ trust, which at the same time is
eroded by the loss of secure employment and career progression, managerial
discourse becomes even more inconsistent. Because managerial discourse, as an
essential resource in the construction of managers’ professional identity, lacks
coherence, the picture of professional managers’ identity can also be excepted to
be complex and ambiguous, even contradictory.
New managerial discourse and macro-economic processes, together with the
modern cultural context which presents modern identity as a narrative of
independence, autonomy and flexibility (Meyer 1987), value the absence of a
long-term commitment to one and the same object. As people fashion their selves
as a reflexive project, their sense of identity becomes more open, diffused and
contingent upon those individually selected narratives adopted to make sense of
their lives (Giddens 1991). When managers learn not to expect reciprocal loyalty
from their companies, they abandon more collective concepts, such as belonging
and traditional loyalty, in favour of their own interests and careers. In other
words, in the new organizational and cultural setting managers come to see
themselves as free agents who cannot be forced to cooperate by hierarchy, but
only if they choose to make binding commitments to keep their words. The new
generation of managers, despite being urged to identify with the organization, is
less interested in adjusting personality to fit the bureaucratic organizational
environment or in developing commitment to one company. Their sense of
professionalism becomes invested in a dynamic, freeloading entrepreneurialism
which places them, not the organization, at centre stage.
Contemporary economic life, with its short-termism, flexibility and more
amorphous job categories, connects with contemporary managerial ideology and
the pressure for innovation and risk-taking. Together, these facets serve to
undermine the stability and predictability of social life. Because of this uncertainty,
our modern societies, which prize freedom, autonomy and choice, face the dilemma
of how to generate stronger bonds of trust which could provide a sense of
psychological security. Without the development of trust relationships people
experience a persistent existential anxiety and a lack of confidence in the continuity
of their self-identity (Misztal 1996). This can contribute to wider social tensions
and disincentives for cooperation. Since our ontological security, as the most
important psychological need, is founded upon the formation of trust relationships
(Giddens 1990:94–9), trust, or lack of it, becomes a central issue for modern
Trusting the professional 21
societies. Although we need innovation, creativity and change we also need a

sense of psychological security. This raises the question of how modern societies
can manage such a paradoxical situation of the erosion of trust and the increased
demand of trust, without relying on the traditional sources of collaboration and
cooperation; that is, hierarchy, control, religion or family.
Modern society’s fluid and open character, together with the need for trust,
challenges us to find ways of fostering a new type of trust. Since we cannot hope
to repair ‘our trust deficit by retreating into older, more homely bases of trust’,
there is a need for new innovation in our social and public institutions to put trust
on a new footing (Leadbeater 1999:150). The production of trust in a society
which is in constant flux can be only achieved by enhancing ‘modern rather than
traditional, open rather than closed, forms of trust’ (Leadbeater 1999:167). For
that to be possible there is a need for a revival of an ethic of collaboration by
inspiring a transparency, openness, accessibility and accountability of the
institutional system. Seen from this perspective, organizational efforts to enhance
trust among its members are a part of the general measure to promote trust.
What, however, can economic organizations do to foster trust, especially now,
when managers feel that the rewards for their emotional devotion to their company
are not forthcoming?
With the growing recognition that cooperative relationships are the main sources
of productivity gains, the organization interested in fostering trust among its
members and partners must adopt policies of informalization and
professionalization of the managerial stratum. The entrepreneurial manager
becomes invested with a professional status by the organization, largely in order
to generate a commitment and investment between the manager and the company.
The aim of this chapter is to explore and evaluate the effectiveness of such strategies
for enhancing managers’ commitment and trust. In order to fully understand the
current shift towards a rhetoric of trust, I shall begin by briefly outlining the
changes in managerial discourse and the place of trust in managerial ideologies.
Shifts in managerial discourse

Many writers on trust in organization (for example, Oliver 1997; Mayer et al.
1995; Hosmer 1995) admit that the study is fraught with problems of definition,
confusion of the levels of analysis, and ambiguity in conceptualizations of the
factors responsible for trust production. Yet, despite these difficulties, there has
been an impressive proliferation of theories about trust. Moreover, in the current
contradictory mixture of ideologies in managerial discourse, the recognition of
the importance of trust is probably one of few common denominators.
Until recently, managerial discourse has tended to be seen as a progression
from early Taylorist systems of technical control to increasingly sophisticated
forms of bureaucratic control in modern organizations. In reality, however,
managerial thought does not present such a picture of orderly progress. It alter-
nates between rational ideologies, such as Taylorism and system theory, and
normative discourses, such as human relations and organizational culture (Barly
and Kunda 1992). The movement away from those theories which perceived the
worker as untrustworthy, to contemporary recognition of the importance of trust
for production gains, provides a good illustration of the alternations in managerial
ideology.
The shifts in managerial discourse not only reflect changes to a broader
economic system, they also have practical implications because such movements
determine the degree to which organizations trust their employees. Managerial
philosophy contains assumptions about the trustworthiness of employees as well
as beliefs about their abilities and capabilities for exercising self-direction and
control. The first of these professional ideologies, scientific management or
Taylorism, assumed that workers were neither trustworthy, capable of independent
decisions nor reliable. It also presumed that the worker was motivated only by
external reinforcement and that he/she required fairly constant supervision. In
contrast, the human resources approach sought to engage employees’ loyalties
whilst attempting to direct their commitment towards the goals of the organization
itself (Sabel 1982).
The human resources perspective flourished under Fordism, the mode of
production which dominated in the industrialized world until the mid-1970s.
However, since Fordism was underpinned by many scientific management
assumptions, it was a system of low trust, based on sanction, deskilling, hierarchical
and bureaucratic control (Fox 1974). At the same time, due to the fact that Fordism
matured during post-war full employment and the advancement of welfare
legislation, it was a system which provided employees with security and enhanced
their rights and solidarity (Offe 1999). Interpersonal trust among employees was
generated by the relative homogeneity of their roles and the permanent nature of
employment (Roche 1991). In contrast, the trust relationships between managers
and employees were not the result of interpersonal familiarity, but were rooted in,
and supported by, the formal structures of firms, legal codes and bureaucracies.
In other words, even though Fordism was a low trust system, as illustrated by its
well-developed structures for monitoring and controlling workers’ output, it was
also characterized by a relatively high level of institutional-based trust. This
institutional-based trust was generated by legal regulations securing workers’ rights
and positions on the one hand, and a new managerial professionalism, which
provided a formal source of information as to how much an individual could be
trusted, on the other.
In the 1950s, the growing dominance of the ideology of ‘professional
managerialism’, together with the development of professional training and
managerial techniques, ushered in ‘the professional manager’. The new managerial
ideology, exemplified in the human relations approach, claimed that the leader
must be a professional manager who knows how ‘to motivate groups and
individuals’ and ‘how to enhance job satisfaction’ (Whyte 1956:134). The
professional manager should not be a narrow specialist, rather she or he should
adopt a broad ‘managerial viewpoint’ based on the social science claim that ‘the
happiness of man (sic) depended on the rootedness in a stable group’ (Whyte
1956:39). One of these professional managers’ tasks, therefore, was to create
conditions for group cooperation, solidarity and trust relationships. Consequently,

the ideology of ‘professional managerialism’, as Whyte notes, was not necessarily
compatible with the companies’ spirit and interests and it sometimes led to
paradoxical claims. One such example is the idea that in order for managers to
get ahead, they ‘must co-operate with others—but co-operate better than they do’
(1956:124, original emphasis).
While the social ethics of the 1950s relied on the exploitation of feelings of
belonging, later theories of management have challenged some of these
assumptions. With Fordism being undermined by the changing economic climate,
in particular by globalization, neo-liberal ideology and the economic challenge
from Southeast Asia in the 1980s, the rational model declared that employment
relationships are merely market transactions. This perspective stressed the rational
separation of self from organization. Whereas human relations, or human
resources-oriented theories, pointed to employees’ social needs, both the rational
self-interest model and the agency theory of management viewed employees as
actors in market transactions. Thus their behaviour was understood as the actions
of self-interested actors transacting with other self-interested actors to accomplish
individual goals which they could not achieve alone. However, as the new features
of the flexible mode of production increased the growing demand for creativity,
reciprocal communication and mutual trust, the appreciation of employees’
commitment and innovations has generated a new shift in managerial discourse.
Consequently, the buzzword in managerial discourse of the 1990s has been ‘trust’.
In what follows, I discuss reasons behind the new-found popularity in the notion
of trust.
The emergence of the trust discourse

With systems of formal control now undermined by many of the structural
processes of the 1980s and 1990s, cooperative relationships based on trust are
becoming increasingly seen as a precondition for competitive success.
Consequently, the issue of trust has assumed a new significance, and a great
many phenomena—from short-termism in the stock markets to the impressive
success of Silicon Valley—have been explained in terms of either presence or
absence of trust-based cooperative relationships. Theorists promoting trust
orientation (Fukuyama 1995; Misztal 1996; Putnam 1993; Seligman 1997; Wolfe
1989), disappointed with the narrowly construed rational choice theory approach,
argue that cultural, moral or ethical characteristics are needed to sustain economic
growth. By stressing the need to incorporate non-market factors into accounts
of the economic behaviour of individuals and groups, the language of trust has
proved itself useful for all political forces in their reflections on the failures of
their respective strategies in the context of post-Fordism and the decline of the
welfare state. Theorizing and promoting trust can be seen to provide a response
to both the narrow economism of much Marxist theory, and the failures of the
economic markets. Thus, influenced and spurred on by the success of solidaristic
Japanese firms of the 1980s, a high-trust managerial culture is perceived by many
as a necessary condition for achieving the full involvement and creativity of a

staff. New successful economies are seen as ‘underpinned by social relationships
which help people to collaborate’, and as being rooted in ‘an ethic of trust’
(Leadbeater 1999:11). In a global economy, where risk-taking, innovation and
information sharing are seen as paramount, companies will only be able to
prosper if they create a high-trust culture. In an electronic world, where businesses
are geographically far from their customers, a reputation for trust assumes even
more importance. The widely accepted view is that trust is more needed as
markets become more volatile and fragmented, technological change more rapid,
product life cycles shorter and highly specialized production more dominant
(Misztal 1996).
To generalize, the attractiveness of the concept of trust is traceable to the claim
that in post-industrial, globalized, hypercompetitive, knowledge-based economies,
relationships of trust and cooperation are essential if individuals and organizations
are to prosper if not survive. Trust is viewed as a social lubricant, which makes
possible production, exchange and cooperation and as such it is assigned the
status of a public good, which solves the problem of collective action. In other
words, visible renewal of interest in the issue of trust can be attributed to the
search for new ways to protect against free-riders and increase competitiveness.
However, the breadth and complexity of this concept, while increasing the
popularity of the idea of trust, have not enhanced the development of an integrative
theory of trust. Even though the debates surrounding trust have captured a sense
of widespread change in the economy, in the organization of work and in
communication technologies, its openness and ambiguity have neither overcome
the low heuristic value of the concept nor reduced the diversity of approaches to
it. The role of trust is still examined from a number of different, often contrasting,
directions: its role in the production of national prosperity (Fukuyama 1995); in
competitive advantage; as a part of morality itself (Hosmer 1995); as a basic
condition of an international business morality (Brenkert 1998); as a factor in
employment relations (Soule 1998); and as a facilitator of strategic alliances (Parkhe
1998). Nonetheless, despite these diverse approaches, an overview of management
theory reveals the existence of at least four commonalities in the discussion of the
issue of trust.
Commonalities in the trust discourse

First, the dominant focus in management literature on trust is on the process of
trust creation in uniquely business relationships, hence this disciplinary perspective
differs significantly from more general sociological and ethical writings on trust
(Shepard and Sherman 1998). Even though business studies frequently quote
sociological and ethics writings on trust, they tend to overlook their relevance
(Mishra 1996). This lack of interest in sociological and philosophical works can
be attributed to the fact that such studies are seen as unable to address the problem
of mechanisms for trust management. They are understood to have little relevance
for employment relations where the asymmetry of trust is more obvious than in
non-contractual relationships. The current analyses of trust in business studies

focus more on trust in interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships than
on impersonal trust in institutions.
Second, despite the absence of agreement on a single definition of the concept,
writings on trust in organization are interested in trust as a new demand created
by the main developments in organizations. That is, they focus their attention
primarily on how one may set about creating and fostering trust in the new
political economy. In the context of recent changes in terms of new technologies
and the global economy, those studying business and its values tend to embed
the notions of vulnerability, uncertainty and risk in their definition of trust (Jones
and Bowie 1998; Mayer et al. 1995). From this perspective, trust is ‘the mutual
confidence that no party to an exchange will exploit another’s vulnerability’ (Sabel
1993:1133). To trust others is to accept the risks associated with the type and
depth of the interdependence inherent in a given relationship (Shepard and
Sherman 1998:423).
Third, with many managerial studies now interested in discovering ways of
increasing the level of employees’ commitment and creativity, there are signs that
the prevailing image of the employee in ‘managerial philosophy’ is changing.
Cultural discourses, which are accessible for the construction of identity and
work environments, have served to undermine the value of unreflective, role-
bound and role-obedient conduct and have contributed to the new picture of
employees as emotional beings making independent decisions on the bases of
their culturally specific knowledge, experience and evaluation. Managerial
presuppositions about the trustworthiness of employees have altered because many
structural changes have enhanced the new reliance on, and, therefore, the new
vision of the employee. Some of these changes are: the movement towards less
centralized organizational structures, new means of communication, the growth
of knowledge-based industries and the smaller size of companies, all of which
increase the importance of horizontal links and the need to replace now-dated
vertical forms of communication with more direct, high-speed contacts. There is
also an increasing recognition of the importance of teamwork and workers’
initiatives as contributing factors to efficiency and product improvement. The
old narrow approach to the issue of motivation has been undermined by wider
social and cultural transformations. For example, the fact that employers now are
often faced with employees who resent being treated as subordinates, who are
critical, who expect to be consulted and to exert influence, is of the vital importance
in shaping the content of managerial discourse (Zeldin 1999). In view of the
cultural changes and the alternations to organizational structures, managerial
philosophy is forced to move away from simplistic visions of employment
relationships and pay heed to the diverse range of factors capable of enhancing
commitment and cooperation within organization.
Fourth, despite a lack of an integrative theory of trust, management literature
is united in promoting a vision of the future as belonging to organizations capable
of ensuring trust among their members and their partners. The commonly accepted
assumption in most businesses is that ‘the organization of the future’, or ‘the wise
organization’, is the organization that creates the conditions for the development
of trust among its employees and in its broader organizational environment
(Drucker 1997; Kramer and Tyler 1996). The arguments which corporations
and many management theorists utilize to stress the importance of establishing
trust are familiar: trust is crucial, (a) because work conditions of the modern
organization demand creativity and teamwork, (b) because the problem-solving
nature of tasks, and (c) because of horizontal structures requiring more sharing
of information, more negotiation and more reliance on employees’ involvement
(Darley 1998:328). In other words, the organization of the future is interested in
fostering trust among its members and partners because it is recognized that
centralized bureaucratic control is too weak, too costly and incapable of performing
in a new competitive environment where cooperative relationships are the main
sources of productivity gains.
With managerial discourse emphasizing the importance of trust relations, it is
not surprising that many practical steps have been taken in the search for
mechanisms and structures capable of facilitating trust production in employee/
manager relationships, as well as in relationships between managers and their
companies. However, due to distinctions within the workplace, such as different
levels of autonomy, a company does not need to be equally interested in gaining
trust with all its members. The literature suggests that effectiveness of new global
firms is based on the achievement of highly committed core professional managers,
often identified as the ‘symbolic analysts’ (Reich 1991). So, to compete globally
in a rapidly changing and unpredictable market, there is a need for enhancement
of trust relationships within this particular core of a company’s staff. This pursuit
frequently leads to the introduction of more informal ways of coordination and
to the enhancement of a higher level of employee autonomy. The processes of
informalization and professionalization, although proclaimed as the means of
recreating trust, are predominantly adopted as the solutions to raising economic
productivity in an era of global competition. But how effective are these attempts
to activate sources of trust and whose interests do they serve?
Ways of ‘securing’ trust: informalization

The present intellectual ferment in managerial studies reflects an increasing
recognition of the contingencies and risks of economic life. After a long period of
centralized institutional control, expanding formalization and legal codes, we are
now seeing various attempts to recreate trust, or supplement trust, by introducing
more decentralized, less formal, more personalized methods and strategies into
the work place. Arguing that role behaviour prescribed by formalized instructions
and routinized, together with standardized procedures within hierarchical
structures, has restrained the employee from developing her/his creative forces,
managerial discourse now embraces the notion of reconstructing institutional
backgrounds in order to unleash innovativeness. This is illustrative of a broader
trend towards a more intuitive style of strategic management which rejects elaborate
rationalist models because they do not facilitate innovation, creativity and
flexibility—qualities demanded by the new economic context. Following this, new

interest in the tacit and relational dimensions of business and managerial work
can be seen as characterized by intuition and as ‘simultaneous, holistic and
relational than linear, sequential and orderly’ (Mintzberg 1994:319).
As ambivalence and unpredictability become the main characteristics of the
‘age of contingency’ (Bauman 1996:50), fears of the risk and provisionality of all
arrangements may threaten the achievement of organizational goals. As a
consequence, managerial discourse is increasingly concerned with contingencies
and uncertainties involved in companies’ decision-making and tries to develop a
theoretical framework for understanding people’s creative and flexible responses
to situational complexity and ambiguity. The new managerial rhetoric suggests
that such responses require the appreciation of open, unrestricted, reciprocal
communication, that is, communication based on an understanding that extends
beyond mere instrumental concerns and formal hierarchy. Consequently, as the
need for trust spreads, companies try to reconcile the ‘twin claims of trust and
flexibility’ by reducing formal control and trying to secure space for people’s
informal conduct (The Economist 1995:16). Many organizations opt for various
informalization strategies based on the assumption that in informal interaction
people have some chance to face others not only as independent calculative
strategists, but as interactive partners, with whom they can establish cognitive
and emotional attunement, mutual understanding and behavioural
interdependence (Misztal 2000). Of course, the recognition of the importance of
informal groups is nothing new. However, what is novel is the strategic use of
informality to enhance institutional goals. Informalization is seen as a solution to
the trust problem because it well suits both the company’s needs for flexibility
and cooperation, and employees’ values and needs. To meet the expectations of
a new generation of well educated Western managers, who, unlike the loyal and
secure ‘organization man’, are less interested in adapting their personalities to fit
the bureaucratic organizational environment or in developing commitment to
one organization, companies are increasingly required to experiment with new
strategies of informalization.
While the formality is characterized by the centrality of explicit external
constraints, rules, contracts, instrumental calculation and impersonality, the most
common and underlying element of all definitions of informality is the scope of
relative freedom of conduct. Following Goffman’s focus on role distance, we can
define informality as a style of interaction among partners enjoying relative freedom
in the interpretation of their formal roles’ requirements (Misztal 2000). Informality,
therefore, refers to situations with a wider scope of choices of behaviour where,
in order to make the most out of the possibilities in given circumstances, that is,
to reach ‘a working understanding’ (Goffman 1983:9), people employ various
but, not pre-made, forms of action.
While formal relations—that is, neutral, legally circumscribed or depersonalized
and structured types of behaviour—are seen as a means to sustain power
relationships and methods of exercising formal control, informality is now
perceived as a way of acting in a personalized manner, ‘in which the conventional
attributes of a role are shed in favour of those of personal identity or “character”’

(Burns 1992:275). The new strategy of informalization aims at the introduction
of more consensual and cooperative types of management techniques,
democratization of work practices and forms of communication, encouragement
of team feelings, creativity and individuality. The new significance of informality,
as a way of enhancing cooperation, can be illustrated by a recent trend in some
American companies, which, in the process of adjusting to new global market
conditions and new means of communication, are tending to downsize and become
less hierarchically structured organizations. These type of initiatives originated
on the east coast of the United States and became very popular with almost
three-quarters of the largest US companies. Employees of these firms are expected
to be casual, down-dressed, unofficial, more relaxed and to develop a more
personalized and intimate style of relations with others (Weiser 1996). They are
encouraged to enjoy and conform to a less formal work environment during
their ‘Casual Fridays’, ‘Business Casual’ or ‘Dress Down Day’, when they are
encouraged or ordered to come to work dressed casually. In 1992, 63 per cent of
American office workers could wear casual dress occasionally to work, and by
1996 this had risen to 90 per cent (Epaminondas 1996:1). As Willmott puts it:
‘By creating a culture that enables employees to believe that they have a little
more autonomy and security, employees are enjoined to become more committed
to corporate objectives’ (1994:110).
This example shows that the informalization strategy can achieve an
incorporation of some previously unacceptable forms of behaviour into the official
role. Can it, however, produce trust relations or enhance cooperation and creativity?
This is a valid question to which we only have a tentative, and rather negative,
answer. The scepticism surrounding a new corporate culture with its ‘tyranny of
informality’ is based on several observations. It mainly points to the fact that
business casual conduct is neither as empowering nor egalitarian as it appears.
The ‘tyranny of informality’, as a recurrent element of a new corporate culture,
can be seen as a new form of conformity. When ‘informality’ becomes an official
way of playing the role, ‘being informal’ becomes the order of the day. The tactic
of the institutionalization of the presentation of the ‘right’ emotions used by the
corporate sector, where, for example, workers are encouraged to under-dress and
be more informal, often results in nothing less than the creation of a new form of
subjection. Such a situation does not really permit a more independent choice of
behaviour, and can easily end up in the hyper-rationality trap of formally
demanding informality or ‘willing what cannot be willed’ (Elster 1989:41).
Moreover, these new strategies not only often replace one form of conformity
with another but they can also be coercive and alienating. The bureaucratization
of informality and the compliance to ‘organizational emotion rules’ mean that
spontaneity and cheerfulness in the line of duty become something other than a
private act, as companies attempt to set standards for emotional expression. The
compliance to ‘organizational emotion rules’ often is stressful and can be an
additional burden on an already burdened employee. As a consequence, people
may feel that existing institutions are too demanding and inexperienced to cope
with the complexity of people’s emotions (Fineman 1993:24). The end result of
this subordination of ‘a private emotional system’ to commercial logic is ‘the
managed heart’ that corrupts ‘how we hear our feelings’ and how ‘they tell us
about ourselves’ (Hochschild 1979:21).
Furthermore, because acting informally, which ensures more personalized
relationships with those whom one shares this activity, is determined by social
ranking, it can be said that this new strategy is not egalitarian because it is not
available to everybody and it does not reduce inequalities. Because the nature of
the distinction between person and role is itself socially framed, those employees
who occupy higher positions are better situated in terms of interactional resources
and opportunities for individualization of their patterns of interaction. The invisible
barriers resulting from the differences in kinds of interactional material used by
various groups often reaffirm, rather than diminish, hierarchical divisions. Thus,
distinctive styles of interaction, as well as the potential negative consequences of
informality (such as nepotism or favouritism), ensure the preservation of
distinctions between groups rather than removing them, as the phenomenon of
‘old boy networks’ illustrates (Gunes-Ayata 1994; Meny 1996).
More importantly, effects of informalization should be questioned because
they could present a threat to procedural justice. This becomes obvious when we
consider that trustful and cooperative labour relations are more likely to emerge
if the sanctioning power of management is limited by statutory rules designed to
protect employees’ health, safety, wages and jobs (Offe 1999:71). Although
informalization needs to be understood in the context of excessive
bureaucratization and formalization, we should not overlook that legal regulations
and formal opportunities for an employee to express her/his opinion with respect
to performance evaluation are essential factors responsible for the creation of
trust in modern organizations. For example, a new employee will tend to assume
the manager’s benevolence if the workplace has procedures which enables abusive
managerial treatment to be punished. This is primarily for the reason that believing
a situation to be ‘bounded by safeguards enables one to believe that the individuals
in the situations are trustworthy’ (Harrison et al. 1998:479).
In addition, it should be borne in mind that the gap between the earnings of
those at the top and those at the bottom continues to expand and that employees
are increasingly on short-time contracts. Therefore, recent attempts to increase
‘informality’ have not significantly altered either the formal structure of power or
the distribution of wealth. Nonetheless, experimenting with ‘informality in the
line of duty’ will not stop because, where competitive pressures on business have
increased significantly, even small improvements are seen as being of critical
importance and therefore worth implementing. It needs to be stressed, however,
that the enhancement of people’s creative and flexible responses to situational
complexity and ambiguity requires more than the appreciation of people’s informal
conduct. This leads to the conclusion that the positive dimensions of informality
can only be sustained by a simultaneous process of formalization. This fine tuning
of formality and informality, now emerging as central to the creation of social
trust, can be helped by the process of professionalization of the managerial stratum.
Ways of ‘securing ’ trust: professionalization

Since the notion of professionalism is ambiguous and highly contested, it is not
surprising that the question of whether managers can be classed as ‘professionals’
is still without a clear and commonly accepted answer. Equally contested is the
issue of the consequences of contemporary socio-political changes for the future
of professionalism and for the professional ethics of this group. I would argue
that the current evolution of organizational structures opens up some space within
which managers can strive for more autonomy. Moreover, that the main reason
why organizations encourage the development of professional discourse is
connected with their increasing appreciation of the importance of professional
norms and ethics in motivating and controlling employees’ conduct.
Professionalism, with its proliferation of formal requirements and the spread
of education and training, is commonly assumed to be one of the most important
trust-producing formal structures. Professionalism, as traditionally understood,
provides particularly ‘clear examples of how trust can be signalled’ (Zucker
1986:64) because various mechanisms and devices, such as socialization and/or
membership in associations, defines the spheres in which members of a particular
profession can be trusted. Professional expertise and ethics furnish the grounds
for client trust, while the structure of professions provides a framework wherein
trustworthy relations might develop and grow. Since professionalism entails the
obligation to put expert knowledge in the service of clients, people generally trust
professionals with the expectation that the professional will promote and safeguard
their well-being. Moreover, professions merit trust ‘because they do not authorise
the professional to subvert client values’ (Koehn 1994:177).
Until very recently, Durkheim’s idealization of professionalism as a moral and
technical guide to a better society, based on trust and solidarity, has tended to be
seen as a correct representation of the role of professionals in society. However,
the truth is that since their inception, professions have not only been interested in
propagating values, but they have actually taken an active interest in advancing
their market position (Brint 1994:203). The issue of social contribution had
especially little intrinsic meaning for business managers who, as modern
professionals, are the product of the advent of scientific management, which
provided a ‘scientific’ rationale for their professional status and autonomy. The
complex movement towards the professionalism of the business stratum, which
expressed the first explicit claim that ‘the real managers’ were an ‘expert
professional class’ became established in the 1920s (Runciman 1997:143). It was
further cemented when the leading universities, first in the USA and then
worldwide, began to accept business management as a suitable subject for
professional training. Despite this trend towards professionalism, managers of
this early period did not necessarily exhibit many defining characteristics of social
trustee professionalism (such as autonomy, a commitment to the public welfare,
and high ethical standards). The process of professionalization of managerial
roles, which served to provide managers with legitimization and credentials, has
been aided by the increasing criticism of traditional professions for their lack of
correspondence to the realities of organizational and commercial life and for the
decline in professional ethics. This increasing public suspicion of traditional
professions and their specialized knowledge, together with a growing appreciation
of managers’ instrumental effectiveness and technical ability to solve problems,
has contributed to the increasing recognition of managerial professionalism (Brint
1994:40–7), while placing pressure on professionals to become managerialist.
The growth of the managerial stratum and the process of a new professionalization
can be seen, then, as responses to the disruption of trust caused by the increasing
heterogeneity of the work force and the instability of business enterprises in the
early stages of industrialization. Under the condition of distrust, the trend towards
credentialism provided ‘an alternative formal source of information as to how
much an individual could be trusted’, while the steep increase in managers, who
were required to monitor the untrustworthy worker’s effort and output, ensured
the production of an institutional-based trust (Zucker 1986:94).
If the role assigned to managers depends upon the perceived trustworthiness
of employees, and if trust is measured by the scope of investments in monitoring
and sanctioning under the condition of trust, the principal role of managers is
then to coordinate team efforts and to transmit information. By contrast, under
the culture of distrust managers, therefore, need to perform the functions of
monitoring and surveillance (Zucker 1986:91). Today the situation is more
ambiguous, as companies operate in increasingly uncertain and competitive
environments. Thus, on the one hand, there is a high demand for trust, not least
because monitoring and surveillance are either unfeasible or are prohibitively
costly. On the other hand, the removal of rigid bureaucratic hierarchies, far from
inspiring and freeing employees, ‘arouse the sense of vulnerability’ (Sennett
1998:142) which, together with a lack of stability of employment, corrodes trust,
loyalty and mutual commitment. Paradoxically, these two trends—the erosion of
trust production and the increased demand for trust—have augmented the need
for further professionalization of the managerial stratum as the formal trust
producing structure.
As the future of companies grows less predictable, encouraging managers’
aspirations for professional status and more autonomy increasingly suits
organizational goals. This is because professionalism requires employees to conduct
and control themselves autonomously, but, crucially, within a network of
accountability which is governed by professional conduct (Fournier 1999).
Organizations also profit from professionalism because ‘high levels of trust among
professionals provide them with an ability to establish fast, efficient and diverse
sets of linkages within and between professional-intensive collectivities and
organizations’ (Oliver 1997:238). Common characteristics of professionals, and
the rhetoric of trust skilfully employed by their professional bodies, guarantee
professionals’ considerable capacity to introduce trust into exchanges. This ability
of professionals to develop trust-relationships is beneficial for organizations because
professional networks based on trust lubricate its inter-organizational links and
alliances (Parkhe 1998). And while these features of professionals and their rhetoric
of trust help to reduce the rigidity of organizational forms, in turn, such
organizations increase the importance of professionals and the importance of

professional networks and their ideologies (Oliver 1997).
Furthermore, with growing evidence that sophisticated business strategies do
not work, and with the loss of certainty due to the spiralling advance of technology,
companies need more than ever managers capable of creative, innovative and
quick decision making. Thus, managers come closer to resembling other
professionals since they are expected, like other professionals, to make decisions
in unprogrammed ways and in unroutine situations (Pellegrino et al. 1991:30).
As the quality of managers assumes even greater importance to organizations,
trusted managers are not only buffered from routine, but are provided with more
opportunities to take charge of their own professional lives.
Debates surrounding the wise organization, while stressing that trust-based
exchanges in organizations facilitate managerial professionalism, tend to assume
that professionalism, seen as synonymous with social capital, can be a remedy
for all problems. The identification of professionalism with the fostering of
reciprocal obligations points to the concept of social capital, which encapsulates
‘such diverse entities as trust, norms, and networks’ (Woolcock 1998:161) and
which enhances collective action for mutual benefit. However, such an
identification is erroneous for several reasons. First, although professional bonds
can be a constitutive element in some types of groups characterized by a high
level of social capital, social capital can also be embodied in a wider variety of
social groups, associations or networks. Second, if professionalism is synonymous
with social capital, we should expect that, like social capital, it also has negative
consequences. A high level of social capital can foster nepotism and exclusion;
cohesive groups made of strong ties can obstruct innovation and access for non-
members, thus lowering the opportunity for the improvement of products and
reducing the capital gains. By way of contrast, professionalism is assumed to
ensure that trust relationships are based on the accountability, transparency and
the commonality of goals, rather than emotional bonds or familiarism. Therefore,
this potential disciplinary logic of professionalism (Fournier 1999) cautions against
seeing it as merely performing the function of social capital.
Another criticism of the idealistic perception of professionalization as a lubricant
for cooperation is that as managers’ individual reputation becomes a key resource
in their professional careers, their individualistic dispositions increase rather than
decrease (Kanter 1997). Thus the expansion of managerial professionalism does
not necessarily produce high levels of commitment, trust or obligation, on the
contrary, it may well lead to heightened instrumentality. In order to advance
their career in a situation where companies are searching for the best executives
in a global market, managers will increasingly rely on their individual capacity to
attract better offers. Since the professionals’ reliance on reputation stands in marked
contrast to the bureaucrat’s anonymity, professional managers, unlike traditional
corporate managers, ‘have to make for themselves’ (Kanter 1997:145). Thanks
to public recognition and the acceptance provided by reputation, ‘star’ managers
are guaranteed inroads into organizational and professional networks. Thus,
reputation encourages trust, which—as with the accumulation of ‘reputational’
capital—can bring new job offers. Not surprisingly, business people are ‘becoming
more like actors, with talent agents who offer package deals for their “stars”’ (The
Economist 2000:93). Rather than ‘belonging’ to companies, the new professional
managers are increasingly aware that ‘it pays to quit’.
For the reasons discussed, in the final analysis the panaceas for decentralized
decision making, that is, increasing skills and performance-related rewards, have
not succeeded, and cannot succeed, in winning commitment from top employees.
And, as managers ‘are losing their conviction’ (Zeldin 1999:4), their lack of interest
in developing and maintaining commitment is also reinforced by the decline in
the stability of a managerial career and the growth of job insecurity. As
organizations become smaller and flatter, turnover at the top has risen dramatically,
and managers are now more likely to be fired than in the past. Moreover, the
volatility of managerial careers has been increased by the arrival of shareholder
capitalism which forces companies to be more willing to get rid of underperforming
chief executives. The trends towards flattening hierarchies, job insecurity and
high turnover mean that the old model of a career in which an employee worked
her/his way up the ladder in a single company is becoming rare, with the result
that it is now more difficult to plan careers.
Buying loyalty?
In the context of a global market for managerial skills, and when the most
important challenge for a company is to win ‘the war for talent’, organizations
resort to buying managers’ commitment with high salaries. For example, whereas
in the 1960s the average American chief executive took home a salary forty-four
times more than the average factory worker, in 1999 that ratio was as high as
326:1 (The Economist 1999:61).
However, while many factors increase the pressure on companies to retain
good managers and to offer them additional incentives, it is questionable whether
high executive salaries actually ensure managerial loyalty. There is evidence to
show that top executives, while certainly appreciating financial rewards, attach
the highest priority to non-material aspects of job, such as pride, respect and trust
in their companies (Buckingham and Coffman 1999). Moreover, high managerial
salaries rather than securing the desired managerial trust and loyalty to a company,
paradoxically contribute to the decline of employees’ trust in organizations.
Evidence of institutions ‘permitting unfair advantages and of failing to compensate
at least some major kinds of social inequalities’ are reasons for ‘distrust and
eventually cynicism’ (Offe 1999:75). In America, some suggest that management
‘has lost credibility, employees are scared, and organizational trust has hit rock
bottom’ (Whitener et al. 1998:513). But it is not only workers who are losing
trust in their bosses; it is clear that the general public does not have a high regard
for business’s reputation as ‘only thirty-two per cent of the public thinks most
corporate executive are honest’ (Williams 1992:2).
The social repercussions of the discrepancy between salaries of chief executives
and the rest of employees are deepening as an awareness of the problem reaches
beyond shareholders’ protests and their attempts to tie executive salaries to

company’s performance. The media and public discussions are drawing attention
to the problem of corporate standards and ethics as well as to the ways in which
we measure employees’ worth and contribution. Thus, the question of top
managerial salaries becomes emblematic of a far more serious set of questions
about how we define and secure our society in a rapidly changing world and to
whom companies owe their responsibilities. In order to generate societal trust
that is essential for democracy, we cannot ignore the importance of the normative
functions of organizations. These should be designed in such a way as to ‘represent
certain values and operate so as to provide arguments, as well as incentives,
which condition loyalty and effective compliance with these values’ (Offe 1999:73).
Conclusion
Modern societies ensured their solution to the problem of cooperation by setting
their foundations in formal procedural democracy and rational universal
administration. Nevertheless, attempts to act in the spirit of rational formalism
have always been complemented by the practical importance of various informal,
non-hierarchical, voluntarily negotiated forms of self-coordination, as well as trust-
based strategies for alleviating contingency and ambiguity. Presently, two
contradictory trends—the erosion of trust production and the increased demand
for trust—are forcing organizations to search for a new balance between formal
and informal strategies of control and motivation.
In our current era, which is dominated by downsizing and outsourcing and
where ‘tradition, loyalty, and culture’ are seen as the enemies of managerialism,
relationships of trust can seem ‘anachronistic’ and inconsistent with corporate
strategy (Soule 1998:251). With the German model of capitalism seen as outdated
and with the American model characterized by its combination of ‘victorious’
labour market flexibility and competitive entrepreneur ship, some now argue
that ‘trust-based capitalism is a no longer-affordable luxury’ (Elliot 1999:14).
Nonetheless, if the reduction of uncertainty and the establishment of reciprocal
expectations are essential for cooperation, the increasing deficit of trust will put
today’s arrangements under pressure. As the rational self-interest model loses its
appeal, as numerous protest actions against the current economic arrangements
intensify across the globe, and as interest in business ethics grows, it can only be
hoped that the search for ways of achieving wealth in a socially responsible manner,
that is, in a way which fosters trust by inspiring openness, transparency and
accountability, will continue.
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3 Aspects of the ‘Audit
Society’
Issues arising from the colonization of
professional academic identities by a
‘portable management tool’
David Jary
Michel Foucault reminds us that the most boring practices often play an
unacknowledged but fundamental role in social life. This…is undoubtedly true
of auditing.
(Power 1997:xi)
Introduction
This chapter is about the expansion of the ‘evaluative state’ (Neave 1998: also
‘enabling state’, Rose 1992, 1999) particularly as manifest in the new controls of
higher education within the UK and the implications this has for professional
identities. The intellectual inspiration for the chapter is Michael Power’s account
of the ‘audit explosion’ (Power 1994), subsequently expanded by him into the
concept of the ‘audit society’ (Power 1997). The concepts of ‘trust’ and ‘risk’ are
central in Power’s account: the explosion of audit is a response to increasing
actual or perceived risk and declining trust, not least trust in professionals. Thus,
as well as about the ‘evaluative state’, the concept of ‘audit society’ also connects
with the concept of ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992; Power 1994:3).1
Defining audit
For Power, ‘The audit society by definition is one which has come to understand
the solution to many of its problems in terms of audit’ (Power 1997:138; original
emphasis). Thus it ‘is that many more individuals and organisations are coming
to think of themselves as subjects of audit’ (Power 1994:5). It is important to see
that Power uses the term audit in an extended sense:
the audit explosion is only in part a quantitative story of human and financial
resources committed to audit land its extension into new fields. It also
concerns a qualitative shift: the spread of a distinct mentality of administrative
control, a pervasive logic which has a life over and above specific practices.
(Power 1995:5)
Aspects of the ‘audit society’ 39
Although an academic accountant, Power’s rreference to Foucault connects his

thinking to contemporary sociology’s emphasis on the importance of modernity’s
‘disciplinary’ power/knowledge. Audit is a ‘portable management tool’ in which
‘environments are rendered accountable, structured to conform to the need to
be monitored ex-post’ (Power 1994:8). It is an increasingly pervasive, potent
and transmuting, example of the ‘disciplinary regime’: ‘Audits do not passively
monitor auditee performance but shape the standards of the performance in
crucial ways, and public conceptions of the very problems for which they are
solutions (Power 1994:8).
Audit obviously reshapes professionals. Although it also provokes resistance,
such resistance also transforms professionals and again illustrates the disciplinary,
‘colonizing’ power of audit. There are potentially positive features of the
‘modernizing’ processes that audit promotes, not least the reform of traditional
forms of professionalism that serve a narrow ‘producer interest’. In a ‘risk society’,
the search for new forms of institutional and individual ‘reflexivity’ is central to
the goal of greater control of a ‘runaway world’ (Giddens 1990). New forms of
public accountability are essential to any realization of an ‘empowerment’/
‘democratizing’ agenda. However, it is plain that the audit explosion is not—at
least not yet—the agent of this. Meanwhile, we exist in an era in which
professionals—not least academic professionals—have been semi-transformed,
existing in the, arguably, ‘half-way house’ that contemporary forms of audit have
created between traditional professional self-regulation and the potential of a
substantially reformed public sphere as described by Habermas, Giddens (1990,
1998) and others, Michael Power included.2 Although audit (and the new forms
of public management—NPM—associated with this) has been a tool of ‘neo-liberal’
governance (not least the pursuit of ‘value for money’—VFM—and meeting the
imperatives of ‘capitalist logic’/‘crisis in state expenditures’), it is not merely a
tool of neo-liberalism. An overall increase in ‘openness’ and the rise of
‘consumerism’ are wider elements. It is also an aspect of a far wider response to
fundamental features of ‘reflexive modernization’ and the new globalization,
including the potential for a ‘democratic turn’ (Giddens 1990). The politics of
‘New Labour’ and the ‘Third Way’ are also moves within the wider rhetoric of
‘audit society’, including the associated phenomena of ‘charters’, ‘mission
statements’, ‘executive summaries’, ‘sound bites’, ‘performance indicators’, ‘targets’
and ‘league tables’. The shifts in trust and cultural capital and the redefinitions of
knowledge and its application in terms of ‘performativity’ (Lyotard 1984) that
are underway involve profound changes in our social institutions and professional
roles, where the appropriate evaluative stance—resistance, acceptance of current
modernisation, or seeking more ‘Utopian’ change—is far from clear.
Academic audit
In academia, audit has had a variety of focuses, notably ‘institutional audit’,
‘teaching quality assessment’ and ‘research assessment’. A major driver in the
onset and focus of these is the new ‘risks’ associated with the advent of mass
40 David Jary
higher education and the perceived ineffectiveness of a previous dependence on

more informal ‘trust’ in the ‘quality’ and performance possible for a far smaller
number of institutions of much less diversity. A study by the European Training
Foundation (1998) identifies accountability for public funds, information to
students and employers, competitiveness, institutional and international
comparisons, the assignment of institutional status and funding and a check on
new institutions as important reasons for a new focus on audit and measurements
of quality. As described by Parker and Courtney (1998), the contemporary world
of professional academia is largely populated either by ‘elite nostalgists’ (usually
hostile to audit) or ‘mass modernizers’ (more often in favour of the new forms of
audit), who tend to exchange rhetorics with relatively little evidence base. This
chapter examines the operation of audit within academia as well as more generally.
It advances a critical appraisal of audit and the responses to audit by academics
and seeks to plot a way beyond contemporary forms of audit. As Brennan (2000)
notes, hitherto, rather than a scholarly literature, discussion of academic audit
has been ‘largely a literature of advocacy’, the preserve of educational developers,
‘who regard the agendas of the quality agencies as extensions of their own
improvement agendas’. Power’s discussion above all, and the contribution of
numerous commentators notably Marilyn Strathern (1997, 1999, 2000), offers a
basis for changing this.
Michael Power: eight aspects to audit

There are eight elements in Power’s core thesis about audit (1994:4–8):
1 The first element is that ‘despite differences in context and meaning, there
exists “a common thread” to all the new uses of the word “audit”’. Although
many audits, such as some in medicine, ‘are conceived primarily as internal
reviews to improve decision-making…there are important linkages between
the different contexts of audit’.3 Thus, forms of ‘self-audit’ may ‘rely upon
bureaucratic procedures which can in principle be used for independent
verification’.
2 The second element as Power puts it is that: ‘Audit is not just a series of
(rather uninteresting) technical practices. It must also be understood as an
idea.’ Although, ‘particularly in official documents and textbooks’, it has
been usual ‘to conceive of audit only in terms of its technical and operational
qualities’, this ‘disguises the importance’ of audit. In fact, audit ‘has become
central to ways of talking about administrative control. The extension of
auditing into different settings, such as hospitals, schools, water companies,
laboratories, and industrial processes, is more than a natural and self-evidently
technical response to problems of governance and accountability. It has much
to do with articulating values, with rationalising and reinforcing public images
of control.’
3 Power’s third thesis, arising from the second, is that ‘the spread of audits and
audit talk corresponds to a fundamental shift in patterns of governance in
advanced industrial societies’. ‘Audit has emerged at the boundary between

the older traditional control structures of industrial society and the demands
of a society which is increasingly conscious of its production of risks, in
fields ranging from the environment, to medicine and finance.’ It is part of ‘a
far-reaching transition in the dominant forms of administration and control,
both in government and in business.’
4 A fourth thesis about the ‘new wave of audits is that they work not on
primary activities but rather on other systems of control. For example, recently
proposed quality assurance mechanisms for higher education require audits
of the quality assurance systems of higher education institutions.’ Thus, audits
‘are often not directly concerned with the quality of performance, whether
environmental, educational or financial, but rather with the systems in place
to govern quality’ It is this that gives audit ‘a more remote assurance role
than is often understood by the publics which they are intended to serve.’ It
is this ‘policing of policing’ that ‘distinguishes the audit explosion’ from an
earlier traditions of quality control.
5 A fifth thesis, related to the fourth, is that ‘audits do not contribute
automatically to organizational transparency’. Although the rise of audit is
prompted ‘by demands for greater transparency of organizational and
individual action, the capacity of audit to deliver this is problematic’. Often
the new forms of audit ‘can make organizations more obscure’. Furthermore,
‘the audit process itself remains publicly invisible despite the commitment to
making organizations transparent’. If ‘the audit explosion signifies a
displacement of trust from one part of the economic system to another; from
operatives to auditors’, a question that arises is, who audits the auditors?
6 A sixth thesis, as already indicated, is that audit ‘is not passive but active’.
‘Not only does it shape the activities which it controls in critical ways but it
represents a very particular conception of accountability’ In fact, ‘audit actively
constructs the contexts in which it operates’.
7 The seventh thesis is that audits possess ‘a remarkable capacity of being
invulnerable to their own failure’. One of the surprising features of the
spectacular failures of audit—such as the Maxwell affair—‘is that they tend
not to call into question the role of audit itself. Instead, where audit has
failed, the common response has been to call for more of it.’
8 Power’s final thesis is that ‘notwithstanding the dominance of audits there
are other ways of achieving accountability’.
Power’s overall argument—in Power (1994, 1997)—is intended to demonstrate

the increasing institutional foothold that audit now has in governance while raising
serious questions about this impact and effectiveness. A particularly striking aspect
of audit that Power emphasizes is the frequent self-referentiality of the entire
process (Power 1994:53). Audit is intended to reveal external performances in
real time, but increasingly reports on its own internal process, its own constructs.
There are elements of hyperreality (Power 1994:56); he cites Baudrillard (1983)
in describing audit as a ‘narcissistic practice’). There are ‘real’ effects of audit, but
42 David Jary
audit is not the transparent process of accountability and control that it might be
assumed to be. And the most ‘central concern’ of all ‘is that the audit explosion
has made it difficult to think of alternatives to itself However, what Power wants
to emphasize is that ‘any society or organization can use very different models of
control and accountability’, which he summarizes in the listing of alternatives
(Table 3.1).
As Power (1994:8–9) sees it:
The audit explosion has involved an overwhelming priority for style A as

the solution to any problem…Quantified, simplified, ex-post forms of control
by outsiders have increasingly displaced other types of control.
It is not Power’s intention ‘to suggest that there have been no gains at all from the
growth of audit (Power 1994:9)’. It has in fact been associated with a ‘complex
bundle of gains and losses’. However, these gains are likely to be most in evidence
when audit is:
used in conjunction with, rather than in opposition to, elements of control

style B. One example of this is when medical audits help practitioners
reflect on clinical methods and management as well as offering a mechanism
for external evaluation. As in all things, the key is to achieve a balance and
compromise.
(Power 1994:9)
Power’s purpose, and ours, ‘is to offer a diagnosis which may assist in restoring a
balance that has been lost’ (Power 1994:9).
Marilyn Strathern on audit and academia

Michael Power’s baton has been taken up by a number of researchers and
commentators, notably the Cambridge social anthropologist, Marilyn Strathern.
In general agreement with central aspects of Power’s thesis, her digested
formulation is that: ‘While the metaphor of financial auditing points to the
Table 3.1 Two styles of audit

important values of accountability, audit does more than monitor—it has a life of
its own that jeopardises the life it audits’ (Strathern 1997:305).
Strathern both applies and extends Power. Above all, her focus is on ‘audit
culture’ as a ‘bloated’ phenomenon, with a ‘runaway’ ‘momentum of its own’.
She notes the historical importance of the model of academic ‘examining’—formal
testing, quantification and the written record—in the creation of human
accountancy (Hoskin 1995, 1996) and the paradox of a return of audit to haunt
the academy. She also remarks on the widespread penetration of academic
discourse and writing by the styles of audit, for example, the increasing use of
such devices as mission statements and bullet points. The latter in particular are
discussed in Strathern (1999) as a symptomatic of what is amiss in audit. She
draws a parallel between responses to audit and the Mozambiquean Naparama
army of boys and men protected merely by the ‘scars’ of what they deemed
‘vaccinations’ against bullets. Like this army, Strathern suggests, elite universities
such as Cambridge can seek to deflect the attentions of funding councils and
audits by answering in other terms than the new requirements of audit; for
example, in terms of traditional research and scholarship. But increasingly they
do not succeed and are forced to respond in the rhetoric and language of the new
accountability. Then it becomes ‘not just a matter of warding off…punitive
measures…but of seeking approval’ (Strathern 1999:5).
Strathern’s critique of the new forms of audit is especially telling in the contrast
she draws (see Power’s Style A and B in Table 3.1) between the superfi-cialities
and distortions of audit and the depth of research and understanding characteristic
of anthropological ethnographies. Especially citing Habermas, Power contrasts
audit with dialogue. Strathern also draws on this contrast. Above all, Strathern
(1999:7) asks: ‘What kind of self is being elicited when we demand that
organizations thus give descriptions of “themselves”?’
The language and measurements in which ‘selves’—both institutional and
individual selves—must be presented in audit implies managerial structures,
organizational models and a codification of action and process, in terms of which
the reporting occurs. This pre-empts any different or wider ‘self-scrutiny’. Self-
scrutiny may be invited:
[But the] auditors’ interest is not in producing an ‘organisational model’ in

the sense of a model of an ongoing organization with its own characteris-
tics…And the evaluation of ‘how well’ [an organization is doing] is already
taken care of by…pre-set criteria of what an efficient organization would
look like.
(Strathern 1997:312)
Rather, ‘The “self” in the invitation to self-scrutiny turns out to be already a

particular kind of self…the self [in] the type of agency that propels persons/
institutions towards their stated goals’ (Strathern 1997:313).
The ‘reflexivity’—awareness of self and others—implied by audit is already
explicit in scholarly activity. Scholarship ‘is part of an accountability process’;
44 David Jary
‘Audit…is late company to sit down at the same table’ (Strathern 1997:314).
It has the potential to do ‘for institutions what…self-scrutiny can do for the
scholar’. There need be no disputing the virtue of a scholarly approach to
teaching and learning, to reflexive practice. There need be no objection in
principle to audit as ‘enabling’ new practice, providing increased information
to students and stakeholders, or increasing accountability for public funds
(although more on this later). But audit soon becomes ‘exhortation’. Thus, in
teaching and learning, information technology may be presented as an
inevitable adjunct of ‘good practice’. ‘Useful improvements thus do duty as
“proof” of improvement’ (Strathern 1997:317). There arises a problem of
information overload, an emphasis on constant change and improvement that
subverts time and the natural cycles of activity and rest within organizations.
There also occurs a ‘conflation of management and performance’, the incessant
drive to improving ratings.
Strathern underlines with some aplomb how audit grows in ‘a global pond
where organizations jostle for recognition in an ICT soup of logos and websites’
(Strathern, 1999:7). Crucially,
it is through the way they describe themselves that organizations demand

attention—coerced into giving such descriptions they also force their
descriptions of themselves on others. But in either case, they have to persuade
others that it is ‘themselves’ they are describing. They have to create the conditions
of trust under which their representations will hold conviction. Submitting
to good practice would seem to do some of this validating work. If it has
thus become ‘good practice’ simply to be able to describe one’s mission
through stating aims and objectives and the procedures to achieve them,
even to aim to do so smacks of virtue.
(Strathern 1999:7, original emphasis)
Marilyn Strathern is here Foucaultesque, though she does not cite Foucault. Both
institutional and individual selves are involved and controlled/reconstructed in
such practice:
‘Good practice’ carries the double resonance of ethical behaviour and

effective action. Simultaneously a standard of measurement and a target to
which to, work, it is its own reward.
(Strathern 1999:7–8)
However, many academics protest about the categories into which they are
forced to render their accounts of themselves and complain of the complexity
lost on the way.
(Strathern 1999:8)
The ‘self-referentiality’ of audit is given close attention by Strathern who makes

particular use of Luhmann’s (1990) writings on systems:
Information is not transferred between system and environment; rather

the system creates a distinction between the ‘information’ it can use internal
to itself and unusable ‘data’ beyond.
(Strathern 1999:9)
‘Written on the eve of the audit explosion’, Luhmann’s ideas ‘on self-reference
are uncanny in the circumstances. He anticipates—with almost predictive force—
the conditions under which practices of good practice might start taking off as a
self-organizing system’ (Strathern 1999:9). ‘Self-referential systems are able to
“observe” their own operations, and will insert descriptions of themselves into
themselves’ (Strathern 1999:10):
The more the system can take on, the more powerful its interactions with
its environment. Today, this formal theoretical position which specifies the
properties by which one may recognize ‘a system’, turns up in other location
altogether: in the hands of social planners and theorists it appears as a
literal aim or objective. Thus we may understand modern societies as
developing various theories about social process as ‘instruments of self-observation
within different functional sectors’ (Luhmann 1990:185). Theorizing about
education or law, say, has been concerned with the reflexive foundations of
these functional components (finding educational principles on which, for
example, to base educational institutions).
(Strathern 1999:10)
With audit, however, ‘literalisation is taken one step further’:
[It is] added to what a system is doing in its own communications…an

invitation for meta-communication for—literally—a ‘self-description’. But this
is not reflexivity for its own sake…We can see audit as a social system with
its own self-organizing properties, regenerating itself through the auditable
accounts it elicits…
How to render practices explicit becomes part of audit’s internal
complexity, and points to its boundary condition. Making the practices
explicit is a key means by which audit systems reduce…absorb outside
complexities into themselves. But audit constitutes its environment in a
rather partial way: it fishes in a pond potentially full of organizations—such
as institutions of higher education or health service trusts—perceived as
other systems each required to be explicit about its own organization. Yet this
is no reciprocal relationship; the systems do not ‘meet’. When an
organization such as a university department…becomes subject to audit,
the interactions all seem to work in audit’s way.
(Strathern 1999:10)
In short, the ‘whole audit apparatus…amounts to a self-organising “system” which

can take on any other’. It is ‘neither open nor closed’. It keeps its virtue by its
46 David Jary
‘own self-description’ as ‘an enabling technology’. As an organization ‘it produces

trust in organization(s)’, by requiring that they ‘“perform” being an organization’.
As ‘instruments of purification, the ‘smooth running’ of audit ‘is not up for
scrutiny’: ‘What makes audit virtuous is its power to purify the principles of
(good) organization as such’ (Strathern 1999:11).
Strathern’s central point, then, is not simply that audit in its frequent forms
‘pre-empts proper self-scrutiny’. ‘Accountability regimes imply a negation of
trust’, a denial of ‘mutual’, ‘reciprocal knowing’. It is because of this that they
give ‘a false presentation of visibility’. There is also the problem that the
different sides are seeking advantage and, with this, the loss of the ideal or
ethic of open communication/dialogue. (An example we can note is the
‘feedback’ within audit of enforced ‘self-critique’ as an externally discovered
failing.) More generally, the forms of accountability require us not simply to
present a ‘depiction of ourselves produced in order to impress others but a
picture which shows how impressed we are with ourselves’ (Strathern 1999:7). There
is also finally the worry that bullet points and such related forms may actually
replace other kinds of language/discourse. ‘What’, Strathern asks (1999:12), ‘is
an institution of higher education doing in producing unanalysable nonsense?’
Mission statements may appear, in Malinowski’s terms, ‘phatic’, ‘talking for the
sake of talking’. But such statements are now a global phenomenon, not just
an HE Funding Council imposition. They may perform some work: for
example, as a defence of diversity, although they may also draw attention to
diversity as a suitable case for treatment. But in the end, there remains the risk
that the bullet-pointed and templated language of missions and audits will
supplant other kinds of discourse.
In all of this, the contrast with fuller reflexivity or true research—one of Power’s
key points—is extreme. Rarely does audit provide transparency. Power also talks
of audits ‘giving-off information’ (managing information) rather than providing
the fuller information capable of leading to an actual empowerment of stakeholders.
Collusion between auditors and auditees and the sometimes cynical manipulation
of data are further frequent features of audit. Here the relationship between
‘measures’ and ‘targets’ is instructive. ‘When a measure becomes a target’,
Strathern (after Hoskin) suggests, it ‘ceases to be a good measure’. Power points
to a continuous struggle of colonization and resistance as features of audit.
Demoral(e)-ization and demotivation from loss of professional autonomy are all
to be listed among the pathologies/dysfunctions of audit (see also Jary 1999;
Shore and Wright 1999, 2000). All of this makes particularly hard to take the
self-justificatory, relative immunity from critique, the narcissism of audit and its
processes.
Three ways of professional control/accountability?

Self-referentiality and narcissism, including self-serving interests, is, however, not
only a feature of audit. As Table 3.2 indicates, audits have also been widely
regarded as a feature—even, an essential and constitutive feature—of traditional
forms of professional self-regulation. And this professional self-regulation, of

course, is what the new forms of public management and quality control are
expressly framed to replace. In a ‘reflexive modernity’ (Giddens’s term), with
declining deference and far less acceptance of traditionalism/paternalism, and
the rise of consumerism, there is obviously far less place for ‘taking on trust’,
and far less tolerance of under-analysed risk. Whatever the limitations of
modern forms of audit, they are a response to manifest problems and issues
and cannot simply be set aside.
The positive claims made for audit are summarized in Table 3.2. From a
managerialist or recent UK government perspective the gains potentially available
from audit include ‘efficiency gains’, increased VFM and more generalized ‘quality’
gains realized as part of an enhanced ‘service’ orientation. What are we to make
of these claims? There is at least an argument for saying that audit and its associated
management practices have had some ‘success’ in helping to bring about the
resources and the ‘flexibility’ necessary to open-up higher education to a new
mass entry. Equally, however, given the manifest limitations of audit in many of
its present forms, the response obviously cannot be ‘three cheers’ for existing
forms of audit.
The issue that arises is not, is there a way back to pre-audit days? But is there
a different (better) future for audit that academic subjectivities while also achieving
legitimate ‘accountability’ and ‘improvement’ in HE without the pathologies/
dysfunctions of the present forms of audit? Table 3.2 provides a summary of the
ground to be covered by our consideration of the issues.
Practicality or ‘utopianism’ in the proposed reform of

academic audit?
As Power constantly insists, ‘It would be wrong to conclude simply that less
auditing is desirable’ (Power 1997:114). ‘What makes auditing auditing is the
legitimate requirement for one party to give an account of those actions
relevant to its relation to another party’ (Power 1997:134: my emphasis). For
Power, however, the central problem that surrounds audit, including higher
education audits, is what he refers to as ‘the epistemological obscurity of
audit’. And the biggest problem here is that ‘audit has put itself beyond
empirical knowledge about its own effects in favour of a constant
programmatic affirmation of its potential.’ ‘More generally, the audit explosion
has actually closed off avenues of official scepticism and modesty; auditing has
become central to regulatory programmes’ (Power 1997:144). It may be, as
Power contends, that audit:
is too greatly needed for many of the changes which have taken place for an open
and fundamental diagnosis of benefits and dangers. Diagnosis is necessary and
yet constantly deferred by a range of other localized and procedural issues which
occupy regulatory energies.
(Power 1997:144)
Table 3.2 Three methods of professional control/accountability
50 David Jary
Yet there is today a need, as Power sees it, for ‘real’ evaluation with a social
scientific base in order to make the side-effects of audit visible. It is apparent that
while auditing is everywhere acquiring an institutional momentum, it is becoming
insulated from systematic inquiry. This also means that ‘the operational reality of
auditing has a problematic relation to the democratic ideals and the ideas of
empowerment which in part drive it.
One of the great merits of Power’s discussion is that he locates his
discussion of audit within the wider perspective of ‘emancipatory’ theorists
like Habermas as well as theorists such as Giddens and Beck, who
examine the general environments of risk and trust within reflexive
modernity. He considers audit’s capacity for development, including the
potential for dialogic reflexivity, new forms of accountability, and new
social compacts and empowerment within a society ‘knowing when to
trust’, compared with the nightmare of an audit ‘society where nothing is
trusted and everything is checked’ (Power 1997:146).
Strathern’s general proposals, broadly consistent with Power’s, seek to:
1 control the ‘information explosion’;

2 preserve ‘implicit knowledge’;
3 produce ‘embedded knowledge’.
As well as being influenced by Power and emphasizing a more open

‘reflexivity’, her view is also influenced by Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’
and, like her co-contributors in her 2000 volume, is above all grounded in
conceptions of sound, and ethically attuned, ethnography. For Rose
(1999:191), for example, the intention is to expand and to turn to different
effect the context created by audit in which a ‘language of ethics is
proliferating’. In all of this, the overall goal is to move ‘audit’ (or beyond
‘audit’) from Style A to Style B. The assumption of Michael Power and other
would-be reformers of audit would appear to be that changes that are good
for academic subjectivities can also be good for accountability and
performance and can potentially be achieved. Fine sentiments! But how
realistic are they? How practical are they? As Power admits, the existing
auditing practice may be ‘the best option available for achieving cost-effective
incremental assurance’, with audit representing a necessary form of ‘pragmatic
“muddling through”’. A global explosion of, and overload in, communications
and a proliferation of media voices and a world of intense market competition
may together explain the prominence of such phenomena as the ‘sound bite’
and ‘executive summary’ as well as audit, all of which become ways of
coping. Thus audit involves ‘trade-offs’ in relation to the exigencies that are
driving it: capitalist logic, a massified higher education, and numerous global
processes, including global competition between institutions (see Figure 3.1). In
these circumstances, forms of audit that distil judgements to simple
‘reassuring’ categories undoubtedly assist governments and institutions in
appearing to function effectively, or can be used to identify ‘blame’ and the
need for intervention. In UK higher education, for example, audit, having

been in retreat up to the point when direct state control of polytechnics
ceased, was reintroduced as part of a new regulatory regime to meet what
was perceived as an increased risk when the polytechnics became universities.
This new regulatory regime became more intrusive for both pre-1992 and
post-1992 universities than what went before. The possibility, then, is that the
more routinized forms of audit play a necessary role where low trust and high
risk are perceived to exist. The possibility is that the general exigencies that
are driving audit will continue to sustain Style A audit and preclude any
widespread move to Style B.
A further central issue, internal to institutions, is whether ‘organizational design’
is ‘capable of building in ‘moral competence’ and ‘of providing regulated forms
of openness around these competencies’ (Selznick 1994, cited in Power 1997:144).
In Power’s view what is required ‘is actually consistent with the growing enthusiasm
for self-organization and responsive regulation but it also requires mechanisms
for higher level reflection on instruments of control, on the mix between internal
and external audits and on the consequences of audit arrangements’, ‘sensitivity
about the side-effects of the instruments of knowledge’ (Power 1997:144). As
indicated by Sieber (1981, cited by Power):
it may be possible to develop criteria, performance indicators perhaps, by

which audit could evaluate itself. For example, audit could be judged in
terms of: empathy with and understanding of the auditee; its capacity to
reflect on cultural bias; the strength of its orientation to original goals to
avoid displacement;…the existence of provisions for rebuilding auditing
agencies; the creation of forms of evaluation which are sensitive to regressive
effects.
(Power 1997:144)
Power rightly asks: ‘Would all this simply be an ironic extension of auditing
and a further step towards the audit society?’ He acknowledges that: ‘The
demands of such ongoing reflexivity would be great, requiring sensitivity to
obscure sources of auditee system maintenance, such as trust, and a constant
preparedness to redesign the audit process’. ‘Regulatory sensitivity about what
makes organizations like schools and hospitals effective is necessary’ (Power
1997:145). This would also:
require some institutionalization of social scientific knowledge of the manner

in which instruments of supposedly neutral verification can transform the
contexts to which they are applied. And as this knowledge of consequences
grows, so too would the possibilities for debate and discussion about whether
they should be intended or not. In this way, audit would become part of a
broader organizational learning process rather than an empty ritual of
verification for merely disciplinary purposes.
(Power 1997:145)
Figure 3.1 Global exigencies driving audit
Kinds of academic selves and the present and future

possibilities of academic audit
In turning to the possible futures of audit/accountability in higher education it is

first necessary to examine further current trends. Here I am guided
methodologically by Giddens’s (1990) notion of ‘utopian realism’, that any realistic
discussion of radical alternatives must begin by extrapolations of favourable aspects
of current tendencies.
A useful consideration of the question what kind(s) of professionals/ employees
academics are is provided by Puxty et al. (1994), who conclude that, the position
of academics is now best described as ‘employees of state capitalism’, in that their
funding depends centrally, not on markets, but on state management of capitalist
accumulation. The squeeze on academic funding and academic labour—its
‘intensification’—and the move from ‘craft’ forms to mass delivery, arises from
the relationship between higher education and the state being ‘necessarily political’.
Of course, the state must also maintain ‘legitimacy’ and will be constrained to
advance social justice so the link with capital accumulation is accordingly mediated,
but this does not detract from the point that the main driver is the state-education
relation, justifying the term ‘state employee’.
This does raise the question of whether ‘audit’ should be the focus of attention
or ‘the state-political relation’. The answer of course is that the two are interrelated.
A progressive commodification/valorization of academic labour has occurred as
the ‘use value’ of academic labour becomes centred on the ‘exchange value’ of
HE output and on its wider ‘political value’ to the state. Audit is manifestly an
aspect of this, including both (1) the introduction of ‘standardized and centralized
measures of research performance’ affecting funding, and (2) the assessment of
‘teaching quality’ and teaching administration. These developments both ‘fuel
and legitimise’ the advance of ‘hard managerialism’ (Trow 1994) and lead to a
privileging of hierarchy and bureaucracy over collegiality and professionalism.
The introduction of such terms as ‘line manager’, ‘product’ and ‘customer’ is
symptomatic. It is in the course of this that professionalism gets redefined as
‘dedicated and proficient compliance’ to the rule of managers, as ‘flexibility’, etc.
That the new systems of audit are, in part, designed and administered by academics
means that these maintain elements of collegiality and legitimacy, but the loss of
autonomy and routinization of work is clear to rank-and-file academics. For Trow
(1994), the outcome of teaching quality audit is that a ‘drift towards delivery
philosophies of teaching, supported by hard managerial assumptions is
transforming teaching from a relationship into a transaction which can be made
auditable in isolation.’ (Trow 1994:103)
If we examine the effects of audit on individual academic selves, it is clear
that the effects are highly variegated, with no simple tally of ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’,
losers and beneficiaries, from audit. In Mertonian terms (Merton 1949) and in
relation to traditional academic values and new organizational forms, ‘innovative’
(or ‘new conformist’) careers for ‘modernizers’ are one side of the coin.
Traditionalism or ‘ritualistic’ attempts at Naparaman ‘deflection’, or else
54 David Jary
‘retreatism’, are the other. Resistance and ‘rebellion’, perhaps associated with a
more radical agenda, are also in evidence, although, as Puxty et al. (1994) and
Parker and Jary (1995) suggest, these have been muted and countered by
government policy of institutional divide-and-rule and individual competition
between staff. But in relation to all of these responses audit has been
transformative. Resistance also involves colonization. One further possibility in
all of this, as pointed to by post-colonial theory and post-modernism, is the
likelihood of fragmented or ‘split’ selves (Sennett 1999). However, since such
selves can be part of a postmodern weltanshauung, we should not underestimate
the capacity of individuals—especially the young—to swim in several seas and
build viable, and fulfilling, if sometimes ambivalent, self-narratives, careers and
even political projects on this basis (Beck 2000). On the other hand, it is also
plain that, for many, ‘retreatism’ and ‘nostalgia’ is the prime reaction to what
may be perceived as a ‘McDonaldization’ of universities (Parker and Jary 1995),
even an outright ‘proletarianization’ of academic roles. Given the above
configuration of academic selves and the general exigencies driving audit, what
indications are there of audit either moving or being movable in any particular
direction?
Table 3.3 provides a schematic account of the different forms of audit that
have been operational or are proposed in UK higher education. It is characteristic
of these that although they can be seen as state-led, they also involve central
elements of ‘self-regulation’, albeit much of it directed by higher education’s
collective and institutional managers, by the Higher Education Funding Council(s)
(HEFCs) and by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) established by universities
and colleges (although required by statute).
Of the systems of ‘audit’ identified in Table 3.3, ‘institutional audit’, highly
dependent on ‘audit trail’ analysis of process rather than outputs, can be seen
as closest to Power’s ‘ideal type’ of Style A audit. Significantly, resistance to this
has been greater than for other forms of academic audit, with a number of
primarily elite institutions declining to participate recently. On the other hand,
while still partially reliant on ‘audit trails’, more output/outcome based assessment
of ‘fitness for purpose’ have been uppermost in Teaching Assessment (TQA)
and the Research Assessment (RAE), especially the latter. That the existing
systems of audit are to an extent designed and administered by academics can
be seen as an advantage in terms of Power’s Style B criteria, ensuring that both
the TQA and RAE have maintained both elements of collegiality and a degree
of academic ‘legitimacy’. This has been especially so for the RAE where direct
measures and both quantitative and qualitative measures of output have
prevailed. On the other hand, all forms of academic audit, since they have been
constructed to appease government, can fairly be described as forms of ‘self-
audit designed to be used bureaucratically’. Moreover, the involvement of
academics in the implementation of these forms of audit also means that many
academics—and especially academic managers—have been subject to
‘colonization’/‘normalization’ by the processes and language of audit, leading
to a narrowing of academic subjectivities. For all forms of ‘quality’ audit, it is
Table 3.3 Modes of audit and organizational and professional control
in UK higher education
56 David Jary
highly evident that evaluation at both the departmental and the institutional
level increasingly strengthens the ‘harder’ form of institutional management
(Brennan 2000). As well as this, audit has undoubtedly been associated with
more workplace compliance and intensifying workloads (including increased
stress; see Rose 2000) that has been widely resented. Although, on the plus side,
audit has undoubtedly strengthened somewhat the relative power of higher
education ‘consumers’—not least students—compared with ‘producers’, on the
evidence of a recent report commissioned by HEFCE (for example, Segal Quince
Wickstead 1999), there is relatively little to suggest that the audit/accountability
has been VFM or that the weight of audit has resulted in a corresponding
increase in transparency (for example, for students or employers) or has been
otherwise widely empowering of external stakeholders. Instead superficial, and
in may ways misleading, ‘league tables’ have flourished, fuelled by audit. Also
the output of audit has been used to ‘name and shame’ institutions and academics
(for example, the intervention of the QAA at Thames Valley University, even
though the record of audit was ambiguous).
For all this, there are elements—though mixed—in the current forms of audit,
and especially in recently proposed changes that can be seen as pointers to possible
change—albeit as yet limited—in the direction sought by reformers such as Power
and Strathern:
1 For the RAE, despite opposition to the dominance of traditional disciplines

and its association with extreme selectivity in funding and work intensification,
there is a breadth of acceptance that assessment provides a ‘fair’ indication of
research quality even though there is a view that it may not enhance quality
and has unwanted side-effects (e.g. on teaching). Furthermore those charged
with the conducting the RAE have maintained a dialogue with practitioners,
and worked to increase its transparency. (This contrasts sharply, however,
with a widespread hostility to the data collection techniques associated with
the recent ‘Research Transparency’ Exercise aimed at establishing the ‘true’
costs of research.)
2 Institutional audit in its most recent incarnation, ‘continuation audit’, at least
allows for the possibility of a ‘light touch’ review.4 On the other hand, it is
likely to remain first-and-foremost a ‘secondary’ analysis of processes via
audit trails, although with the addition of Performance Indicators and likely
to continue to suffer from some of the more extreme ‘pathologies’/’fatal
remedies’ of audit.
3 Teaching assessment, including the introduction of QAA ‘benchmarking’
carried out by ‘subject communities’, will, in its future form (now termed
‘academic programme review’), also aim to achieve a ‘lighter touch’, reducing
its previous emphasis on ‘inspection’. Following pressures from institutions,
and despite some counter pressure from key stakeholders (notably employers,
who would prefer a simpler quantification of quality), it will seek to avoid
reducing learning and teaching ‘quality’ to a matrix-based metric providing
fodder for league tables.
4 The qualifications framework, despite being over elaborated in its

identification of levels, would appear to represent a potentially valuable
step in transparency of value, especially to students and other external
stake-holders.
5 Prompted by the Dearing Report of 1997, both institutional Learning and
Teaching Strategies and the national Learning and Teaching Initiatives (for
example, ILT and a new HEFC-funded Learning and Teaching Support
Network, LTSN) are aimed at achieving an increased focus on institutional
support for learning and teaching. The latter especially are intended to
strengthen reflective, discipline-based professional networks.
6 Benchmarked performance indicators (notably those concerned with
recruitment patterns and access) may become the means of a more responsive
higher education, based on assessment of direct measures of output/outcome,
without the artificiality of more contrived forms of audit.
Tactical struggles—involving government, H E FCs, higher education

institutions and QAA—have been factors in many of the compromises involved
in the above and these are small steps, but at least the potential would seem
to be there for moving towards Style B from Style A audit and accountability.
The question remains, however, can the exigencies that sustain this Style A
audit and outweigh its disadvantages also be met by movements in the Style
B direction? If the imperatives leading to the evaluative state in relation to
higher education are, as suggested by Puxty et al. (1994), ultimately mainly a
matter of a control of funding/accumulation and serving the direct training
needs of the economy, the answer may prove to be ‘no’. But if the demand for
audit and accountability are accepted as legitimate, and if it is also
acknowledged that audit could be reori-ented more effectively to serve wider
social interests, then more than a protection of academic subjectivities will be
seen as required and a reformulation of audit may occur to forward the aim
of a more truly reflexive modernity. Thus the issues, which may or may not
be resolvable, would seem to be:
1 How to best serve this plurality of academic and client ends (nostalgia for a
return to elite system, in which autonomy and ‘latitude’ led to ‘abuse’ is
plainly not the answer)?
2 How further to enhance the overall reflexivity of higher education about
itself, and to enhance a reflexive professionalism within it?
3 How best to achieve stronger, more inclusive coalitions of stakeholders given
the inherent problems of extending involvement and the counter pressure
for narrower forms of external control?
4 How best to achieve a reworking of professionalism as well as ‘softer’ new
management forms?
5 How best to seek progressively to redesign the necessary elements of audit
on the above basis, in which a wider discussion of the relationship between
HE policy, audit, professional and personal ethics has a place?
58 David Jary
Conclusions
In the language of ‘actor network theory’ there can be no doubt but that audit
has become a significant ‘actant’ (Law 1996, cited in Strathern 2000) in the overall
process of modern ‘governance’ and in UK higher education. Michael Power
and Marilyn Strathern have posed the questions and stated the possibilities. The
jury is still out, and, indeed, relatively little work has as yet been done to very
fully explore5 whether their proposals are ‘utopian realist’ or merely Utopian.
Given the forces driving the current forms of audit it may be that a Foucauldian
pessimism about contemporary ‘self-disciplining’ regimes would be more
appropriate. However, Power and Strathern have outlined a context for reform/
transformation of audit which should be further explored. What Power has stated
in general terms about the requirements for a substantially different future for
audit bear particularly on the changes in trust as well as reflexivity that would be
required:
It is important to recognize that such an institutionalized capability for

evaluating audit which avoids reproducing the very problems it is intended
to solve could only be created by a confident society This would be a
society capable of knowing when to trust, and when to demand an audited
account.
(Power 1997:145–6)
Notes
1 The chapter extends in key respects a previous discussion of the ‘audit society’ in Jary
(1999); it does so especially in locating academic audit globally and identifying the
exigencies that drive the present forms and the possibilities of change.
2 Power cites Habermas (1992). For an accessible overview of the general importance of
Habermas, see Outhwaite (1994).
3 Power however does draw important distinctions between ‘audit’ (dependence on ‘second
order knowledge’), ‘inspection’ (involving direct observation), and ‘surveillance’
(continuous observation).
4 Since this provision is expected to be only for elite institutions, this also illustrates how
the risk/trust exigencies driving ‘audit’ are likely to constrain its forms.
5 Power himself remains relatively cautious in advancing any very specific claims about
particular solutions; rather he is content to recommend increased ‘reflexivity’ as part
of a continuing dialogue between all interested parties, including the development of
a research agenda.
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4 Medical professional
autonomy in an era of
accountability and
regulation
Voices of doctors under siege
Marilynn M.Rosenthal
The most important drivers in the academic doctors’ lives used to be success in
research, making honest and good contributions to the progress of medicine,
teaching medical students and residents and being proud of the clinical care
they gave. That has all been replaced by the ‘operating margin’. And that has
created significant amounts of disaffection.
(Interview, the American Chief of Staff, December 2000)
The state of the professions

It is argued that professionalism is not only under attack but that there is a process
of deprofessionalization, even prolatarianization taking place. These assertions
have been discussed with reference to the medical profession for some decades
(Haug 1973; McKinley and Arches 1985: Ritzer 1996), as have been challenges to
these critiques (Freidson 1994; Rosenthal 1987, 1995). It can be argued that such
analyses reach too high a level of generalization, missing the subtleties and nuances,
the ebb and flow of aspects of professionalism. Professional autonomy is a
multidimensional phenomenon. The dimensions must be sorted out and examined
individually. Furthermore, change does not take place on a single trajectory.
Among the more thoughtful analyses of professional autonomy is the work of
Starr (1982). He identifies a number of dimensions of autonomy: political,
economic, social, cultural and technical. Freidson (1994) suggests that although
doctors will more and more be salaried and responsible to managers, these will
often be other doctors who will retain their allegiance to the culture of medicine.
Others have argued that the medical profession in a particular country may lose
control over some dimensions of autonomy while retaining control over others.
Moreover, these elements of control wax and wane (Rosenthal 1987).
This chapter explores the state of medical professional autonomy in an unusual
way. It is based on three extensive interviews with chief medical officers in three
academic medical centres, one each in the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United
States. All the chiefs were asked the same questions from the same semi-structured
interview schedule with some small adjustments in country-specific vocabulary. The
interviews are rendered as a series of paraphrasing, summaries and direct quotes.
62 Marilynn M.Rosenthal
Along with the research and theoretical constructs, it is important to hear

directly the voices of doctors themselves. Subjects to be covered include attitudes
and assessments of growing efforts from government, market agencies and the
attempts by medical professional leadership to bring the profession to greater
accountability for its work.
Various mechanisms have been instituted in these three countries to accomplish
these ends. Motivated, at the same time, by the need for cost containment and
improved quality, these mechanisms have both intended and unintended
consequences. Set in the context of the perennial clashes between professional
and bureaucratic cultures, the interviews cover what has happened to professional
service ethics, control over knowledge, control over clinical, economic and political
autonomy and self-regulation.
There is absolutely no claim that these physicians are typical of doctors in their
medical centres or in their countries. In fact, if anything, they are atypical, having
been chosen for positions of great responsibility in difficult times. Perhaps they are
rather more insightful, more articulate, forceful and statesmanlike than their
colleagues. They are in the unique position of seeing ‘the bigger picture’ in their
settings. Their voices provide strong suggestions as to how the profession of medicine
views itself and its situation in a world of emboldened managers, market forces and
unremitting cost containment strategies. The authority structures within which
they work give them different and differently exercised power. Their observations
also reflect distinct personalities responding to questions at a particular time.
How are the battles being fought? Which negotiated? Which compromised?
What is the natural course of change and the accommodations to it?
This chapter is an opportunity to hear the words and assessments of chiefs in
three different countries, three different health care systems, three different cultures.
Different systems and cultures yet, in many instances, strikingly similar expressions.
One might argue that there is an international culture of biomedical science that
influences some convergent views transcending national boundaries. In addition,
there are national cultures for each country’s medical profession that produces
unique views.
Three health care systems

The United Kingdom and Sweden both have public health care systems where
access is guaranteed as a right of citizenship. The UK National Health Service
(NHS) is funded primarily from general tax revenues and is centrally planned. It
offers a standard and universal set of benefits, essentially free at the point of
delivery. Its management and organizational structure has been reorganized a
number of times, since its inception in 1949, in the name of efficiency and
effectiveness. The most significant reorganization took place under the Thatcher
government and created ‘internal markets’ (Ham 1992).
This is an effort to mimic the dynamics of a competitive market but with public
monies and within public structures by creating a purchaser-provider split. Hospital
doctors are salaried employees of the NHS; general practitioners are private
Medical professional autonomy 63
contractors. There has always been a private sector, alongside of and in the public
sector. It has grown significantly in recent decades. Academic medical centres
often have centuries-old origins and may also control significant endowments.
The Swedish health care system also guarantees equal access (Calltorp 1990).
Like the UK, it is a public system, supported by public taxes, with a standard,
universal range of benefits with reasonable out-of-pocket fees at the point of delivery
of care. The Swedish system has always been more decentralized than the UK. It
is the responsibility of the counties who have major and direct financing and
administrative responsibilities for health care delivery. The central government
tries to maintain ‘steering’ influence on the counties, but in the last decade the
counties have become increasingly independent in their organizational
philosophies. The Swedish health care system, influenced by the UK, has also
attempted to create various forms of the ‘internal market’.
Administrators in Sweden, driven by the need for cost containment and
efficiency, have become more aggressive and determined. There has always been
a small private sector for medical care in the largest population centres, but it has
not been encouraged as in the UK. The vast majority of doctors are employees
of their counties and those in private practice get negotiated fees. There are six
well-regionalized academic centres, now supported primarily by the counties.
The United States has a heterogeneous health care system with multiple forms
of ownership, multiple forms of financing, multiple kinds of insurance and highly
varied benefit packages (New England Journal of Medicine 1999). In the last several
decades, there has been an emphasis on pushing health care more into the
marketplace in the pervasive American belief that market discipline produces
both efficiencies and effectiveness.
Most Americans get their health insurance as a benefit of work. Benefits are
widely varied and growing numbers have no health insurance either because
they are between jobs or work for small businesses that do not offer health
insurance. The Federal government funds and operates a national insurance
programme for the elderly, Medicare, and shares funding for Medicaid, a state-
run insurance plan for the poor. These are heavily regulated and used to try and
influence the entire health insurance industry.
As in the UK and Sweden, there have been increasingly strong efforts to
contain costs. This has, in the last decade, converged into financing and delivery
systems known as ‘managed care’. Managed care entities across the country are
highly varied but attempt to control costs through varying techniques (financial
and contractual) for controlling consumer choice of specialists and controlling
the clinical behaviour of doctors. There is the increasing perception that any cost
savings through managed care are one-time savings and that the basic concept
cannot be sustained (Udow 2000). This has increasingly antagonized doctors
and patients (Ginzberg 1999; Kassirer 1995). In the USA, it is the subject of state
and national debate, focused on patients’ bills of rights.
Doctors in the USA are paid in a variety of ways including, salary, fee-for-
service, capitation and other financial incentives. Academic medical centres are
primarily publicly funded facilities whose income sources are increasingly
diversified and tied to federal and private research funding. Most academic medical
centres are having increasing difficulty competing in the marketplace because of
their special costs and commitments to research and teaching.
Cross-cultural analyses suggest that health care systems like those of the UK
and Sweden have worked out relatively stable and relatively co-operative
relationships between government and the medical profession. Indeed, over the
decades, the stability and growth and changes to the system have depended on
this relationship (Health Affairs 1999). There is greater acceptance of the regulatory
role of government than in the USA. There are, and have been, important
disagreements between levels of government and the profession and segments of
the profession, but negotiation strategies are set, stable and accepted. This does
not mean that various segments of the medical profession are content or satisfied.
In both countries, managers have become increasingly assertive, increasingly
challenging the clinical decisions of the profession.
As the British doctor notes below, ‘Doctors have been medical directors and
line managers forever in the NHS and thank goodness or the NHS would be a
shambles’. In Sweden, we see that there has been considerable turnover in medical
directors in this academic hospital, primarily because if the ‘director doesn’t keep
within the budget, they are fired’. The chief of medicine says, that for the first
time, the Chief Executive Officer of the hospital is a nurse. In typical Swedish
circumspect language, the medical director suggests some doubts about the
propriety of this.
In the context of the basic heterogeneity of American society, the profession is
more fragmented and the ‘owners’ of the health care system highly varied.
America’s peculiar dollar democracy and interest group lobbying system,
combined with the volatile dynamics of the market, make for a much more
turbulent health care system (Health Affairs 1999). Currently, the big payers of
health benefits (the large corporations) are trying to use their clout to influence
the health care system. It is unclear what major direction aspects of the system
will now take, although cost containment will continue to be a strong thrust. In
the USA as well, managers are more and more assertive in challenging doctors
and insisting on cost containment. In all three countries, there has been discussion
of quality improvement, medical mistakes and professional accountability, although
to different degrees and in different forms.
The role of chiefs of medicine

In Sweden and the USA, fellow doctors choose the chiefs; in the UK, Trust
Boards choose the chiefs. In each of the countries, the posting is competitive. All
appear to be well regarded by their colleagues who count on them to represent
doctors’ points of view although there are hints that they eventually get accused
of ‘selling out’ to administration.
All are specialists who continue to do some clinical work and maintain a
clinical office. The British chief is a radiologist, the Swede, a rheumatologist, and
the American is an intensive care specialist.
All share authority in the typical dual administrative structure of hospitals.

But where the medical view used to prevail, power has shifted to administration
as each system struggles with issues of cost containment, develops data systems
that can be used to monitor the clinical work of doctors, and quality accountability.
English and Swedish doctors, while more accustomed to a collaborative style
than American doctors, find management more aggressive than ever. Where
doctors used a particular British politeness to assert control, it doesn’t work so
well any more. Swedish doctors have always been constrained by Swedish norms
of public consensus. All three medical professions used to count on ‘shroud waving’
and superior medical knowledge to maintain control, even if behind the scenes as
in Sweden. While still operative, these are increasingly challenged, making the
role of the chief increasingly difficult. The chiefs are caught between the particularly
strong loyalty to colleagues that mark the profession of medicine, and greater
awareness and responsibilities for economic realities. We’ll let them speak for
themselves:
Speaking for themselves
The United Kingdom
It’s all been clinically crazy but that is the political world. Everyone now
has a feeling of being put upon. There have been so many support staff
cuts. As for the mood of the clinicians in this hospital, the older doctors are
gravely disappointed in how their careers are turning out.
The Medical Director (MD) speaking these words is a consultant radiologist. He

explains that his is a very old hospital dating back to the Middle Ages:
Some years ago, it was merged with another historic hospital here. The
Government decided, on the basis of false data, that there were too many
hospital beds in this city. And also too much research. There was a long
process of considering merger options. Since the merger, it’s now a mess
with very little logic in the distribution of services. Some Emergency Rooms
(ER) were closed last year and ER are now flooded. There has been endless
fighting between units over resources and dominance. The government
never put a budget on the merger. They never said how much money they
would contribute.
He explains that each hospital in the NHS has now become a Trust with a
board and several medical directors. The responsibilities of a particular
medical director can differ from hospital to hospital. There has been a great
deal of reorganization in the NHS and when things change, new roles are
often not thought through.
The medical director gives appropriate advise to the Trust board on medical
affairs. The Trust sets internal policy. The Trust also controls an old, valuable
endowment, which gives it access to extra and extensive funds. In this hospital,
there is a strong clinical directory structure. The clinical services of the hospital are
directed by MDs with support from the administration. At this time, this Medical
Director is the clinical leader of the hospital but doesn’t have line management
authority. He has to work through eleven clinical directors. He holds executive and
board-level responsibility in the areas of research and development, post-graduate
education and clinical audit. This latter is considered a major tool for clinical governance
in a National Health Service Hospital. In this Trust, he has been given responsibility
for affairs related to the 450 consultants (senior specialists) who are formally appraised
each year on the basis of personal, professional and professional clinical behaviour.
These are distinctions defined and regulated by the major medical professional
body in the UK, the General Medical Council. The chief is expected to take personal
action on problem cases that arise: ‘It works very patchily. We have dealt with two
or three problem consultants through clinical governance. They’ve been convinced
to take early retirement or to go away’.
There are many major evaluation tools now for assessing doctors’ performance.
There is clinical audit which documents complication and mortality rates. But
this is very limited: ‘The NHS outcomes data are very poor. It might work for
surgery but is harder for other specialties’. Self-review is promoted but it is not
systematic. Morbidity and mortality (M and M) conferences have been done
traditionally and now there is a recent push to get customer dissatisfaction into
the equation from surveys and complaints. They all only work well if the doctors
are ‘keen to do it’. But this institution has high standards in general:
Assessment is really about the people on the ‘left side of the curve of
excellence’. Can you really evaluate doctors’ work? No, not really. Poor
performance review is really a peer process; lay people can’t make these
judgments. And in the crunch, lay people are even more generous with
doctors than other doctors. Besides, in every serious incident I’ve evaluated,
many are systems based. But better systems controls are costly.
We have an elaborate complaint system for patients; and this includes
comment cards for everybody…The Clinical Standards Committee met six
times in the last year, considering the complaints and this lead to some
changes…The changes have to take place in the line management. People are
still frightened to raise complaints. There is a rudimentary incident reporting
system. Our tendency is to report what went wrong, not what we do well.
As for examining ‘near misses’, that is very difficult. Audit of prescribing is carried
out regularly, particularly concerning allergic reactions. However, it is time
consuming attempting to get the right balance between quantity and quality.
Amidst such pressures to cut costs they are looking at computer order-entry
systems. There is a big push from the government with the Information Initiative
for Health. Money is being put into this but expectations always exceed funding.
This will be for computerized order entry, electronic patient records. They are
ahead in this and have to slow down to let others catch up. And there are problems
of compatibility across systems.
Why should there be an increasing demand for accountability? Society in
general is changing its attitudes to professional people. It comes with better
education, easier access to information and lack of understanding of professional
people. Professional people are not perfect, they make mistakes. Also UK medicine
has been hit because of human interest in failings. Good press news sells
newspapers. And, unfortunately, there are ‘bad eggs’ among the profession: ‘It is
partly our own fault. We’ve had the privilege of self-regulation. And we didn’t
exercise it strongly enough.’
The overall aim of this hospital is to remain the leading university teaching
hospital. The clinical (doctor) managers try to keep the focus there. The non-
clinical management gets distracted, trying to meet government pressure, all of
which is there for political reasons. The government often promotes programmes
without having a reasonable evidence basis for change, like the recent example of
the unreasonable approach to ’flu staff vaccinations. As the chief put it: ‘One
only gets one hundred per cent compliance in the army’. There is also the dilemma
of shortages. The line management is always worried and when things don’t go
as the government wants, the middle management gets kicked. There is so much
government pressure on the managers:
There is a big row over having to wait more than eighteen months for some
operations. We didn’t make that cutoff point so management gets criticized.
And then the region tried to manage the lists. Doctors don’t trust managers
an inch. It’s essential for clinicians to be in managerial roles. It’s very important
to have clinicians as managers. Otherwise the NHS will be in shambles.
There is so much discontent. The normal retirement age is sixty-five
although one could get full entitlement to leave at sixty. Now only a minority
wants to go past sixty. They are voting with their feet to leave early. The
younger doctors are different. Fifteen or twenty years ago, the government
raised the pay for junior doctors and they have restricted hours. But there
is a higher ‘fall out’ rate of junior doctors after they qualify. The younger
ones have more of a clock watching behavior and are not so dedicated to
their patients. Lots of hard nosed young consultants who will not do what
the older generation of consultants did. There is a changed professional
attitude to the detriment of patients. But I must add that I am still amazed
at the quality of the people applying to be medical students. The number
of applicants exceeds the number of spots now. My greatest sadness is how
we destroy their motivation and dedication to the NHS.
The politicians in power want to ‘showcase’ the NHS to demonstrate
that they are doing a good job to get votes. They are very superficial people.
They want the waiting lists reduced, they want the same quality across the
country, they don’t want any geographic barriers to health care. And they
try to avoid any questions about economy.
The Labour government has set up the National Institute for Clinical
Excellence. This concerns itself with evidence-based medicine. They also set
up the Council on Health Improvement. They did a survey on hip replacement
recently and recommended one particular device. The question is how will
this approach keep up with cutting edge technologies, with improvements?
They also looked at Beta Interferon and found that it was of some help but not
cost-effective. That sent the Multiple Sclerosis organization into a tizzy.
These so-called ‘sensible’ approaches distort clinical practice. Our doctors
are not keen on guidelines and protocols. There is a basic tension between
what the politicians want and what the doctors face. There is so much
doctor-bashing in this country…Now the government has said they want
more consultants and three more medical schools. Where will they get
these consultants? Overseas? The Labour government is providing more
funding for the NHS, but it has some horrendous concepts.
Sweden
This is a major academic medical centre and medical school with origins in the
post-Second World War period. Until the 1970s it was owned and operated by
the central government with an annual budget set by them. It has been very
successful with lots of research, excellent people and lots of progress in medical
knowledge, particularly in areas like oncology, neurosurgery cardiology and
endocrinology. Today there are fifty-six different clinics covering almost all
specialties. In the last ten years, some specialties have been exclusively centralized
here: neurosurgery and thoracic surgery.
In the late 1970s, this hospital was transferred to the county, which now provides
its budget. They have a budget of 4.3 billion Swedish Crowns, which come from
this county and six others for whom they are a referral hospital. Since 1993 a
Swedish version of the American Diagnostic Related Groups (DRGs) has been in
place as a tool of cost containment:
We now have a purchaser-provider structure (a version of the British system)

whereby providers (the hospital’s clinics) negotiate for their services with
all the purchasers. Each of our fifty-six clinics ‘sell’ their services to the
counties. So each county negotiates separately with all fifty-six clinics and
their divisions for various services. This is a difficult system and causes
great confusion among the doctors.
Everybody is working hard. If they started a private practice or worked for
a pharmaceutical company, they could get twenty to thirty per cent more. For
twenty years, our salaries haven’t kept up with salaries in general. The salary
rate is not satisfactory. And many doctors also feel isolated. They feel more
lost then before because they don’t have control over time and their patients.
Their biggest problem recently came with the closure of two other hospitals in
the general area:
This wasn’t done with enough advanced planning and has increased the
number of patients coming to our Emergency Department (ED). The ED
was built for 35,000 visits. In 1999, there were 72,000. We had to put
doctors in there who were not prepared for it. All doctors have to take their
turn in the ED so they can’t plan their day. They are getting frustrated
because it distracts them from their other responsibilities. Now, however,
the hospital will hire new ED doctors.
As for relationships with management, the leadership of the hospital has a much
more important role than ten years ago. Much more powerful, has much greater
influence:
One of our problems is that there is no dialogue between the leadership

and the average doctor and nurse. There is too much bureaucracy, too
many division heads. The communications between divisions is so poor.
You feel very little.
Do doctors trust managers? No. Doctors are quite sceptical and
disillusioned. It all makes people feel insecure. The organization of the
hospital is more and more confused by developments (in the health care
system). Under an old chief, half the heads of divisions were doctors and
half nurses. The next chief didn’t want nurse leaders, just doctors. Now a
nurse is again leading from the top. We think it is better to have doctors as
leaders. I’m sure this conclusion is right.
Speaking of the profession’s relationship with policy makers, the chief said:
Our county politicians (those responsible directly for the health care system)
want to be re-elected and therefore they are sensitive to the population, to
the media, to patient organizations. Of course they have limited budgets
(for health care) from the taxes. They have to order doctors to set limits.
But doctors don’t like to think about limits; we want to help patients. These
are very different mindsets. The politicians are behind the times in terms of
what is happening in medical care. Doctors want to expand technology;
the politicians want to put constraints on it.
My generation was brought up in the sixties and seventies when there
was plenty of money. By the nineties, they put an axe to the system. The
politicians distrust the doctors in this hospital; the doctors here are sceptical
of the political system.
One of my responsibilities is for the Lex Maria reports. (Lex Maria is a
state law passed in the 1930s that mandates reporting of unanticipated
deaths in Swedish hospitals. It is generally agreed that there is consistent
under-reporting and there has been recent pressure on the chiefs to increase
reports). I make about thirty-five a year. These are the most serious events
(that go wrong) in the hospital. I receive perhaps sixty and decide which
are the most serious. A recent case involved death during a liver biopsy. An
autopsy was performed and the report sent to the National Board of Health
and Welfare. We have incident reports, which are now computerized. I’d
say our biggest problems are patient lab reports that disappear, personnel
sticking themselves and delivering the wrong medicine.
Quality assurance (QA) is part of every contract for medical services signed with
the counties. There are about seven items including promises to notify if care
cannnot be delivered within three months. There are QA measures for cost
efficiency and the number of patients; the promised educational level of personnel;
and that there won’t be more than twenty per cent turnover in staff. There should
be short waiting times for patients, and good nutrition in the hospital. A pain
score of no more than 3.5 is promised:
There is a ‘report card’ to evaluate the whole hospital, which was pioneered
here. We have Registers to check outcomes in fields like pathology and
cancer. Lots of clinics do M and M, but its not consistent across the hospital.
We check each x-ray and this is done twice a year; twenty per cent are on
computer. We don’t do physician profiling. But there is no measure for
empathy, no instrument to measure that. Is there a good instrument for
evaluation of doctors that is effective and useful? I’d love to have it.
As for mistakes, colleagues are cowards really. I hope older colleagues
tell the doctor about his mistake. If the chief makes a mistake, no one tells
him. We have no system for measuring mistakes. Do we see and correct
wrong behavior? We could do it much better. I’m not confident that we
catch addicted doctors. Stress is often a factor in mistakes. There is no time
to consider what we are doing. When we discover a mistake, I may order a
change. But does it last? I don’t know. There is no follow-up. Maybe five to
ten per cent of mistakes are caught through the incident reports, some of
which go on to be Lex Maria reports.
The young doctors have a more difficult task then the older generation.
There is more medical knowledge; there is the computer, the Internet.
They are very technology oriented. They don’t rely on the patient as much
as in previous generations. They are more effective doctors, but they ignore
some of the more humane issues. They are more rigid in their clinical
approaches. They certainly know more. But the computer can’t replace
the experienced doctor. Young doctors don’t ask colleagues; they are too
reliant on the computer. Doctors don’t have good rapport with patients
who are just a number; patients want more caring. The medical profession
today is better in many ways and worse in some ways. There are growing
demands from the population. The patients are on top. The politicians
and the managers are pushing and the doctors are trying to balance all
the problems.
We have the best; we are the best. If only they would give us the money,
We save lives but we also prolong illness. Technological development is
just fantastic. We save more patients then ever before. We also produce
more people worried about their health. We will have to find a middle way.
Not to prolong life but to give illness-free days. Politicians declare policies
to please patients without reasonable plans for implementation; county
politicians push managers to be bolder in saving money; managers do not
have the cooperation or trust of the doctors who feel left out.
The United States

This chief is a board-certified internist and a sub-specialist in pulmonary and
critical care. He spent twenty years in the private sector as director of a large
critical care unit. He was recruited to the university to head their pulmonary
critical care unit and from that became Associate Chief of Staff and then Chief of
Staff. He continues his interest and research in outcome prediction, particularly
what the likelihood is of a patient living or dying during their intensive care and
hospital experience, the utility in that knowledge and how you use that to interact
with the patient and family:
This is a typical large academic medical center, one recognized of high

quality that treasures its role of research, teaching students and trainees,
and treasures innovations and excellence in clinical care. This is both the
joy and the burden of being in an academic medical center. The former
two activities have a significant costs attached to them and they add a
degree of complexity. We are constantly worried about the introduction of
new technology and innovation which complicates the predictability of
cost and outcome.
The financial situation of the hospital is unusually secure, given the
economic pressures these days. It has 1.1 billion dollars in the bank as a
reserve, as a buffer and as collateral for getting capital for capital expenses.
The hospital has the highest bond rating possible. The benchmark is that
there should be enough cash reserves to operate for 110 days if
reimbursement stopped tomorrow. This hospital could operate for 250 days.
Nobody has to worry about his or her job here, the place will be here and
patients will come. But there is an enormous paradox.
We are clearly in as good financial shape as you can be in a time of
dwindling reimbursement and escalating costs. The price the doctors pay
is costs being carved out of the system and a feeling of being disenfranchised
from the major cost cutting decisions. Their voice is always at the table but
they do not participate in the final decisions. So there is frustration, a feeling
of detachment. If there had been a popular vote on the major cost cutting
decisions here, they would have been voted down.
There is also tremendous pressure to get grant money continually, to
publish robustly and to teach. Salaries are a mixture of clinical productivity,
research productivity and the amount of teaching. The very best scientists
are doing much less clinical care and so feel increasingly estranged from
the clinical world. They increasingly feel that they have little control over
the paradigm of declining reimbursement for care that has to be more

complicated and more expensive, as well as greater pressure for research.
The most important drivers in their lives used to be success in research,
making honest and good contributions to the progress of medicine, teaching
medical students and residents and being proud of the clinical care they
gave. That has all been replaced by the ‘operating margin’ and has created
significant amount of disaffection.
The only satisfactory trend recently is that research money, which had
gotten very tight the last two or three years, is beginning to loosen up again.
There is now a good stream of money for good clinical outcomes research
which didn’t exist before at all. Clinical outcomes research was considered
beneath most people, certainly not the equal of good bench scientific research.
That is no longer the case. The National Institute of Health has made it very
clear that innovation in clinical care is going to be rewarded. People who are
interested are going to be valued and sought after.
The medical profession has changed. It has become much more complex.
Physicians have had to back away from their pledge that they will, above all
else, be defenders of the patient at the bedside, that no stone will be left unturned
in pursuit of good clinical care. The reimbursement system has changed all that:
‘I think physicians become very frustrated when patients are not eligible for
certain benefits that would clearly be helpful’. They were initially able to provide
those benefits and the hospital would take care of the deficit. Hospitals can no
longer do that. The degree, depth, breadth of care is now dictated to them.
Managed Care, which started as a noble and purposeful concept, has now been
transformed in the business sense. It has become people standing between the
doctor and the patient:
Doctors haven’t really accommodated to this. To a large degree they have

ignored it. They have tried to work as they think they should and then do
battle, one on one, as they are challenged. The battles are frequent. The
battles become part of their lives. The battles take the form of growing
amounts of paperwork, more forms to fill out, more barriers put in front of
them. They keep battling because of what they want to accomplish for
their patients. In an academic setting, the doctors don’t know the insurance
status of their patients when they come in. It is only when barriers start to
accrue to the care they feel is best. The physicians have been encumbered
with the cost cutting to which they have had very limited input.
Current relationship with patients

There are many discontinuities, many disconnections. Patients can be admitted
when the doctor is not on duty. Other doctors may take care of the patient.
There is distancing because of research, because of the barriers set up and because
of the limited options at discharge time:
Patients are worried about access. Patients feel that correction of illness is
an unalienable right. They don’t understand why they can’t get everything
they need if it is clearly recognized that is what they need, that they can’t
have certain tests, that their stay in the hospital is foreshortened. They go
home with complicated medications and limited nursing care. They are
then encumbered by a series of ambulatory visits that could have been
obviated by staying in the hospital longer. Patients are frustrated. Doctors
have to explain why the system is doing this when in reality, they would
like to have the system changed.
Doctors understand the cost constraints in the system. But there are a
number of issues. For example, an enormous per cent of expenditure is
expended in the last month of life and in areas that you can define as futile.
Physicians would very much like to recommend to families when care
should stop, would very much like to recommend hospice care when it is
appropriate, would very much like to discontinue aggressive intensive care
when futility has been achieved. The public thinks doctors don’t understand
the patient’s right to die. Nothing could be further from the truth. Families
threaten lawsuits.
We are very good at what we do so if we are forced to, we can keep
people alive for a long time. That’s an area of huge frustration. I think
active euthanasia is crossing the line in our culture. Our experience locally
with Kevorkian (a local retired pathologist who has recently been jailed for
assisting in suicide) has left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. On the other
hand, relieving some of the legal barriers, improving public knowledge and
communicating about futility, these could be important.
Physicians in academic centres get frustrated about the introduction of new

technologies and new treatments:
We were talking this morning about the infusing of muscle cells directly
into the heart to allow it to heal and regain function. Prior to a National
Institute of Health ‘raid’, we had here one of the best researchers in the
world at stimulating myocardial cells to grow. We believe that this type of
treatment will revolutionize what we do now with mechanical surgical
procedures.
We believe that genetic treatment will make chemotherapy for cancer
seem as primitive as barber’s surgery. We believe it will happen in the next
five to ten years. It’s a wonderful time to be in medicine because there are
enormous breakthroughs occurring. But the translation of those
breakthroughs into clinical care is a minefield. No one wants to pay for it.
Innovation is not the darling of purchasers, of third party payers. Once
these breakthroughs become conventional treatment, they will eliminate
hospitalizations, eliminate suffering, and eliminate a lot of morbidity and
mortality. It’s a very frustrating journey from bench to bedside as new
innovative therapies are established.
As for the relationship between doctors and administrators, there is a constant

conflict now between what doctors see as innovation in research and clinical
work and the short term cost cutting that goes on:
The cost cutting is four to five per cent across the board every year. All
those innovations are lost that would have saved the institution money in
the long term. The administration isn’t responsive enough. A lot of the
physicians feel that Mayo and Cleveland Clinic are the best models because
doctors run them. The people who are making the major management
decisions understand the nuances of clinical care. There is a tension for me
that some of my colleagues joke about, that I’m going over to the dark side
as administration takes me from my roots. [But] doctors are right up there
with intensive care nurses as guerilla warriors. Blocking redesigns if they
are not convinced it improves patient care.
As with Sweden and the UK health systems, there has been greater and greater
demand for auditing. The big corporations who pay for health benefits for their
workers have been pressing this. They have developed some crude measures of
clinical performance that the hospital thinks are not accurate. So the doctors have
developed their own auditing systems and their own metrics:
I’ve been trying to bring together quality and utilization review in a period
when we are cutting cost and waste out of the system. I was asked to do
this for the entire hospital. I created a clinical information division support
group to collate and aggregate the same sort of data for the whole hospital.
We are trying to document our clinical experience, using severity adjustment.
We have to understand it, understand the problems we face and what some
of the solutions might be. We think our metrics are much more accurate.
We have been developing and using various metrics on outcomes and
complications, severity adjusted, in intensive care and surgery. It’s all applied
informally and people will respond to that.
It’s a powerful tool of peer comparison that is being used as a mirror
providing some analytical focus to everyone’s performance. We provide
individual data, the department mean and the best performer. It’s very
important for us to understand these kinds of tools but to develop them so
that they are more accurate and sensitive. And to get everyone to agree that
the metrics are fair and useful. We’re doing this where we can. Even as we
develop these tools there is a kind of Hawthorne effect as people know this
tool is coming. But the main thing is that we are doing this ourselves, from
within, and that is important to physicians. No stick, just private peer
comparison.
There is at least one other source of dissatisfaction: medical liability risk, the fear
of being sued. It is unfair in all aspects, and doctors realize that. The vast majority
of medical mishaps, true mishaps, never come to the attention of the legal
profession. Most issues that become malpractice suits are not, in the main, reflective
of what honestly deserves reimbursement or that kind of scrutiny. When they
are sued, doctors feel personally attacked, almost violated. The legal system is set
up in such a way that they are treated as unworthy of even practising medicine.
It devalues them as professionals and makes the assumption that they are either
incompetent or uncaring. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a
persistent source of dissatisfaction.
As for adverse events, there are problems, problems that never reach the press
or the lawyers. People are unwilling to talk about it because of the threat of legal
action. Legal action takes resources out of the system, resources that should go to
prevention and reduction:
There is another, even more powerful reason: shame. Physicians are ashamed
of what has happened. They have been taught that to make an error is
wrong, that it’s bad. The shame is very painful and it’s something to be
avoided. I think that has kept the dialogue suppressed. We’re trying very
hard to move away from the ‘shame and blame’ culture so that we can get
more information for improvement, for prevention. But I still cling to that
old training. I think if I give it up I’ll be less of a physician.
The chief is amazed that there has not been more of an impact of current conditions
on medical education and students. The promise of autonomy in an exciting
career used to be a powerful motivator. That has gone now and students
understand that they will be part of a larger system. The students coming in are
most worried about the debt they will have when they graduate. But many still
see medicine as a wonderful career, a wonderful way to help people. The medical
school is still getting very bright applicants; the discouragement felt by the older
generation is not there for the younger ones.
What do the politicians, the policy makers want? They want the best clinical
outcomes at the lowest cost. The new focus is on good outcomes and patient
safety, maybe not so much on cost. Then there are issues around patients’ rights
and the privacy of medical information: ‘But it’s really accountability,
accountability with appropriate metrics. Much of the pressure is coming from
better-educated patients. Payers want it too and physicians. All the pressure is
coming from many quarters. We all want improvements.’
Discussion
Some major themes are consistent in these three interviews. First, doctors feel
more and more removed from policy and managerial decisions. Where they
used to be the major decision-makers, they now feel left out. Managers, in
their cost-containment strategies, are getting more aggressive, emboldened and
less intimidated by the status of doctors. This is reflected in the increasing
tensions between doctors, mangers and policy makers. There is an interesting
difference here.
The British and Swedish voices are as bitter as the American is but they have
a clear idea of who is doing the pushing. It is their governments, the owners and
funders of the health care systems, with whom they have been respected and
equal partners in the evolutions of their health care systems. There now seems to
be less respect and less equality, as governments become more aggressive and
less willing to negotiate. This is expressed most openly in the UK interview and
in more veiled ways in Sweden, where polite forms of co-operation are still the
norm.
In the USA, the pressures on the profession come from multiple sources with
different forms of enforcement and pressure. The federal government plays a
role through Medicare funding and regulations; the market produces a cacophony
of pressures from the wide variety of payers and other forces in the marketplace.
These include the pharmaceutical industry, the medical supply and equipment
industry all of whom impact health care delivery in the USA in heterogeneous
ways. Where the British and Swedish doctors can clearly identify those who
create policy and pressures, it is much more complex and turbulent in the USA.
There is great antipathy towards managers and policy makers in all the
countries. The perception of thoughtlessness and lack of planning of the managers
and politicians who do not understand medicine and the demands of clinical care
is expressed, using a strikingly similar concrete example in the UK and Sweden.
That is, the closing of emergency rooms without adequate planning as to who
will have to take the overflow, creating chaos. There is the accusation of political
expediency for votes.
Each chief of staff expressed great pride in the reputation of their academic
centre; each has a deep pride that they are the best. And each is deeply concerned
that this excellence is being compromised.
Pressures for accountability are particularly strong in the UK and the USA.
The Swedish chief’s responses to questions in this area are more general, more
evasive. He doubts that good instruments for measurement are available and the
efforts he lists are old standbys that have rarely been evaluated. The pervasive,
evolving, clinical auditing tools of the NHS are not present nor are they pushed
in the Swedish health care system. One may surmise that there is a tacit agreement
that if doctors co-operate more with cost containment strategies, audit will not
become more rigorous. The approach in the American hospital describes the
chief spearheading an outcomes audit system that he and fellow doctors created
and which they feel is more accurate then one imposed by big payers. He accepts
the usefulness of this form of audit but insists that doctors should create and
control it. He has expended considerable energy in successfully bringing his
colleagues along. The English chief essentially says the same thing when he argues
that audit is most successful when doctors are ‘keen’ about it.
Each doctor feels strongly that they make the best decisions for patients. There
is a shared belief, among these three chiefs, in the promise of technology. There
is a parallel fear that the push towards standardization of clinical care will deter
progress and deflect innovation. All three note that great technology is now
available and more that innovations are coming. However, there is a deepening
frustration that they cannot provide these improvements for their patients. Two
of the chiefs point out the promise of genetics research to improve clinical practice.
The governments of the UK and Sweden are furthest along in making doctors
agents of rationing, where a strong government role has long been accepted and
the bulk of the profession has relatively limited choice of employment. The private
sector in the UK grew under the Thatcher government, but is restricted to senior
consultants. The private sector in Sweden is larger than generally thought but
more limited than in the UK. Furthermore, most of the profession, in both the
UK and Sweden, has long shared the general cultural belief in guaranteed equal
access to health care as a common right.
The profession of medicine in the USA has, historically, many more choices
in the private sector, primarily the non-profit private sector. The growth of the
for-profit sector and of managed care concepts has put more US doctors on
salary, although the average doctor is more likely now to have an income that is
a combination of fee-for-service, capitation, salary and bonuses.
Government control and market forces can both limit choices for doctors. Yet
the American market also provides new opportunities. It is worth observing that
governments in the UK and Sweden are better able to regulate their pharmaceutical
industries than happens in the USA where pharmaceutical prices are a continual
challenge to health care systems, managed care, hospitals and the average
consumer.
Governments and markets have been relatively successful in influencing
doctors’ clinical decisions in all three countries. In the USA, a combination of
government regulation and market forces has pushed the profession to its current
state. In the UK and Sweden, the regulatory role of government is accepted.
While it is a subject of political and ideological debate in the USA, the government
has an important regulatory role through Medicare and Medicaid.
However, the increasing push, in all three countries, to influence the profession’s
clinical decisions has reached a critical point. It has reached deeply into the heart
of professional autonomy, clinical autonomy. It is more and more challenging the
profession’s ability to make the right decisions for patients. It is more and more
challenging the traditional oath to do everything possible for the individual patient.
It is more and more demanding that doctors think first about the needs of groups
of patients and of society at large. The profession’s resistance has been aroused
as never before and their natural allies in this are patients and consumers of
health care.
There are some significant differences between the three chiefs as well,
particularly with the American chief. The financial status of his academic medical
centre is unusual; most American academic centres are struggling with financial
deficits as they are forced to compete in a managed care environment. (The UK
chief also has access to financial backup, but in the form of a centuries old
endowment. That is common to London’s old hospital trusts.) The American
research funding environment has improved, particularly from the National
Institutes of Health. The American notes the chronic American problem of
malpractice threats, which is less of a problem in the UK although growing, and
almost non-existent in Sweden. The American also addresses openly the challenges
and costs of end-of-life care.
The American’s own expertise in outcomes measurement is rather unusual,
although he reflects the transnational desire for the profession to work out and
control its own metrics, make them clinically realistic and helpful internally to
the profession itself. This would find parallels in the UK NHS. Also transnational
is his admiration for the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic (doctor-owned and
doctor run). All three of these chiefs strongly emphasize that only doctors should
be making policy decisions that impact clinical care. Only the profession can be
the judge of what is appropriate clinically. This is a theme documented over and
over again in the social science literature (Bosk 1982; Freidson 1994; Rosenthal
1995, 1997, 1999).
What about the future? All of the chiefs point to advancing technology and
how it will enhance the care and cure of patients. It is not difficult to predict that
it will also enhance the knowledge monopoly and improve the status of the
profession everywhere. All three countries appear to be on the edge of utilizing
the remarkable breakthroughs in the application of biogenetics. And the general
public, with increasing publicity of these possibilities through the media, will
clamour for their use as well.
Why the similarities and why the differences? I think the similarities can be
explained by the processes of globalization that bring the various medical
professions into contact with each other through the journals they read, and the
international conferences they attend. By the same token, just as we see the
persistence of nationalisms and ethnicities at the same time we experience
globalization, national historical cultures and national political systems and
economies shape part of the thinking and experience of particular medical
professions.
What does this anecdotal material tell us about the state of professionalism for
the medical profession in the UK, Sweden and the United States? We begin by
recognizing professionalism as a collection of elements, that individually and
collectively wax, wane and change like all social phenomena. Economically, doctors
are still among the best paid professionals in their societies. If on salary, they have
all sorts of ways in each country to supplement their incomes. Politically, they
win on some policy issues and compromise on others in each country. The social
status of the profession is such that more students continue to apply for admissions
to medical school than there are places. Culturally, they must adapt to a better
educated population; this has all sorts of positive aspects. Clinically, new science
will strengthen them. As for accountability, I would argue that the leadership of
the medical profession in these three countries, and elsewhere, will welcome the
opportunity to take the leadership in and control over improving the quality of
their care for patients.
The successes in clinical applications of genetic research will strengthen the
knowledge monopoly and the social and cultural prestige of the medical profession.
They still control the important clinical decisions, through ‘guerrilla tactics’ where
necessary. Cost saving measures are now relatively acceptable to the profession,
certainly to the younger generation. Doctors want to do everything possible for

their patients. Patients want that too. The repudiation of the control ideology of
managed care in the USA is a clear sign, even if politically motivated. In the UK
and Sweden, if the doctors are too unhappy and the perception of deterioration
of quality grows, the private sector grows. Also, the historic norms of co-operation
between government and the profession in the UK and Sweden suggest that both
groups need each other to make the health care systems work. Their historic and
ongoing relationship has an undergirding of sustainability.
Of course, costs have to be contained. It is time to turn to the medical technology
and supplies industry and push hard for cost consciousness there. That will be a
very tough battle too. However, the auto industry has responded to safety and
fuel economy pressures. The food processing industry has responded to calorie-
consciousness. The fitness industry has been remarkably stimulated. The tobacco
industry has been sobered. Next comes the medical technology industry.
As for the medical profession, to be under siege by no means signifies the loss
of the battle and certainly not the loss of the war. The optimism of the American
chief underscores a determination to hold the profession to its traditional high
ideals and stop any further encroachment on clinical autonomy: to take on the
challenge of accountability, but under professional control. The profession is
smart, resourceful and necessary. These characteristics make for long-term
endurance.
Interviews
Interview, Chief of Medicine, England, 4 September 2000.
Interview, Chief of Medicine, Sweden, 17 August 2000.
Interview, Chief of Medicine, USA, 22 December 2000.
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5 Managing the ‘professional’
man
Deborah Kerfoot
Be calm, judicious, rational; groom your personality and control your

appearance; make business a profession.
(C.Wright Mills 1956:81)
Introduction
This chapter takes as its object of investigation the linkages between management,
masculinity and the concept of professional identity. In the discussion that follows,
I explore the pursuit of professional identities by managers through the activities
of managerial work. By this, I refer to a form of inquiry that holds the concept of
professionalism to be problematic. In asking the question, ‘how useful is an
investigation of professional identity?’, this chapter considers what it means to be
‘a professional’ for those for whom the very notion of professional identity has a
powerful resonance. My argument centres on exploring the notion of ‘being
professional’; of professionalism and of the activities of management as
‘professional work’. This exploration takes as its starting point the idea that these
concepts are drawn upon, made and continuously remade in dynamic process by
people at specific times and places, in specific circumstances and in specific ways
in any given organizational locale.
More than this, the attachment to professional identity and claims to status
of a professional knowledge base can be seen not merely as a defence against
contemporary threats to managerial knowledge. Such threats might encompass
the growth of the service sector and concomitant decline of manufacturing
output; shifts in organizational structure and culture requiring ever more
‘commitment’ of lower hierarchy staffs; the rise of information and
communications technologies and their relationship to working practices; and
the growth of e-commerce, for example. However, the concern to appear, at very
least, to be a professional manager goes beyond questions of status and workplace
competence. Stating such is to recognize a dimension of the discourse of ‘the
professional’ and professional identity as connected to the status of oneself as
a ‘proper’ manager. At one and the same time, I want to explore the notion
of ‘being a professional’ in terms of the relationship between organizationally
reinforced modes of (social) relation and masculinity For, as the chapter argues,
82 Deborah Kerfoot
discourses of professionalism and professional identity constitute both a mode

of regulation of the self and proscribe what it is to be a manager in terms of
the articulation of specific masculinities and behavioural displays commonly
associated with men.
A discussion of gender and identity is apposite at this time since much of the
traditional literature on professionalism and the professions has overlooked or
ignored questions of gender and identity in its analyses. Likewise, writings on
professionalism in given organizational or more particularly, in occupational
settings (see for example, Abbott 1988; Collins 1979; Macdonald 1995), have
sought to identify the mechanisms by which occupational groups achieve closure
upon a field of knowledge, with little clue as to the gender aspects of their
investigation. Following this path, some feminist writers have sought to rework
realist labour process perspectives by emphasizing their gendered dimensions
and their effects upon women at work and in relation to a sociology of the
professions. Crompton (1987), for example, has examined in detail processes of
exclusion of women through credentialism in financial services employment, while
Witz (1992, 1999) has developed a historically nuanced analysis of closure in the
health professions. Flowing from her research in nursing and ‘care’ work, Davies’s
(1996) trajectory of inquiry leads her to explore the way in which a particular
form of women’s inclusion is hidden by a discourse of gender at the core of
professional practice (Davies 1996:663). In the realm of studies of managerial
work, processes and strategies of closure have been investigated with little or no
(direct) reference to gender in fields such as personnel management (Watson
1994) and accounting (Sikka and Willmott 1995). In certain aspects of their
analysis, others have uncovered the gender effects of such practices on specific
managerial groups (for example, Legge (1995) on personnel management), in
line with the findings of studies of non-managerial employment (Crompton and
Sanderson 1986; Davies 1995; Spencer and Podmore 1987).
While important contributions have been made to our understanding of the
character of professional practice, its historical development and contemporary
processes of regulation, comparatively little attention has been paid to
professionalism in relation to gendered subjectivity and identity. Moreover, in the
field of management and organization, notwithstanding laudable attempts to
expose the ‘man in management’ (Collinson and Hearn 1996), the apparent
unity of men, masculinity and professionalism remains noticeably under-
researched.
Men and masculinity

The past ten years or so have seen increased interest in men and masculinity
within the study of gender and organizations, and as a part of a growing, albeit
contested (MacInnes 1998), arena of debate within the sociology of gender more
widely. This interest is apposite insofar as, as has been suggested (for example,
Collinson and Hearn 1994, 1996), much of the earlier work in both conventional
management writing and in that of feminist literature has, often unproblematically,
Managing the ‘professional’ man 83
tended to position men at the centre of the argument. While mainstream/

malestream writing on management and organization has frequently served to
deny or denigrate the significance of gender as a concept in the pursuit of ‘better’
management practice, feminist insights have often focused on women and their
experience of, and location within, (patriarchal) organizational structures and
their differential status in the paid labour market. One result of this neglect of
men, and, in particular, masculinity as a core problematic, is that while men and
masculinity are central to any analysis, they ‘remain taken for granted, hidden
and unexamined’ (Collinson and Hearn 1994:3). The growing literature on
masculinity and organization serves as a corrective to this tendency, and
reconfigures the debate in such a way as to render men and masculinity visible as
objects of critical interrogation.
At one and the same time, critical discussion of men and masculinity in
managerial and organizational locales has enabled the often problematic aspects
of masculinity to be illuminated, not least at the level of subjects themselves.
In parallel, a related literature on men more generally (see, for example, Baumli
1985; Brod 1987; Clatterbaugh 1990; Connell 1995; Kaufman 1987; Stoltenberg
1990), although spanning a wide range of positions in the debate, has signalled
current problems with respect to men and masculinity, most notably perhaps
in relation to men’s experiences of holding on to a sense of masculine identity.
Predominant conceptions of masculinity have variously characterized the
consequences of masculinity synonymous with power, aggression and control,
and the ‘experience of masculinity’ delineated in terms of a sense of loss, inner
trauma, emotional turmoil and continue striving for conquest of objects, people
and events in the external world. Accepting the term masculinity as problematic,
in that there are clearly diverse masculinities across racial and ethnic difference
(Mercer 1988) within and between countries (Gilmore 1990) and across time
and location, subsequent work on men and masculinity sought to escape the
confines of dualistic gender essentialism. Moreover, beyond the obvious plurality
of masculinities, the differing experiences of masculinity within the lifespan of
individuals forced reconsideration of whether masculinity, as an all-embracing
descriptor for the behaviours of men, was of any significant value. The work
of Connell (1987), for example, resonated with that of Brittan (1989) arguing
that the failure to recognize masculine identities as plural could be found in the
hitherto unacknowledged understanding that masculinity had been conceived
as an internally undifferentiated category. Connell’s contention was that the
failure to recognize the complexities and differences amongst men had resulted
in a skewed analysis of social relations and in the politics of the sexes wherein,
as a consequence of this theoretical slippage, all men were pitted against all
women. While there are clearly multiple masculinities, culturally and historically,
what remained at issue in the discussion and development of the literature on
masculinity was the shared characteristics of these behaviours. Following the
publication of Carrigan et al.’s (1985) article attempting to theorize men’s
(dominant) behaviour in terms of masculinity, the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’
achieved prominence.1
84 Deborah Kerfoot
At much the same time, the preoccupation with ‘the self’ in discussions of
masculinity was thought, in some circles, to erode the potential for a wider
collective politics of change and of greater social egalitarianism. As Mercer
(1988:87) asked, ‘what happens to the political if it goes no further than the
purely personal?’. More recently, commentators elsewhere have echoed this
concern, asserting for example, that focusing on the concept of masculinity leads
to an ‘apparently radical but in practice individualised and conservative cul-desac
which reinforces the contemporary preoccupation with the self at the expense
of its social context’ (MacInnes 1998:59). Yet this critique overlooks one of the
most central aspects of the debate on gender politics, in that theoretical
development of the concepts of gender subjectivity and identity illuminates
precisely a means by which gender difference, and gender inequality, are
produced and sustained (see Kerfoot and Knights 1994 for elaboration). For
work on subjectivity and identity, influenced primarily by the writing of Foucault
(1977, 1984) and poststructuralist theorizing, has further opened up the field of
enquiry. This has markedly shifted aspects of the debate on gender away from
more essentialist positions and recognizing that predominant behaviours defined
in terms of ‘masculinity’ can be enacted by both women and men (see also
Kvande and Rasmussen 1994). This uncovers something of the extent to which
gender can be seen as ‘cultural performance’ (Gherardi 1995) and further
problematizes the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Carrigan et al. 1985) as
a, by now, well-established shorthand in describing the outcome of men’s
behaviour. Other writers (Kerfoot and Whitehead 1998) have preferred to
develop an alternative conceptualization, the ‘masculine subject’ (see also
Whitehead 2002). This allows movement away from universalism—from
masculinity as a universal category—and gender essentialism, while recognizing
the political and power effects of gender in organizations. Hence, masculinity—
although shifting and fluid according to time and place—describes and delineates
those behaviours elevated and privileged in contemporary organizational and
social life, differentially in different settings but whose common characteristic
is a preoccupation with a form of instrumental purposive rational control.
Poststructuralist feminism offers a condition of possibility for change in that
such insight can show how gender is both produced and sustained at the level of
the material and discursive. Following Butler, this is to regard gender as performed,
as enacted, and as constituted in inter-subjective dynamics:
Consider gender, for instance, as a corporeal style, an ‘act’ as it were, which

is both intentional and performative, where ‘performative’ suggests a
dramatic and contingent construction of meaning.
(Butler 1990:139)
Poststructuralist theorizing on the self, subjectivity and identity is therefore highly

political, in so much as gender identity is rendered amenable to investigation and
to change. For work on subjectivity and identity facilitates the investigation of the
self as produced in, and constitutive of, the social context. This is to conceive of
subjectivity as constituted and sustained, in an active fashion, by those ‘practices

of self’ (Foucault 1988) through which persons maintain an albeit fluid and
contingent sense of identity. Leaving aside the obvious comment that the
behaviours referred to as masculinity, of whatever persuasion, do not merely ‘go
away’, should questions of self and identity be eschewed? The material actuality
(Ransom, 1993) of gender requires that gender differentiation be investigated by
way of uncovering the conditions of its existence (Kerfoot and Knights 1994).
Moreover, at the level of individuals, this is to recognize the inconsistent and
often discontinuous experiences of subjects engaging in and with discourses of
masculinity in given contexts, while simultaneously acknowledging gender
inequalities in organizations as, in part, their condition and consequence.
Masculinity and professional identity

The genesis of contemporary management has been variously charted elsewhere
and the growth of managerial activity subject to (often competing) explanatory
frameworks (see Reed (1989) for critical elaboration). Chandler (1977) provides
an account of the development of management as a discrete activity, suggesting
that the growing scale and complexity of industrial capitalist enterprise beginning
around the mid-nineteenth century necessitated the emergence of a new breed of
specialist. One aspect of this early development of ‘modern’ management was its
association with engineering and in technical skills of production, engineering
and manufacturing (see also Clawson 1980; Pollard 1965; Thompson 1967;
Ezzamel et al. 1990). This theme is echoed in work on men managers in post-war
Britain (Roper 1994) and in another arena, in discussion of the eroticization of
technology (Easlea 1987; Hacker 1989; Wajcman 1998).
In the contemporary context, what counts as professional practice in a variety
of managerial locations can include for example, attachment to processes of
accreditation and certification as represented by educational and vocationally-
specific qualifications such as degrees in management, in-service training and the
seemingly omnipresent MBA (Master of Business Administration). These can be
interpreted as strategies for professional autonomy, for the creation and regulation
of entry portals, and for control and (re)regulation of public perceptions of
professional legitimacy (see Robbins 1992). As techniques of closure, formal
qualifications in the field of management represent both an appeal to external
authority—the trained and certificated management ‘expert’—and impose fixed
meaning on an otherwise discontinuous and contingent range of activities,
signalling the social constitution and construction of management as particularized
historical configuration. But accreditation and certification practices represent
merely one aspect in apprehending management as a ‘profession’ and its
membership as a professional ‘elite’. Of greater interest here is the effect of the
attachment to techniques and practices of management, and their relationship to
the predominant ‘way of being’ in an organization. For such techniques and
practices are highly abstract and instrumental with regard to controlling their
object. Often ushered in under the guise of organizational change programmes,
86 Deborah Kerfoot
‘new’ practices such as those within the rubric of human resource management
(HRM), for example, are grounded in knowledge and power bases that make it
possible to engage with the organizational world and its members through
instrumental means (see Townley 1994 on HRM in particular).
In this respect, that managers and management knowledge engage
instrumentally with the social and organisational world is far from headline
news: arguably the very condition of possibility for management is capitalist
work organization wherein discipline, control and regulation of the workforce
for instrumental (managerially defined) ends are defining features. For example,
MacIntyre (1981) charts the appeal of management in the context of the growth
of large modern bureaucracies as coterminous with its promise of effectiveness
and efficiency in the achievement of corporate goals. In that these goals are to
be obtained by the manipulation of others has been the subject of significant
critical interest on the part of those who would, in consequence, see management
as highly questionable in its moral foundation (Jackall 1988; McMylor 1994;
Roberts 1984). Equally, that management knowledge and management activity
is precarious, in that its outcomes are unpredictable compared with the abstract
and generalized laws of the natural sciences, is clearly documented, most notably
in theoretical and empirical studies of resistance (see, for example Jermier et al.
1994). Alongside the uncertainty surrounding management knowledge, the
work/life profiles of many managers are increasingly subject to rupture from
models of corporate effectiveness that demand continuous ‘flexibility’ and
‘innovation’, however defined, on the part of staffs no longer soothed by job-
for-life financial and symbolic security (Sennett 1998). Plainly, both in its
knowledge base and at the level of everyday experience of being a manager,
managerial work is insecure and at odds with the conception of management as
a specialized body of knowledge that confers potency upon those who would
exercise its methods. While ‘being a professional’ remains highly contingent
and overlaid by workplace and other insecurities, part of the attraction (and
seduction) of professionalism lies in the possibility of release from day-to-day
uncertainty and insecurity, at whatever level this may be experienced. In this
respect, the notion of professionalism exists as a seductive and compelling
discourse: for professionalism offers the possibility of certainty, of one’s own
knowledge and sense of self, in an otherwise highly uncertain locale (Whitehead
1999). Such certainty can never fully be realized as there is always another
challenge to be overcome, another problem to be tackled or another target to
be met (see Kerfoot and Knights 1994 for discussion).
Writers elsewhere have further explored this continuous movement in terms
of ‘performativity’ (Lyotard 1984), where performativity describes the endless
search for effectiveness and efficiency in contemporary ‘postmodern’ society (see
also Usher and Edwards 1994). Through the application of technical criteria and
processes of pseudo-scientific verifiability, surrounding quality management, HRM
and business process re-engineering for example, the dominant questions in
organizational life are increasingly output orientated, concerned with the ‘bottom-
line’ of production. Questions such as ‘is it efficient?’, ‘what use is it?’ and ‘does
it add value?’ may serve to unsettle if not displace other ways of being and
relating to the organization and its members (see Whitehead 1998).
Management ‘knowing’, as theoretical knowledge, as technical expertise, and
as a mode of being and relating, can be characterized as seeking to render the
other subordinate to the demands of the corporation and its bottom line. In this
context, ‘being a professional’ describes, in its most bald expression, the attachment
to a way of being and behaving that privileges instrumentality over other means
of human engagement (see Kerfoot 1999). However problematic or contested
the definition of management as ‘professional’ activity, managerial rationality is
that which elevates the control and co-ordination of human activity for
instrumental ends to a fundamental principle. With regard to professionalism,
Connell (1987) expresses it thus:
The combination of theoretical knowledge with technical expertise is central

to a professions claims to competence and to a monopoly of practice. This
has been constructed historically as a form of masculinity: emotionally flat,
centred on a specialised skill, insistent on professional esteem and technically-
based dominance over other workers.
(Connell 1987:181)
As a number of studies in a variety of empirical sites (see, for example, Wajcman

1991; Cockburn 1991) have amply demonstrated, managerial work projects a
heavily masculine imagery. What is of concern in this chapter is less whether (or
most probably not) management can be apprehended as a profession. That is, in
terms of it meeting certain criteria and more in understanding management as a
site for the production and reproduction of a range of abstracted depersonalized
objective measures and ways of behaving synonymous with the concept of a
professional ideal. For in reflecting upon management, my interest lies in signalling
a dominant form of masculinity reinscribed through the activities and behaviours
that make up what it is to be a professional manager.
Masculinities in management
Plainly, not all managers are ‘typically’ masculine. Rather, I suggest that the
yardstick by which measures of professional competence are generated can be
described as masculine insofar as it projects a cultural standard as to what counts
as correct or proper professional behaviour in given sites. One aspect of this
correct professional behaviour relates to the emotional. In another context, Roper
(1994) speaks of the discrepancy between the rational discourse of management
and the emotions of what he refers to as ‘organization men’, where to be a successful
means ‘conforming to certain emotional constraints, learning to exercise intellect
but suppress passion’ (Roper 1994:1). Those who would seek to appear
professional in their presentation of self both operate within and recreate the
organization as a political entity. The one who succeeds, that is, in making it ‘to
the top’ is ‘the organisational politician, concerned above all with informal ties,
88 Deborah Kerfoot
manoeuvring toward the crucial gatekeepers, avoiding the organisational

contingencies that trap the less wary’ (Collins 1979:31). Not least as a way of
presenting oneself, professional identity, in key respects, is bound up, then, in
particularized behavioural displays and in an attachment to techniques and
practices of managing that privilege certain meanings above others. This
constitution of professional identity on the part of otherwise uncertain managers
resonates with Kimmel’s (1994) notion of masculinity:
The hegemonic definition of manhood is a man in power, a man with

power, and a man of power. We equate manhood with being with being
successful, capable, reliable, in control…One definition of manhood
continues to remain the standard against which other forms of manhood
are measured and evaluated. Within the dominant culture, the masculinity
that defines white, middle-class, early middle-aged heterosexual men is the
masculinity that sets the standard for other men, against which other men
are measured and, more often than not, found wanting.
(Kimmel 1994:124–5)
An aspect of control, exercised by those who seek to appear as competent

professionals, is at the level of personal feelings. In the execution of their duties,
the professional manager must appear personally detached and disengaged at the
level of the emotional since, in the logic of organizations ‘both jobs and hierarchies
are abstract categories that have no occupants, no human bodies, no gender’
(Acker 1990:143). To be a professional in this context is to labour at fine-tuning
one’s manner and appearance, dress and bodily display; to engage in emotional
control and display in such a manner as to appear seamless with the requirements
of the organization. Professional identity is thereby inter-linked with the regulation
and reregulation of emotion, providing both the means by which emotions can
be displayed, yet constraining their expression to within given boundaries.
Professional identity thus represents the confining of emotions to ‘safe’ avenues
of expression. Moments of corporate failure are to be experienced as if they were
real to organizational members, regardless of whether there is any personal impact
from the situation. Likewise, corporate successes are to be lauded as personal
joys. In sum, the professional manager is called upon at all times, to remain at
once both emotionally controlled yet emotionally involved in the organization:
that they carry the fortunes of the organization as if they were personally real and
meaningful.
In terms of managing oneself as ‘professional’ in whatever manifestation, this
is doubly problematic. At the level of the emotions, the attachment to professional
identity requires a delicate balancing act between ‘letting go’ and ‘holding on’.
Being in tune with the requirements of the organization in the moment, so to
speak, yet being watchful; of the need to hold respect; retain and enhance one’s
own status, and ensure a continuing place in the future of the enterprise. In this
regard, professional managers must always be one step ahead, most notably of
their own emotions. Moreover, in driving forward organizationally defined goals,
managers are required to motivate and engage their subordinates in such a manner
as to enthuse staff in the drive to ensure committed workforces. That motivation
of staffs at all hierarchical levels has long been a problem for management reflects
at least in part the problematic nature of attempts to ‘encourage’ workforces to
feel attuned to the emotional requirements of the organization.
Tolson (1977) alludes to the disparity between interpersonal relations as lived
experience and the paucity of our inherited languages for the expression of feelings,
coterminous with a masculinity that is ‘overly dependent for its coherence on
external public discourses’ (Rutherford 1992:15). In his account of a men’s group,
Tolson notes:
We began to discover that we had no language of feeling. We were trapped

in public, specialised languages, specialised languages of work, learned in
universities or factories, which acted as a shield against deeper emotional
solidarities. When we talked about ourselves and our experiences these
would be presented through the public languages in formal abstract ways.
The factory manager actually talked about himself as if he functioned like
a machine. The student-philosopher spoke about his ‘bad faith and his
struggle to be authentic’. And the man on the dole, in this context kept
silent—was perceived to be incoherent, swept along by fluid introspective
experience.
(Tolson 1977:135–6)
The professional manager is required to exercise judgement for ‘the good’ of the
corporation, often with minimal regard for the ethical consequences beyond those
concerning immediate personal encounters. That the predominant mode of
professional practice provides a ready-made model for uncertain managers is,
simultaneously, both seductive and repellent. Seductive in that the professional
ideal provides the means by which, through suppressing aspects of themselves,
their non-work lives and their own emotions, subjects may elevate themselves
above others and distinguish professional from non-professional practice. Repellent
in that success in being professional requires the subordination of self to the
demands of the organization. Hence, professional identity is double edged. For
those who would subscribe to the professional ideal exist in tension with it. While
part of the attraction of being professional, however delineated, is the promise of
release from uncertainty, its experience is one of continuing wariness, ever watchful
and mindful of the need to police oneself in line with the professional ideal.
A ‘new’ professional?
So far in this chapter, I have sought to demonstrate how the discourse of
professionalism is overlaid by masculinity and how predominant conceptions of
what ‘counts’ as professional practice in given contexts reproduce and sustain a
particularized mode of engaging with the organizational world, defined here as
masculine. Markers of ‘success’ include the material and symbolic rewards of
90 Deborah Kerfoot
being a competent manager. These may be reinforced across the organization

through for example, the formal structures of appraisal, job retention and
promotion or associated ‘perks’, and informally through the ideas and ideals of
being ‘of the moment’ through the approbation of one’s colleagues—as peers,
superiors or subordinates—in self-generating momentum. Hence, professional
identity can be seen as collectively achieved. Its attainment is, however, fleeting
and precarious, being sustained or undermined by a complex network of
perceptions of self and of those that others may have of us. But what of the
possibilities for change? What are the possibilities for the production and
constitution of a subjectivity that is other than grounded in instrumental
organizational and workplace practices in its search for a secure professional
identity? Expressed otherwise, what might be the conditions for the production
of an (organizational) subjectivity centred on conceptions other than instrumental
professional identity?
In certain spheres of work, concepts such as ‘emotional intelligence’, for
example, have gained prominence as a professed means of ‘re-energising’
organizational and managerial workforces. In face-to-face or voice-to-voice
exchanges, organizational members are called upon to engage with their most
human aspects of self in the service of the organization. This with the aim of
responding to calls for greater customer focus and ‘sensitivity’ in the demands of
contemporary organizations to ‘feminize’ both in terms of recruitment strategies
for new entrants and social skills training for existing staffs. At one level, this new
turn of emphasis on the social and interpersonal aspects of work and organization
can be seen merely as yet another managerial fad in response to declining profit
margins or productivity levels. Thus, ‘looking in on oneself’ as a ‘reflexive
practitioner’ becomes pure expedient as a mechanism in the search for competitive
advantage. Yet at another level, this turn to interpersonal skills and reflection
calls upon staffs at once to disclose and disseminate, for productive ends, what
would otherwise be seemingly unrelated, idiosyncratic elements of their behaviour
as an expression of professional competence. Employees are required to reveal
aspects of themselves that might otherwise remain hidden (see Kerfoot 2000 for
discussion).
The work of Foucault (1984) alerts us to the possibilities of this ‘call to self’
and self-disclosure in terms of his notion of the confessional and its consequence
as a relation of power through which (organizational) subjects are, in part,
constituted:
[for] the agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks (for it
is he who is constrained), but in the one who listens and who says nothing;
not in the one who knows and answers, but in the one who questions and
is not supposed to know.
(Foucault 1984:59)
Flowing from this, we can see the establishment of a (re)configured discourse of

professional practice wherein specific subjectivities become established and
regulated through one’s relationship to what is said and done: to what ‘counts’ as
correct professional behaviour in any one time or place. Plainly, the degree to
which such embodied behaviours can be usefully and adequately ‘tapped’ in the
service of the organization is debatable: as innumerable studies have clearly shown,
staffs at all levels retain a capacity to exercise resistance at all levels in the face of
managerial designs to control them. Nonetheless, ideals of professional practice,
be it as the example of customer service standards, in retail sectors or elsewhere,
extend beyond mere descriptors of ‘the way we do things around here’. In another
context, Joyce Fletcher (1999) writes, in parallel, of these activities in terms of
what is referred to as ‘relational practice’ in work. While one outcome of relational
practice is more harmonious and smooth-running production and work processes,
her point is to identify the way in which the labour of emotional, social or
interpersonal skills becomes the corporation’s greatest ‘disappearing act’ when
the material and symbolic rewards of management are allocated. Relational practice
is at once central yet invisible and includes ‘translating’ one party to another in
work situations, ‘either absorbing the stress or acting as a buffer between people’
(Fletcher 1999:51), ‘picking up the slack’, ‘looking at the whole’, ‘connecting
activity’, and, specifically, ‘preserving working relationships’ and ‘protecting
feelings’ in order to advance work projects. Fletcher cites one (woman) engineering
manager as follows:
It’s just that I was more sensitive to it than Ned [manager]. Like, if someone
didn’t feel that it was their job, and I might have sensed they were getting
to the point they were going to get hurt or feeling like they were being
taken advantage of? And didn’t like what they were doing? Then I’ve put
myself in that role and I’ve just said to Ned, ‘Maybe we should send so-
and-so a thank you or whatever’.
(Fletcher 1999:51)
That the demand for organizational members to, at very least, appear seamless in
their embodied behaviours towards others, extends likewise to managers. This
move to promote emotional intelligence amongst managers has been applauded
by some commentators. It is seen as a long-awaited expression of managements
finally ‘getting in touch with their feminine side’ and as an expression of welcoming
‘the feminine’, and particularly women, to hitherto male bastions of managerial
power (see Brewis and Grey 1994 for critical evaluation). However, it remains
unclear as to whether the direction of such initiatives will ultimately come to
represent a signal shift in the direction of democratizing organizations and their
employment practices or not. Perhaps, more likely, it will sustain the process of
change only insofar as it facilitates the corporation’s goals as defined by senior
management. For shifts in discourses of professional practice, of whatever ilk,
centre on the production of new, organizationally defined, truths rather than as a
means for the exploration of one’s own subjectivity as an organizational member.
In this regard, shifts in professional practice represent a (re)regulation of the subject
rather than a search for (new) knowledge.
92 Deborah Kerfoot
Conclusion
In this chapter I have sought to examine how the notion of ‘being a professional’
can be regarded as mutually interconstitutive of masculinity. And as an aspect of
what it is to construct gendered identity as enacted and as performed in specific
contexts and through specific ways of being and relating to the world. The
managerial workplace, and its range of work activities and work cultures are
clearly sites for the maintenance and reproduction of masculinity, not as a fixed
‘property’ but as ideal(ized) representations of what it is to be successful in any
one location. Neither professionalism nor masculinity can be regarded as played
out in abstraction but in idealized ways of behaving in given situations and places,
describing those behaviours enacted by subjects for whom their successful display
and performance confers organizational legitimacy and the prospect of a secure
identity. Organizational members are at once subjects of and active participants
in the constitution of masculinity and what it is to be professional. Hence, in
labouring to attain the professional ideal, certain behaviours achieve ascendancy
as ‘the way’ of relating in given settings. At one and the same time, the desire for
managerial legitimacy and for a partial resolution to the experience of uncertainty
borne of both gender and professional identity leads managers to collude with
conceptions of professionalism in managerial work. That this collusion is worn
as a badge of honour and pride makes the experience of sustaining professional
identity no less insecure. Organizational subjects thereby exist in tension with
and in instrumental relationship to notions of ‘the professional’.
This analysis goes towards the beginnings of a wider en-gendering of our
academic discussion of professionalism, enabling both professionalism and
masculinity to be held in the same frame rather than as discrete entities. As I have
argued, the professional ideal involves a form of workplace organization and
engagement that constitutes, sustains and privileges the masculine as an
instrumental, purposive-rational mode of being in the world and relating to others.
Moreover, it underscores the utility of the concept of masculinity as a vehicle for
social and organizational analysis.
Additionally, the professional ideal is grounded in a conception of self and
agency that inscribes managerial techniques and practices with a potency that
takes little account of their human consequences. Such consequences include the
valorization of instrumentality as a means of organizing and engaging at work.
Discussion of the constitution of professional identity invites consideration of the
personal—and organizational—costs in terms of what gets suppressed, marginalized,
demeaned or trivialized. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, at a time in
which organizations are called upon to become more creative and innovative in
their practices, many are responding to the demand for ‘transformation’ by turning
ever-closer to means of managing that offer the possibility of certainty which has,
in the past, so seldom been achieved. That managements cling to a familiar logic
(albeit in new guises) in terms of their knowledge base, signals not merely the
closing-off of other, non-instrumental formulations of organization but also a
failure to conceptualize the possibilities of alternatives such as community, co-
operation and co-ordination. Further, I have suggested that the constitution of

professional identity entails a personal price, not least with respect to the expression
and experience of emotion. For the ‘work’ that gets done in pursuit of the
professional ideal is as much work on the self in suppressing ‘organizationally
inappropriate’ feelings and in sustaining definitions of selfhood that elevate the
workplace over home life. More than as merely a descriptor for a range of
techniques and practices, professional identity thus entails the constitution of
oneself as object—of continuous scrutiny by oneself as much as by others—of the
professional ideal.
Notes
1 The concept of hegemonic masculinity refers to a theoretical tool used to delineate
the (dominant) behaviours and actions of men. The term achieved prominence
following Carrigan et al.’s (1985) elaboration. See Whitehead (2002) for critique.
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Part II
Performing and
negotiating professional
identity
6 Speaking professionally
Occupational anxiety and discursive
ingenuity among human resourcing
specialists
Tony Watson
Words in action: discourse and discursive resources

The focus of this chapter is on one particular occupational activity, that of personnel
or human resource management, and to compare the utilization of notions of
professionalism as discursive resources by an occupational spokesperson, on the
one hand, and by an occupational member on the other hand. We will see the
former individual expressing one version of a professional identity for the
occupation he ‘leads’ and we will see the latter talking in terms of a rather different,
and much more equivocal, professional identity for human resource managers.
The approach to be taken is a sociological one, with elements of social
psychology included. In spite of attention to language, the concern is not with
language or linguistics as such. To treat certain linguistic utterances like ‘profession’
or ‘personnel’ as discursive resources is to recognize two things. First, these
utterances are resources that are utilized by human actors to further particular
projects and manage their identities. And, second, they are drawn from certain
‘resource banks’ or ‘linguistic repertoires’ (Potter and Wetherell 1987) made socially
available to any particular social actor. A particular position in the sociology of
knowledge is thus being adopted here. It is one that sees a vast range of discourses
emerging within human cultures as part of the process of the social construction
of reality and the ways in which people construct their identities (Berger and
Luckmann 1971).
The concept of discourse being used here has it as a connected set of concepts,
expressions and statements which constitutes a way of talking or writing about
an aspect of the world, thus framing and influencing the way people understand
and act with regard to that aspect of the world. There are clear similarities in this
concept of discourse and that used by Foucault (1980). But the notion is being
used here as part of a social constructionist sociology and a discursive psychology,
these being conceived in a way that does not entail a commitment to Foucauldian
poststructuralism. Discourses, as they are defined here, are both drawn upon by
human actors in the fulfilment of their projects and reshaped and developed by
the way they use them—playing a part, that is, in the active reality-constructing
dimension of human project fulfilment (Schutz 1972; Watson 2000, 2002; Watson
100 Tony Watson
and Harris 1999). And a key ‘project’ in which every human being engages is
that of producing both for themselves, and for others, an identity. Every individual
has their own self-identity. This is their private notion of ‘who they are’. But they
also have one or more social identities, ways in which other people define ‘who they
are’. These two aspects of identity are inevitably and intimately interconnected,
not least because the ways in which we see ourselves and the ways others see us
both tend to be ‘framed’ by discursive elements taken from the same cultural
‘resource bank’. However, the two aspects of our identities (the public and private,
we might call them) do not automatically and unproblematically inform each
other. Sense-making work has to be done by each of us as we make sense for
ourselves and for others who or what we are. Our identity is emergent and is, in
large part, negotiated through our interactions with others and our active use of
available discursive resources.
To locate the notions of profession and professionalism within processes of the
negotiation and construction of reality and identity in this way is to turn away
from the dominant tradition in the sociology of professions. This has used the
notions of profession and professionalism as concepts to be used in the analysis
of social processes, as opposed to regarding them as topics for social scientific
analysis, as we are doing here. In what follows we are concerned solely with the
way members of a particular occupation utilize notions of professionalism: no
use whatsoever is made of any social scientific concept of ‘profession’ in the
analysis. To put the analysis that is offered into context it is now necessary to
look at the dilemmas of human resource or personnel managers in organizations,
dilemmas to which the discursive resource of professionalism has an important
relevance.
Tensions and occupational insecurities in human

resource management
If we look at how work activities have been structured in societies over the
centuries we can see two main principles, ones which have come into some tension
since the Industrial Revolution. These are the occupational and the organizational
principles (Watson 1995b). In the first, and older, pattern of societal work
structuring, the primary emphasis is on the working person’s attachment to an
occupation, to other people who do similar work and the norms and practices
which these people develop over generations. With the growth of the industrial
enterprise and the large public bureaucracy as societies have industrialized and
democratized, the organizational principle has become dominant. Individuals’
work activities are much more significantly influenced by the work organization
that employs them than by their membership of an occupational grouping. This
is not to say that the occupational principle has disappeared in modern times.
It survived with the idea of a trade union (at least during the period when the
employee representing bodies were largely based on particular trades or
occupations). But its major survival is in the notion of professionalism. This
concept can be understood as one which was developed by members of certain
Speaking professionally 101
high-status occupations (or occupations aspiring to high status) who wished to

resist the broad trend towards all workers becoming employees, subject to the
control of an employer, rather than subject to control of others in the occupation
(Elliott 1972).
Certain occupations—most famously those of law and medicine—achieved
significant success in maintaining some autonomy in the face of the trend towards
increasing employer control. And this success can be understood as providing an
attractive set of discursive resources in the form of what Becker called the ‘symbol
of professionalism’ (1971) to certain groups of relatively high status employees,
especially ones who could claim possession of some special expertise or knowledge.
According to Collins (1991), the issues that arose here—ones of tension, in effect,
between occupational and organizational principles—were attended to by the first
social scientific research on ‘specific professions’. ‘The theme of professions versus
bureaucracies, of expert versus line authority’, claims Collins, ‘was something of
a paradigm found not only in the studies of professions but also in the more
general field of organizational studies as well’ (Collins 1991:12). And tensions
like these, which look back to certain preindustrial principles of work structuring
and ideology, are still significant in these early years of the twenty-first century
for understanding the ways in which the symbol of professionalism is being utilized
by people working in personnel or human resource management, and by
occupational spokespersons.
At first sight, managerial work of any kind is the least likely occupational
activity to become associated with the symbol of professionalism and its promise
of at least some degree of autonomy from employer control. Managers, after all,
are the very agents of employers. They are the officers of the corporation. The
whole logic of their occupational existence is one of maintaining the organizational
and employment principle of work structuring. Why should they look towards
the symbol of the independent and service-oriented chartered knowledge specialist
who works in a firm of peer-controlled ‘partners’? One answer to this question
would be the broad one implicit in what I have argued so far: that the members
of almost any occupation (‘critical social scientists’ included) are likely to be
attracted to a label which not only justifies the right to resist certain aspects of
employer control but also contains some promise of high social status and material
reward. But there are also specific circumstances that can be added to this when
we look at particular areas of managerial work. Personnel management is an area
of managerial work where such circumstances are particularly powerful ones.
There have been tensions in the relationships between personnel managers
and other members of management that have existed since the early days of the
occupations. These have been analysed in particular by Legge (1978, 1995a) and
by Watson (1977, 1986). The tensions that both writers have identified are
summarised in Legge’s reference to the role of personnel specialists in ‘mediating
a major contradiction embedded in capitalist systems: the need to achieve both
control and consent of employees’ (Legge 1995b:14). This means that, part of the
time, human resource specialists are working with other managers to increase
control over employees and maximizing the corporate benefits to be extracted
102 Tony Watson
from employees. At other times, however, they find themselves working against
other managers, who are coping with short-term and localized pressures. This is
because of the essentially strategic function of a human resourcing department.
This requires human resource specialists to consider the longer term implications
(as opposed to immediate problem-solving pressures) and more corporate
implications (as opposed to local or sectional preferences) of human resourcing
decisions and actions (Watson and Watson 1999; Watson 2002). These specific
occupational dilemmas are equivalent to those seen in many other occupations,
and they are dilemmas which members of the occupation have to handle, both at
the level of everyday practice and at the level of personal identity and self-
understanding (Hughes 1937). The particular dilemmas of personnel work, taken
together with the general stresses and anxieties experienced by all managers, led
to a range of conflicts and tensions with other managers and other functions.
This, in turn, has led to a significant degree of what might be understood as
occupational insecurity (Storey 1992; Torrington and Hall 1996; Tyson and Fell
1986; Watson and Bargiela-Chiappini 1998). And occupational insecurity is likely
to have implications for the identity work which members of such an occupation
have to do.
The discursive resources of professionalism, then, are not only attractive
resources in the same way they are attractive generally to certain middle-class
employees of modern societies. They are especially attractive to members of
the personnel or human resourcing managerial occupation because of the
specific tensions that are associated with the work that these people do. They
may also be helpful to the identity work that personnel specialists need to do
to handle the way these tensions impinge on their individual lives. It is in the
light of such possibilities that we can understand efforts by the occupational
association of the personnel managers to embrace the symbol of
professionalism in a very explicit and formal way, by seeking state recognition
in the shape of a royal charter (see below). We can now look at the way the
discursive resources of professionalism have been employed to further this
occupational strategy by focusing on the words of the leading spokesman of
the occupation. We will then turn to a conversation with a member of the
personnel management occupation, one which related to some of the same
particular issues to show how, in the different circumstances of the human
resourcing practitioner, the discursive resources of ‘professionalism’ are used
somewhat differently. The point being made, in both cases, is that notions of
profession, professionalism and ‘being professional’ need to be seen as devices
that are made use of by people handling particular occupational issues, in
particular ways, in particular circumstances.
Discursive ingenuity and the occupational

spokesperson
The occupational association for people working in personnel or human
resource management, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
(CIPD), has developed in Britain over the twentieth century as a result of a

series of amalgamations of separate representational bodies (Niven 1967). The
final amalgamation was a major one in 1994 between the Institute of
Personnel Management and the equivalent body for people specializing in
training and employee development work. At the time of that amalgamation,
it was decided that the new body would work towards seeking from the
Privy Council the awarding of the royal charter, which was subsequently
granted. This would give the association a form of state approval, something
that at a later stage would be developed into a further application to the
Privy Council to approve the chartering of the individual members of the
association. In 1999 the IPD through a secret ballot successfully sought
backing from its members for the first application to the Privy Council. As
one of the main attempts to persuade members of the institute to vote in
support of the application, an article entitled ‘Seal of Approval’ appeared in
the magazine People Management (Crabb 1999). All members of the I PD
receive this magazine, and the article sets out the arguments for pursuing
chartered status for the Institute as articulated by Geoff Armstrong, the
director general of the Institute. Although this article appears in the form of
an interview with a journalist, we can treat it as a very carefully framed and
crafted formal statement or ‘manifesto’. Several of the phrases in it have
appeared elsewhere during the campaign.
Before we look at how the pursuit of ‘chartered status’ for the IPD was
presented by its leading spokesperson, we need to make some reference back
to the occupational insecurity that was mentioned above. This is relevant here
because my reading of this same magazine over thirty years (an experience I
know, as a result of personal conversations with him, that the director general
has shared), has involved regular references to worries about personnel
managers being made ‘to take a back seat’, being ‘stuck in the middle’
between managers and workers, being ‘excluded from boardrooms’ or being
marginalized in national debates about employment policies. The director
general’s words therefore need to be read with an awareness of this
background. And to give a clearer flavour of what this background is, and to
fill out my earlier reference to occupational insecurity, I shall examine just
one example. This is an article written in what was then called Personnel
Management by a vice-president of the IPM in 1972 (Dryburgh 1972). G.D.M.
Dryburgh portrayed the personnel manager as caught ‘in the middle’ between
various interests. First, there is the relationship with ‘his’ [sic] employer and
the trade unions:
For the management, who pay his salary, he must argue the company case;
from the union viewpoint he is expected to negotiate acceptable terms and
conditions for the staff. If the personnel man adopts a progressive policy,
management says ‘slow down’. If he goes at the pace of many employer
associations, he is accused by the unions of ‘lagging behind’.
(Dryburgh 1973:2)
104 Tony Watson
Then there is the relationship with other managers:
Is he a friend or foe? Frequently the personnel man has a bigger struggle

with the attitudes of his own management to change than he does with the
attitudes of those on the shop floor.
(Dryburgh 1973:2)
And the relationship with ‘the boardroom’:
The competent personnel ‘professional’ is now backed by considerable

expertise, knowledge and numeracy which is frequently not recognised or
used by his company…[This is] a discredit to the effectiveness of
management and its ability to identify the skills of its own staff.
(Dryburgh 1973:2)
Dryburgh talks explicitly about the ‘frustrations’ that this creates for personnel
managers, personally and as members of their management function. His rallying
cry is, ‘Don’t let the personnel man become the eunuch of the company. Let us not
be afraid to state our views to management or in the boardroom’. Success will be
achieved when personnel managers are heard in these quarters; ‘one of our standards
of success will be the ultimate acceptance in practice of what we say and do’. This
combination of cries of pain with rallying cries to the personnel ‘troops’ to fight for
status and influence has been typical of articles and presentations made over the
years by occupational representatives. And it is the backcloth to the current
‘promotional work’ of occupational spokespersons. But one significant change, as
we will see, is the much less tentative use of the discursive resources of professionalism
than is visible in the Dryburgh piece. The tentativeness was perhaps most clearly
expressed by the quotation marks surrounding the word ‘professional’. But this
does not mean that other aspects of the professionalism discourse are absent. Far
from it: there is, in the above words and elsewhere in the article, reference to
expertise and a body of knowledge. Also, the professional body itself, as well as
being described as ‘second to none in the world’ is seen as the ‘continuing means
to improve ourselves and the image we present to our companies’.
Dryburgh’s 1972 article ended with the words, ‘Tomorrow is the first day of
the rest of our lives’ (Dryburgh 1973:2). The 1999 article, taking the form of a
verbatim report of an interview with Armstrong (Crabb 1999), uses the notion of
an approaching new century to give its equivalent of a rallying cry for the future.
Let us look carefully at how Armstrong, as the ‘occupational propagandist’ for
the latest ‘new start’, presents the case and uses the discursive resources of
professionalism in a way which has both continuities with what went before and
goes beyond it with a newer ‘spin’ on the idea of ‘being professional’. In fact, the
way that Armstrong introduces his attempt to persuade institute members to give
‘overwhelming support’ to the charter application is to answer the journalist’s
first question, ‘Why is it important for the institute to get a charter?’ in a way
which can be read as offering a solution to all the insecurities of the past. Receipt
of a charter, he says, ‘would be a recognition that the profession has arrived’. So

what will ‘the profession’ have arrived at?
At the heart of the discourse of professionalism is the notion of an occupation
whose members deal in some kind of specialist knowledge. This in itself does not
explain the massive attraction of the notion, however. Such an explanation lies in
an associated pair of ideas. First, one can get high prestige and material reward
for applying the knowledge and expertise. Second, one will be seen by the social
world at large as deserving these rewards because the occupation is managing
and applying that knowledge in some kind of service of others. There is, thus,
the promise of a great sense of human ‘worthiness’ together with a whole lot of
material benefits. Becoming a professional, in effect, promises to give one material
well-being and influence with a clear conscience. Let us look at how this discourse—
this set of cultural resources (or ideological toolkit) which is available in all modern
societies to occupational spokespersons—is utilized in the skilled proselytizing of
Geoff Armstrong:
People management is a coherent profession, based on a body of knowledge,

understanding and competences that is capable of being defined, promoted,
taught and learnt, and continually developed.
(Crabb 1999:43)
Membership of such a body gives social standing, both in the work organization
and outside of it. Within the organization it would be ‘a recognition that the
people dimensions of management are no less important than finance, logistics
or marketing.’ Occupational insecurity is dealt with in this way, but only partly.
Armstrong is well aware, as a very experienced personnel director himself, that
the personnel manager’s contribution to organizational performance is the crucial
determinant of ‘how highly esteemed they are in the organizations’. They get
esteem ‘by virtue of the contribution they make to continuously improved
performance…’. Does this mean that professional membership is not so important
after all? Not at all. Professional membership comes in here because the institute
will ‘help them at all levels to continue to raise the value of the contribution they
make’ (Crabb 1999:44).
It is knowledge in the service of the corporation, then, that is emerging as the
key ‘managerial spin’ being given to the older idea of professional work as
something quite distinct from what goes on in employing or ‘managed’
organizations (i.e. having its roots in the occupational principles rather than the
organizational one). But this does not mean that the new personnel or human
resourcing ‘professional’ should not expect social status outside the workplace.
Armstrong talks in terms of ‘benefits in terms of prestige’ that chartered status
would give members. He directly addresses the occupational insecurity issue by
noting that: ‘It galls many of them that they sit alongside chartered accountants,
engineers, secretaries, marketeers or lawyers, [whilst] they aren’t members of a
chartered profession themselves’. He takes this further: ‘This will help them to
overcome the slightly second-class standing that some of them wrongly feel they
106 Tony Watson
have’ (Crabb 1999:43). And further still: ‘It would be recognition that they are in
the “premier league’” (Crabb 1999:43).
Talk like this might be taken to be suggesting rather a selfish, not to say
reactionary, occupational strategy of seeking status and power by pursuing the
level of control over knowledge seen in the degree of occupational closure and
licensing to practise that has been achieved in law and medicine. But Armstrong
is well aware that one of the great dangers of making use of the standard discursive
toolkit of professionalism is that such a line could be very counter-productive. It
would, at the very least, invite a powerful reaction from employers. How, then,
does Armstrong combine the relatively old idea of ‘a profession’ with the principles
of the modern business world, and its associated wealth creation aspirations and
its new technologies? The device that is used is one of ‘a wholly new form of
professional institute’. This appears to involve nothing less than the re-invention
of the very idea of ‘the profession’. What may have once been seen as central to
the logic of a professional body is jettisoned: ‘We are not backward looking; we
are not interested in restrictive practices or demarcation lines, regulation or granting
licenses to practice’ (Crabb 1999:43)
And this skilfully constructed sentence has connotations that go beyond the
explicit rejecting of a ‘monopoly of knowledge’ strategy or ‘restrictive practice’
on the part of the human resourcing occupation. We need to remember that one
of the problems for personnel managers, identified as part of ‘being in the middle’
by Dryburgh, was a degree of identification with trade unions, at least in the eyes
of some managers and some union leaders (Watson 1977). Armstrong’s article
has nothing whatsoever to say about trade unions and the role personnel managers
might or might not play in the future with regard to them. This, I am sure, is
deliberate. But I read into the above sentence a subliminal reference to that part
of personnel management’s traditional image. Overtly, Armstrong is dissociating
the ‘new profession’ from the old ‘licensed to practise professions’. But, covertly,
he is also distancing the occupation from its old trade union connections and the
associated ‘bad old practices’ of that world. ‘Demarcation’ and ‘restrictive practice’
are terms that most people in the industrial world associate with trade unions
and not with professions. The director general knows this very well indeed. And
he also knows how to speak the ‘new language’ of the commercial and managerial
world. And the, perhaps, inevitable term from the world of commerce and
enterprise that Armstrong incorporates into his new concept of a ‘profession’ is
that of ‘adding value’: ‘We have set out to be a professional institute that adds
value to its members in the performance of their jobs…’
And among the means which will be used to achieve this will be ‘Internet-
based information services’. This is just one of the services that the new type of
profession is offering its members to give them ‘practical help in doing their jobs
better’. And, reveals Armstrong, the IPD is not ‘aware of any other professional
body that is setting out with such ambitious plans’. It follows that: ‘The charter
would be the final accolade recognising that we have set an example for professional
bodies in the 21st century’.
Them language of innovation and modernity is taken further when it is
recognized that the world of work is not simply moving into a new century but
into of a new type of economy. A charter can help the occupation contribute
significantly to this new world and help employers compete in it:
As we move into the knowledge economy, it’s increasingly going to be

people who make the sustainable difference between winning and losing.
Chartered status would recognise that and give us additional clout in making
it happen… The institute is fully in tune with the flexible labour markets
and with the knowledge and information age. I believe that we are at the
leading edge of creating the 21 st century.
This might sound daunting—as Armstrong’s interviewer suggests to him. But, he

says, ‘I don’t see why’. The new type of profession will not threaten potential
members with the sort of exclusivity that traditional ‘professional status’ might
imply. There will be ‘open access’ to this ‘broad church’ with ‘pick and mix
routes of progression to the various levels of professional standards’. Nobody
need be frightened. Modernity (like ‘New Labour’ in the world of politics we
might speculate) is a friendly thing as well as a pioneering thing: ‘We would still
present ourselves in a totally modern, forward-looking way—we aim to be a
pathfinder for professional institutes in the 21st century’ (Crabb 1999:44).
And, as Armstrong closes his manifesto, he makes what I take to be references
back to the old worries that characterized all those past articles agonizing over the
insecurities of the personnel manager’s lot. What chartered status will not do, he
says, implicitly looking back over his shoulder to that particular occupational
discourse ‘is catapult us into the boardroom, or into the inner circle of public
policy’ (Crabb 1999:44). But progress is being made and ‘we are getting there
already’. And where is the occupation getting to? Its destination is portrayed with
use of discursive resources from both the new discourse of managerial professionalism
(with reference to ‘the value of our members’ contributions to organizational
effectiveness’) and the older discourse. The human resourcing managers are also
contributing to the ‘good of society’, just like the older legal and medical bearers of
the professional ideal. Corporate interests and the general well-being of society are
one and the same in the discourse of the modernizing professional it would seem.
And that discourse is one that provides useful material for any individual member
of the occupation working out how their managerial work fits into their identities,
into the way they see themselves and the ways they are seen by others
Geoff Armstrong is very much speaking with a purpose. This is a key part of
his role as a ‘leader’ and representative of members of the human resource
management occupation. His role requires him carefully and systematically to
argue a case that will advance the interests of members of that occupation and
help them each make their occupational membership a ‘positive’ element of their
individual identities. And the discourse of professionalism is one from which he
carefully chooses ideas and concepts that will fit his purpose and, equally carefully,
he plays down or adapts elements of that discourse that are not helpful to his
purpose. But what about the members of the occupation?
108 Tony Watson
Discursive ingenuity and the occupational member
We can take it that there is support for some notion of professionalism, at least
among members of the IPD, on the evidence that the ballot (for which the above
article was effectively a manifesto) resulted in an overall vote of 99 per cent in
favour of the charter application. 17,500 votes were cast in support of the
proposition, with more than 55 per cent of the corporate membership voting.
According to the Electoral Reform Society, who managed the process, this turnout
was the second highest that they had experienced over a five-year period. The
only higher vote was for the de-mutualization of a building society
In no way must we infer from this vote by members of this managerial
occupational association that human resource managers across the UK are
enthusiastically pursuing ‘professional status’ for themselves. Over a six month
period prior to and including the time of the IPD ballot, I carried out a series of
discussions with human resource managers, including several tape-recorded
‘research conversations’, on the topic of professionalism and human resource
management. I also collected a number of written comments on the matter. This
was not a systematic attempt at ‘data collection’ and the main generalization I
would make from looking at what was said was that there was little change from
what I observed in an earlier study more than two decades ago (Watson 1977). I
concluded then that personnel managers treated the occupational association
instrumentally and regarded notions of professionalism with equivocality. If notions
of ‘professionalism’ were helpful to them in their pursuit of success within employing
organizations, then they were enthusiastic (especially where ‘being professional’
implied high competence). But where it might imply distancing oneself from
other managers or from commercial criteria in managerial decision making, then
they were more hostile.
The cautious and equivocal position on ‘professionalism’ suggested by the
1970s interviews also characterized the accounts I have heard recently. My purpose
is not, however, to make generalizations about the attitudes of human resource
specialists towards professionalism. I am focusing on the use that members of the
occupation make of resources from the professionalism discourse. I shall therefore
present just one piece of ‘talk’ from a taped conversation with a human resource
manager to show something of this process in action. The import of the words
that are spoken here does not generally differ from those of the other conversations
which occurred, except perhaps in that Bob Thompson seemed to be better
informed about developments in the IPD than most of those to whom I spoke.
He was also somewhat more articulate than many others. However, the processes
of discursive resource utilization we see going on here are the same sort of processes
that all of those I spoke to engaged in, even if few of them spoke so clearly. The
conversation with Bob Thompson occurred shortly after the IPD ballot. And the
first response that Bob made, as this topic was raised, was one that suggests
considerable scepticism. As the conversation unfolds, however, we see something
much more equivocal and we see a level of discursive ingenuity that matches that
of the occupational spokesperson whose words were examined earlier:
Basically I am very sceptical about all of this chartered profession talk.

So how did you vote in the ballot?
I voted for it, of course.
Why do you say, ‘of course’?
Because, I thought to myself, ‘Why ever not?’ I mean, there’s nothing to lose, is
there? I am not at all sure whether it will make any real difference. But it
can’t do any harm. And if it did happen to make a difference, well, good.
What difference might it make, do you think?
It’s ‘more power to the elbow’ sort of thing. I encourage all my staff to join the
IPD and to take their studies seriously. The general sort of learning that
goes on with the mixing with other young people in the HR business seems
to me to be a good thing. Yes, I do want to push this kind of thing. Can I give
you an example?
Please do.
One day I said to one of the youngsters in my department that there was a
good article in People Management which she might find helpful to a job she
was doing for me. ‘Oh I don’t read that’, she went. I knew she gets the
magazine as part of her IPD membership. So I went, ‘Why ever not? You
pay for it. And even if you only skim the thing, you’ll might find something
that sort of kicks off an idea in your head’. I told her that I find it useful
myself, from time to time. Anyway, I now keep an eye on this. All my staff
now know that I want them to look at what’s there. And now I’ve had a
couple of cases where people have come to me with stuff they’ve got off the
web site. OK?
So what you are saying is that the IPD is a good thing?
I suppose I am. It helps the individual in their career, and it helps the firm—if it
makes them do the job better.
But you seemed to be questioning the idea of professionalism?
Oh no, I am dead keen on it. I want all my staff to be really professional. I want
them to be really good at what they do. So perhaps I’ve misled you.
I’m not sure, yet. But is professionalism just a matter at people being ‘good at what they do’?
No, it’s more than that. I think it also has to do with being objective. I would like
to think that my colleagues on the board would call me professional. And, if
they said that, I would take it that they meant two things. First, that I
delivered—that I was good at, you know, delivering for the business. And,
second, that I was well, like, cool. No, I don’t mean that in the hip sense. I
mean that I don’t get all emotional, I don’t get worked up—I am balanced
and objective in my judgements. This is a temperamental thing. Yes, I am
temperamentally a professional person.
And are these two things connected?
No. One is the outcome of all the experience and expertise you’ve developed
over the years. And the other is how you are made. But perhaps, perhaps,
uhm ‘yes’ too. I think I have only learned as well as I have because I’ve
always kept a cool head. I go, ‘Yes, I’ll learn from this success; yes, I’ll learn
from that mistake; no, I won’t do that again’. That’s it, cool, calm and collected,
110 Tony Watson
that’s me as a professional. And it also means I avoid favouritism. And

emotional involvement with—well, you know, tempting as it is…
So, if I can go back, what did you mean when you said you were sceptical about the chartered
thing?
Well, it’s the hype that puts me off. Let’s face it, I’ve voted for the charter application
going forward. But if the whole thing works out and the IPD tells me that I
am now a ‘chartered human resources director’, I shall keep it to myself. It
certainly wouldn’t impress anybody at work.
And at home?
It would mean absolutely sod all to my wife and kids. I might tell the blokes
down the golf club that I was now ‘chartered’. But I’d make a joke of it. I
admit I would be interested to hear what they’d say, though. Yes, I’d try out
the idea on them as a joke. Just to see how they’d respond. And if they were
impressed—which I doubt—well, that would be nice wouldn’t it? So there
you are. Is that it then?
Nearly. Just one thing. When you used the word ‘hype’ just now you seemed to be looking for
something on your desk.
Oh yes, I was. I was looking for that little silver booklet that I got from the
IPD. I couldn’t help laughing at it when I got it. I kept it to look at again,
after I sent off my ballot paper. What amused me was the way they switched
about from the professional stuff—charters and learnable bodies of
knowledge and all that—to trendy business language. One of the things
was about the IPD being ‘world class’. Now we have had all this ‘world
class’ hype in this firm, and I’m sick of it. I think it also had the ‘added
value’ stuff. Let me look for it.
[Bob finds the booklet. He fails to locate the ‘world class’ reference he insists he
saw there. But he reads from one page.]
Yes, so here’s, ‘the new economy of the twenty-first century will be a knowledge
economy, one in which an emphasis on investment in machinery will be
replaced by an emphasis on investment in people. Where continuous learning
and development…blah blah…will enable people to achieve their full
potential’. And listen to this, ‘The professionals who can design and facilitate
such investment and turn it into a sustainable competitive advantage will
become increasingly valued. They know, and can show, that people mean
business’. For goodness sake, ‘people mean business’. What are we into here;
‘Toys R Us’, ‘Beanz means Heinz’. Too slick, baby, too slick.
You are happy with the message, though, are you, Bob, even if the words used stick in you
throat?
Well, let me read it again. [Reads the page again carefully] No, look there is a real
problem here. The hype means their mouth runs away with them—like some
of your academic friends, the ones who’ve not been out in the real world. I
see you grimace at ‘the real world’. But let me explain myself. In the ‘real
world’ that I expect to work in for the next twenty years or so, there’s no
question of stopping investing in machinery. Believe me, if we can replace a
lot of the people we have here with machines, we will do so. Of course, we
will invest in developing people too. But not everybody. My professionalism

won’t be the touchy creepy ‘people people people’ stuff the IPD are pushing
here. It will be using my hard won professional experience which will help
me judge which people to develop, which people to replace with machines,
and which people to warn, ‘Here, do this for this wage packet or get your
arse kicked’. That’s it.
That’s the whole story?
Yes, that’s it. Professionalism? Yes, if it’s one sort. But if it’s all this more of the
welfary old idealism, no thanks. And I do understand what they are saying
about knowledge businesses and how things are changing—and developing
people and all that. But I’m not sure they’ve really got their feet on the
ground. Professionalism’s got to be about all the tough stuff as well. The
twenty-first century is going to be no utopia, believe me.
It has been necessary to reproduce the whole of this piece of conversation because
it is not available as a ‘text’ elsewhere for the present reader to examine for
themselves (as they can with the People Management article). But, more importantly,
it is necessary in order to make the process of discursive resource utilization
visible. Words are used in a context and, when one is looking at word-use as
closely as we wish to here, the dialogic context in which it occurs needs to be
fully appreciated. The ‘position’ that the speaker takes is, in part, one negotiated
with the interviewer. And it is in this process of negotiated understanding that we
see the discursive ingenuity of Bob Thompson as he dodges, weaves and
equivocates, partly rejecting and partly embracing the professionalism discourse.
He also reveals, albeit unintentionally, the malleability of this discourse in the
managerial arena.
Bob begins by distancing himself from the professions discourse from the
start not just by using the word ‘sceptical’ but also by referring to ‘chartered
profession talk’ (my emphasis). Yet he voted for a move which could imply
support for the professionalism idea. This is presented as a pragmatic and shrewd
act; it is one that just might have some pay-off and ‘make a difference’. We then
see him speak positively of the relevance of IPD involvement for his own staff.
This embraces one element of the professionalism discourse, the idea of a body
of occupational knowledge. But the version of this that he uses is far from the
idea of the systematic body of knowledge implied in the director general’s
account. It is magazine material which can be ‘skimmed’ in the hope of ideas
being ‘kicked off in the head’. Yet the internet aspect of Armstrong’s ‘modern
profession’ makes an appearance, however modest, with the reference to ‘stuff’
found on the IPD web site.
When Bob Thompson is taken back directly to his apparent questioning
of ‘professionalism’ he appears to shift dramatically from his earlier
‘scepticism’ to saying ‘I am dead keen on it’. But this can be understood
by recognizing that his ‘scepticism’ was about the charter aspect of
professionalism. He has now moved to a different notion of professionalism—
one of ‘being professional’. He indicates that this means being ‘good at what
112 Tony Watson
you do’. But he does not leave it at that. Although he struggles to articulate
his position, he is clearly turning towards another element of the broad and
socially available professionalism discourse when he explores the notion of
being objective, emotionally controlled and, indeed, ethical; albeit ethical only
at the level of interpersonal relationships at work. He also connects his
professionalism with learning by experience: an interesting gloss on the notion
of the professional as a ‘learned’ person. Whether or not he has in mind
the image of the ‘learned professions’, we can see this as an ingenious spin
on the traditional concept of the professional as someone who has learned
by long study of a formal body of knowledge. And it is possible to see in
his comment on ‘academics’ a cynicism towards or a distrust of formal
education.
When the conversation is taken back to the charter issue, Bob Thompson
hints that although being a ‘chartered human resources director’ might be treated
as something of a joke, it also just might impress some of his social acquaintances.
It might be relevant to this part of his social identity. It would do nothing for his
workplace social identity, however. He is nevertheless tempted by some of the
promise of that element of the professionalism discourse which associates
membership of a chartered body with social standing. Geoff Armstrong utilized
the same discursive resources with his promise of possible entry to the ‘premier
league’. This is a clear appeal to social snobbery, but one toned down by the use
of a concept from relatively classless world of soccer leagues. If people were
impressed by his becoming chartered, Bob muses, ‘it would be nice, wouldn’t it’.
But he does not appear comfortable about getting into this social aspect of the
professionalism discourse and seems to want to close off the conversation at this
point with, ‘So there you are. Is that it, then?’.
There seems to be some embarrassment here about appearing pretentious.
Bob appears anxious to protect that facet of his self-identity which has him as a
non-pretentious person. The same kind of reservation seems to come into play
when he examines the text of some of the IPD publicity. He expresses strong
dislike for the ‘hype’ that he sees in some of the language used (see Watson
1994). But he also draws our attention to a particularly significant aspect of the
IPD spokesperson’s discursive ingenuity. This is Armstrong’s mixing together of
elements of the traditional professionalism discourse (‘The professionals who
can design…’) with elements from contemporary managerial discourse
(‘sustainable competitive advantage’) and even the language style of commercial
advertising (which invites Bob to compare ‘people mean business’ with ‘Toys R
Us’). It would appear that Bob has picked this up because of his reservations
about the use of some of the managerial ‘world class hype’ that he has experienced
in his own company. He was unable to locate the expression ‘world class’ in the
booklet he was examining. But I subsequently found what might have been the
source for it: none other than the words of the director general in the magazine
article (‘We pride ourselves for being world class in everything we produce, from
our brochures to our annual report to our Internet site and People Management’
(Crabb 1999:44)).
When Bob Thompson is invited to consider that it might just be certain words
that he has problems with, rather than the underlying ‘message’, he accepts the
challenge to look closely at just what is being argued by his occupational
association’s spokespersons. And this makes him uncomfortable. He chooses to
confront the substance of the institute’s claims about how the world of employment
is developing. He accepts much of what they say, endorsing their emphasis on
knowledge-based work and recognizing the importance of ‘developing’ employees.
But Bob chooses to emphasize another side to human resource management that
he believes will continue to be important in what he sees as the ‘real world’.
Again, we have hints of a preferred identity as a no-nonsense pragmatic manager.
In his talk of the ‘tough stuff’ of replacing people with machines and people
getting their ‘arses kicked’ he is referring to the ‘hard’ aspect of human resource
management in which every personnel manager working in an industrial capitalist
employing organization knows they have to involve themselves in certain
circumstances. Direct controls are as much a part of human resourcing practices
(Watson 1999) as are the indirect controls which the IPD are emphasizing.
In his reference to ‘welfary old idealism’, Bob Thompson is alluding a long-
standing debate about personnel management in which it is argued that personnel
specialists must resolutely and demonstrably turn their backs on the occupation’s
origins in industrial welfare work. This was said to be vital if they were going to
be taken seriously by other managers, ones less ‘idealistic’ and more committed
to commercial values. Bob uses his reference to this debate to imply that the IPD
spokespersons are being utopian—and sticking to the old ideas of personnel
management’s founding ‘welfare workers’. And the implication of his closing
comments is that if this is the professionalism that is being argued for, then he
will, in effect, redefine the term. This means managerial criteria are brought to
the fore: professionalism becomes a ‘hard-won ability’ to judge which employees
to ‘develop’, which to replace with technology, and which to treat in hire and fire
manner. In a final flourish of discursive ingenuity, Bob Thompson invokes one
of the oldest sources of occupational insecurity among personnel or human
resource managers: the fear that personnel people will be seen as too ‘soft on
labour’ or too ‘touchy creepy’ to be allowed full access the corridors of managerial
power. Bob knows that a personnel or human resources manager who risks
acquiring a social identity at work as a sensitive welfare-oriented humanist or
union sympathizer will be risking his or her job.
Conclusion
We have now looked closely at how two particular individuals talk about the
occupational strategies that are occurring in their field of work. We have seen
how elements of a socially available discourse of professionalism can be used to
handle issues of occupational insecurity, occupational advancement and personal
identity management. The two men utilize discursive resources to give their own
versions of professional identity to an occupation that, at first sight, is an
exceedingly unlikely ‘profession’. Doing this, we see, involves the application of
114 Tony Watson
considerable rhetorical expertise (Watson 1995a), especially in the case of the

person speaking as the leading spokesperson for the occupational association of
human resource managers. Given the particular sources of insecurity that members
of the personnel occupation strive to overcome, the discourse of professionalism,
with its promise of a prestigious and comforting ‘professional’ identity, is
exceedingly attractive.
A professional identity carries the promise of high social status and generous
rewards warranted by the socially admirable service that the professional worker
provides through putting into action the expert knowledge that they alone possess.
The problem, however, is that a managerial occupation like human resource
management does not readily fit with many aspects of the full professional discourse
that such an identity depends upon. Thus we see the discursive ingenuity of the
spokesperson for the occupation finding a way of ‘forcing a fit’ that helps him in
his task of promoting the interests of the occupation as a whole. And when we
turn to an individual who has to confront the same problems, but this time from
the point of view of a human resource manager with a prime loyalty to his
employing work organization, we see a further demonstration of discursive
ingenuity. Here a different sort of ‘fit’ between the discourse used and
occupationally related identity-management is forced.
In demonstrating the way processes of this kind occur, the notions of profession,
professional and professionalism have been treated solely as topic of social science
research. They have not been used as social science concepts or analytical
resources. All words have connotations and rhetorical, pejorative or ideological
potential. But some words have more of these qualities than others, and ‘profession’
is a word that is especially ‘loaded’ this sense. This is fully recognized by Geoff
Armstrong and Bob Thompson.
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7 Amateurism, quackery and
professional conduct
The constitution of ‘proper’
aromatherapy practice
Valérie Fournier
Introduction
This chapter explores the meaning and deployment of the idea of professionalism
in an alternative health care group in the UK: aromatherapy. The motivation for
writing this chapter, and the material upon which it is based, stems from my own
participation in a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) course in
aromatherapy, 1 and my puzzlement with the way in which the idea of
‘professionalism’ was articulated and emphasized throughout the course. The
language of professionalism is commonly used in alternative therapies (Deverell
and Sharma 2000; Sharma 1992), and is accorded central importance in the
NVQ competence framework for aromatherapy, where it gets attached to various
forms of conduct from ‘appearance’ to ‘rapport with client’, ‘attitude’ or ‘manners’.
But what was peculiar about the use of ‘professionalism’ in the course, especially
considering the ‘alternative’ position of aromatherapy, was its articulation in terms
of management and deference to orthodox medicine. This taming of aromatherapy
in terms that would make it acceptable to the ‘medical profession’ and turn it into
a viable ‘commercial practice’ was a constant source of frustration for myself and
most of my fifteen female fellow students on the NVQ3 course in ‘Massage,
Anatomy and Aromatherapy’. Few of us intended to ‘practice’ aromatherapy
other than on ourselves and a small circle of friends or family members; we
attended the NVQ course simply because it appeared to be the only one available
which went beyond ‘a short introduction’ (the NVQ, course runs over two years,
on a part-time basis, and involves one four-hour session per week). It was provided
by the local further education college (as opposed to the more expensive private
schools). As such, we had little interest in being taught how to manage a practice;
yet four of the eight units of competence making up the NVQ3 qualification were
about what in the class was referred to as ‘management’. In order to complete
these units, we had to perform of number of ‘management assignments’, such as
‘designing, distributing and evaluating a market research questionnaire’, ‘designing
a proforma for staff appraisal, ‘designing and costing the setting up of a reception
room for a practice’, and take various class tests on health and safety or ‘selling
skills’. Although in the sociology of the professions, management and professions
Amateurism and professional conduct 117
are often seen as antithetical (Gouldner 1957; Keat 1990; Randle 1996), in the
course, it was the knowledge of ‘management’ that was to make up our
‘professionalism’. Management was presented as a disciplinary process that was
to distinguish us from the unscrupulous quack or the ignorant amateur, and
signal our responsible conduct.
The chapter draws upon my participation in the NVQ course, as well as on
the analysis of aromatherapy books and ‘professional’ journals, to explore how
the idea of professionalism is deployed in the context of aromatherapy. I should
stress here that my concern is not to find out whether or not aromatherapy is
(becoming) a profession in the sense of acquiring the monopoly, status and power
often associated with the term (Abbott 1988; Larson 1977; MacDonald 1995).
On these terms, aromatherapy hardly qualifies as a ‘profession’ for its contested
field is open to anyone, with or without training or affiliation to the many
‘professional bodies’ claiming to represent it. Rather, I wish to examine the work
of legitimation that the idea of professionalism is made to carry, and the identity
work that goes into the construction of the ‘professional practitioner’.
Professionalism, I argue, acts as a resource in performing legitimacy, and in
particular in negotiating aromatherapy’s problematic position in the market, and
in relation to orthodox medicine. And professionalism does its work of legitimation
by invoking the unscrupulous motive of the quack and the naïveté of the amateur,
against which the disciplined and responsible conduct of the professional
practitioner can be defined and legitimized.
The notion of legitimacy is central to the idea of professionalism I want to
articulate here, and is explored in the first section of the chapter in relation to two
different ideas of performativity articulated by Butler (1993, 1994) and Lyotard
(1984) respectively. In the second section, the chapter situates aromatherapy within
the UK health care market, and the increasingly popular domain of alternative
medicine. The third section illustrates how contemporary constructions of the
‘history’ of aromatherapy serve to conjure up the figure of the ‘quack’ and the
‘amateur’, positions against which professionalism can be defined and legitimized.
The third and fourth parts of the chapter examine how the relational positions of
the ‘professional’, the ‘quack’ and the ‘amateur’ are deployed in negotiating
aromatherapy’s problematic position in the market, and in relation to orthodox
medicine. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the ambivalent effects
of professionalism on the constitution and ‘alternativeness’ of aromatherapy.
Professionalism and the performance of legitimacy

Whilst the professions are often (self ) defined in terms of their autonomy
and self-regulating capacities, such autonomy is itself contingent upon
establishing and maintaining cultural legitimacy in terms of prevalent social
values and concerns (Abbott 1988; Robbins 1992). The autonomy of the
professions depends on ‘the values of a promiscuous public’ (Robbins
1992:72), or other relevant actors. For example, medical doctors gained their
professional status and monopoly not on the basis of their ‘expertise’ or the
118 Valérie Fournier
efficacy of their practice, which until the nineteenth century was

indistinguishable from that of their competitors—the unaccredited ‘quacks’
or ‘charlatans’—but partly by linking their practice to the concerns of
eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western governments to quell social
disturbance and transform ‘idle’ bodies into productive ones (Foucault 1975,
1980; Robbins 1992). The professions govern in the name of something
outside of themselves (the public, truth) and have to establish and maintain
the legitimacy of their knowledge and practice in the eyes of those in the
name of whom they claim to profess, such as the state or the client (Foucault
1989). In this respect, professionalism is a disciplinary process (Fournier
1999) for it acts as a mechanism through which an occupational group
establishes its accountability and responsibility to the public, the state or other
relevant actors in terms of criteria that are valued by these actors (truth,
public good, efficiency); in short, performs its legitimacy.
This idea of performing legitimacy is central to the argument of the chapter
and deserves further scrutiny. What it suggests is that legitimacy is not given, or
established once and for all, but has to be actively constructed. And as others
have demonstrated in the context of professions such as accountants (Sikka and
Willmott 1995) or medical doctors (Hughes 1963), legitimacy is not established
unilaterally but is a relational matter that is open to contest and has to be
continuously reproduced. One way in which legitimacy is performed is by
constructing the figure of the quack or the amateur in ways that invoke their
danger and call for their replacement by ‘professionals’. Taylor’s (1995) analysis
of the construction of ‘amateurism’ in ‘professional’ archaeology is illustrative
here. He suggests that professionalism produces the ‘amateur’, a subject position
which in turn serves to define and legitimize professional identity. What is of
particular significance here is that the ‘amateur’ is not a self-defined position
which ‘trained professionals’ come to supplant in a move towards progress and
rationalization. Rather, professionalism and professional legitimacy rely on the
retrospective construction of the amateur:
Far from amateurism preceding a supplanting professional class, the notion

of ‘the amateur’ as a pre-professional can be considered as part of the
professionals’ self-justification. The process of professionalization, in this
sense, requires the ‘invention’ of amateurism.
(Taylor 1995:504)
Taylor’s account suggests that professionalism is performative in Butler’s (1993,

1994) sense of the term: it has the ‘capacity to bring into being that which it
names’ (Butler 1994:33), to call forth discursive subject positions that have the
appearance of substance, and that certainly have substantial effects in reproducing
its legitimacy For example, calling forth the figure of the amateur, the quack,
the charlatan or the witch, all allegedly practising spurious medicine for dubious
motives, has been a central trope in the professionalization of medicine; these
figures have provided the ‘other’ against which conventional medicine could
establish its legitimacy, respectability and ‘professional status’ (Beier 1981; Saks
1992a; Salmon 1984). However, the amateur or the quack were not positions
pre-dating the rise of a ‘superior’, more scientific ‘professional medicine’; rather
they were produced by the discourse of professionalism deployed by orthodox
medicine, and enrolled in establishing the legitimacy of ‘professional
practitioners’. Indeed, until the early nineteenth century, the practice of what
became ‘orthodox medicine’ was hardly distinguishable from that of ‘folk
medicine’ practised by untrained empirics (Larner 1992; Wright 1992).
Moreover, trained medical doctors suffered from a poor reputation as they were
often seen as a horde of drunkards, randy medical students, gravediggers or
shopkeepers trading drugs (Parssinen 1992). The professionalization of medicine
and the granting of monopoly and status by the state required the establishment
of trust and respectability which was partly gained by conjuring up the figure
of the quack (Saks 1992a) in terms marking his/her danger, and calling for his/
her replacement. For example, Parssinen (1992) illustrates how the introduction
of mesmerism from France to Britain at the time became an easy prey for the
legitimization strategy of medical doctors. Despite the success of mesmerism,
especially in treating nervous disorders and as an anaesthetic, practitioners were
portrayed as an army of dangerous seducers threatening the ‘virgins of the land’,
a disreputable image from which medical doctors could distance themselves to
build their own legitimacy. The figure of the quack is still commonly invoked
in the medical field and remains a powerful resource for professional
legitimization. Thus in the face of the growing popularity of alternative therapies,
the medical profession (with its allies in the pharmaceutical industries (Walker
1995)) has accused these practices of being ‘little more than pre-scientific
quackery’ (BMA 1986). While recently the British Medical Association (BMA)
has become more tolerant (BMA 1993), the figure of the quack still gets invoked
by the medical profession, the public, the government or the media to challenge
the legitimacy of alternative therapies, and denounce them as ‘fraud’. For
example, in 1989 a group composed mainly of medical doctors set the Campaign
Against Health Fraud (familiarly known as ‘Quackbuster’, and later renamed
Health Watch) with the aim of exposing dubious practice in complementary
therapies, and protecting the sick and vulnerable from exploitation by ruthless
quacks (Sharma 1995). But if complementary therapies have been subjected to
accusation of ‘quackery’, they have themselves constructed their own ‘quacks’
and amateurs against which they could establish their legitimacy. As will be
discussed below, the contemporary construction of the ‘history’ of aromatherapy
is articulated around various positions (the ancient sage, the folk practitioner,
the gentleman scientist, through to the modern ‘quack’ and ‘home amateur’)
which serve to evoke a set of conditions, culminating in the ‘danger’ represented
by the modern quack and amateur, against which the ‘professional therapist’
can (and ought to) emerge to protect the public and safeguard the cultural
heritage of aromatherapy.
Before moving to the analysis of professionalism in aromatherapy, I want to
attend to another way in which professional legitimacy can be seen as
‘performative’, this time drawing on Lyotard’s (1984) use of the term.

Performativity here refers to the articulation of knowledge around notions of
efficiency and technical competence. In this sense, performativity (Lyotard 1984)
involves the inscription of knowledge within means-ends calculation, its
alignment with efficiency. This notion of performativity has become increasingly
significant for understanding the way in which professional legitimacy can be
established in what some have described as neo-liberalism (Osborne 1993) or
advanced liberalism (Rose 1993). Rose (1993) for example argues that the
move from ‘welfare liberalism’ to ‘advanced liberalism’ in the last fifty years or
so has involved some important change in the ways the professions are made
accountable. This change has often been articulated in terms of a shift in the
criteria for establishing professional legitimacy: from criteria related to notions
of ‘public good’ or social welfare, to market related criteria such as marketability,
budget control and efficiency (Rose 1993; Power 1997). This notion of
performativity is of particular relevance to the analysis of professionalism in
health care groups, such as aromatherapy, operating mainly in the private market.
As I have already alluded, ‘management’ was central to the way professional
competence was defined in the NVQ, course; it was our ability to run a
‘commercially viable’ practice that would distinguish us, ‘the professionals’,
from the unscrupulous quack or the naive amateur. As will be illustrated below,
‘sound commercialism’ was taken as a measure of our responsible professional
conduct and was legitimized by being distinguished from the excess of the
profit motive (impersonated in the figure of the ‘quack’) and ‘naive altruism’
(impersonated in the figure of the ‘home amateur’).
The market and organization of aromatherapy

Within the field, aromatherapy is defined as ‘the controlled use of essential oils
to maintain good health and revitalise the body, mind and spirit’ (Price
1998:119). Although there are minor variations on this definition, there is a
common emphasis on the ‘controlled use’ of essential oils for their therapeutic
properties on a range of physical and psychological conditions, through various
forms of application (massage, self-application, inhalation, compress, bath, and
more controversially ingestion) (Ryman 1991; Tisserand 1994; Westwood 1991;
Worwood 1990). This ‘internal’ definition, however, contrasts with the
institutional location of aromatherapy in contemporary Britain and its popular
association with beauty therapy and massage (Price 1998). Price notes that in
Britain, aromatherapy was popularized by beauty therapists rather than by the
medical profession (as, for example, in France where it can only be practised
by medically qualified doctors). Beauty therapists are usually qualified in massage
techniques, but are barred from treating ‘medical conditions’ by their code of
ethics. As a result, aromatherapy in Britain has tended to be associated with
‘a massage with scented oils’ to relieve stress and improve skin conditions (Price
1998:8). The tension between the definition of aromatherapy around the
therapeutic properties of essential oils, and its institutional location in the beauty
industry makes the positioning of aromatherapy in the field of health problematic,

an issue which will be discussed later.
Aromatherapy is one of an increasing number of alternative therapies (the
British Complementary Medical Association represented over thirty in 1999)
which have enjoyed growing popularity in recent years (Burne 2000; Cant and
Sharma 1999; Donelly 1994; Fulder 1988; Keulartz et al. 1995; Saks 1992a).
What forms the commonality of the many different therapies usually included
under the ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ labels2 is not their shared content or
approach to health but their institutional position vis-à-vis orthodox medicine,
their socio-political positioning on the margins (Saks 1992a). The alliance between
the state and what has become ‘orthodox medicine’, established through various
acts such as the 1858 Medical Act and the 1948 NHS Act, has given orthodox
medicine a quasi-monopoly over the health market but has never totally eliminated
alternative systems which have continued to exist on the margins, essentially
through the demand of the private market (Sharma 1995). And it is their position
in the market that has allowed them to flourish in recent year (Sharma 1995).3
Various economic, political and social factors have conflated in creating the
conditions for the alternative health market to thrive. Radical social movements
and New Right ideology have colluded in opening up a space for alternative
therapies by challenging the authority (and cost) of the medical profession and
‘empowering’ clients to take a more active role in the pursuit of their own health
(Keulartz et al. 1995; Saks 1992a). For example, alternative therapies have been
closely aligned with radical feminist agendas through the creation of self-help
health groups seeking to reclaim women’s bodies from the male medical gaze
(for example, Ehrenreich and English 1979; Phillips and Rakusen 1989; Vincent
1992). And indeed, the ‘alternative health market’ seems to be dominated by
women, both on the patients and practitioners’ side (Sharma 1995), although
this may be due to other forces than that of radical feminism (such as that of
‘healthism’ and the body beautiful; Keulartz et al. 1995). The increasing demand
for alternative therapies can also be explained by changing patterns of illnesses
and the inefficacy of orthodox medicine in the face of ‘modern diseases’ (Berliner
1984; Keulartz et al. 1995; Sharma 1995). In addition, there have been growing
concerns about the iatrogenic effects of scientific medicine’s ‘heroic practice’ (i.e.
use of drugs and intrusive technologies) and its impersonal treatment of ‘patients’
(Keulartz et al. 1995; Sharma 1995).
It is against this background of increased popularity that complementary
therapies have sought (through the innumerable ‘bodies’ claiming to represent
them), and have been urged by consumer associations, the state and the
medical profession, to ‘get their acts together’ (Sharma 1995). This call for
discipline has tended to be articulated around professionalization. Increasingly,
complementary therapies are making claims to professionalism, although to
different degrees, by pointing to the greater length, formalization and
standardization of their training, to the codes of ethics regulating the conduct
of their members, or to their registration systems for ‘accredited’ therapists
(Deverell and Sharma 2000; Sharma 1995).
Professionalization has taken place at both the general level of complementary

medicine through pan-professional bodies and within each individual therapy. At
a general level, complementary medicine is represented by various (competing)
bodies with partly over-lapping, partly conflicting objectives, jurisdiction and
constituency (see, for example, Cant and Sharma (1999) and Sharma (1995) for
an overview of the conflicting relationships between the various pan-professional
bodies). As with many other alternative therapies, aromatherapy is itself ‘regulated’
by a number of competing professional bodies, some also acting as training
institutions, accreditation bodies and essential oil suppliers. For example, two of
the ‘veterans’ of aromatherapy in Britain, Shirley Price and Robert Tisserand,
who have written books often taken as ‘references’ in the field (Price 1998; Tisserand
1994), are suppliers of aromatherapy oils and products, and each has their own
(private) training schools, qualifications, professional associations for alumni and
registration systems. These professional associations-cum-training schools belong
to the Aromatherapy Organizations Council (AOC), ‘the governing body for the
aromatherapy profession in the UK’, founded in 1991 with the aim to establish
common standards of training, raise public awareness about aromatherapy and
act as a ‘public watchdog’ (AOC 1999).4 Running parallel to (but also partly
overlapping with) these various private training/professional institutes is a system
of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) offered mainly at Colleges of Further
Education and awarded by the Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT),
‘the largest Awarding Body in the UK for Aromatherapy, Reflexology and Body
Massage’ (International Therapist 2000:8). On qualifying, NVQ students can become
members of the Federation of Holistic Therapists, which again runs as a professional
association with a code of ethics, a journal (the International Therapist, ‘the magazine
for real professionals’), and a system of insurance services for members.
A history of amateurism in aromatherapy: from

ancient wisdom to modern quackery
Tracing the use of essential oils to times immemorial seems to be an obligatory
move in the teaching of aromatherapy (Price 1998; Ryman 1991; Tisserand 1994;
Westwood 1991; Worwood 1990). This ‘history’ follows a certain narrative
structure articulated around several periods, each with its own version of the
amateur or quack: the ancient sage, the folk practitioner, the gentleman scientist
and the more condemnable modern quack and home amateur. These different
images performed in the ‘history’ of aromatherapy constitute a set of positions
and conditions, culminating in the sense of crisis embodied by the contemporary
‘mass’ amateur and quack, against which professional practice is defined and
legitimized.
The ancient sage and the folk practitioner

Aromatherapy books tend to mobilise centuries of knowledge and traditions by
tracing the use of aromatic substance back to ‘ancient times’ (Price 1998; Ryman
1991; Tisserand 1994; Westwood 1991; Worwood 1990). The ancient-ness of

aromatherapy is symbolized by terms such as ‘the mists of time’ (Price 1998), or
‘the timeless apothecary’ (Worwood 1990), and by reference to its ‘common
usage’ for religious, cosmetic or medical purpose in various ancient civilizations
(the Egyptians rank as favourite as their use of aromatic oils in mummification
can be mobilized to illustrate the ‘efficacy’ of the practice). The long-established
practice of what became ‘aromatherapy’ (the term was only coined in the early
twentieth century) is also conjured up by quoting from ‘the great work’ of herbalists
from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Ryman 1991; Tisserand 1994), and
by attaching the use of aromatic essence to various historical episodes and events
such as plague epidemics or the Crusades. Another common trope in these
‘histories’ is to enrol the ancestors of medicine. For example, Hippocrates, whom
we are reminded is the ‘founding father of medicine’, is an obligatory reference
and is said to have advocated the practice of aromatic bath and massage for
health (Price 1998; Ryman 1991; Worwood 1990). The mobilization of medical
figures in the history of aromatherapy suggests that the use of plant essences was
until recently the staple of ‘medicine’. To quote Price (1998:7); ‘By 1700 essential
oils were widely used in mainstream medicine until the science of chemistry
allowed the synthesis of material in the laboratory’.
By weaving together images of folk practice, in which the use of essence is
attached to various aspects of everyday life, and messages from the ‘founding
fathers of medicine’, these histories serve to blur the distinction between cosmetics,
perfumery, religion and medicine:
During the 1,500 years following the eighteenth dynasty, the Egyptians
perfected their knowledge of the medical properties of aromatics, of
perfumery, and of the making of scented unguents and oils. There was not
always a clear distinction between medicines and perfumes, and one item
often served both purposes.
(Tisserand 1994:22)
This early history of the use of aromatic oils serves an important legitimizing
function; not only does this long heritage suggest that aromatherapy has passed
the ‘test of time’ (Price 1998; Tisserand 1994), but it also inscribes aromatherapy
within the field of medicine.
The rise of the gentleman scientist

This happy co-existence of folk practice and ‘medicine’ through the ‘mists of
time’ takes a scientific turn during the Industrial Revolution. Although the
‘history’ of aromatherapy seems remarkably silent about the nineteenth century
(a time when ‘scientific or orthodox medicine’ emerges as a distinctive from the
practice of ‘folk medicine’), it reappears in the early twentieth century through
the figures of a few scientists—all ‘doctors’ or ‘chemists’ who ‘began seriously to
investigate and research the healing properties of essential oils’ (Price 1998:8).
Gattéfossé, a French chemist, is usually presented as the first of these scientific

pioneers. Here it is worth quoting the following passage at length, for it appears,
in very similar terms, in many aromatherapy books (Price 1998; Ryman 1991;
Tisserand 1994; Westwood 1991):
The scientific study of the therapeutic properties of essential oils was started
by the French cosmetic chemist, René-Maurice Gattéfossé, in the 1920s.
While making fragrances one day in his laboratory, Gattéfossé burnt his
arm very badly and thrust it into the nearest cold liquid—which happened
to be a tub of lavender oil. He was surprised to find that the pain lessened
considerably and that, far from developing into a normal burn reaction of
redness, heat, inflammation and blisters, his wound healed very quickly
and left no scar. From then on, Gattéfossé dedicated the rest of his life to
researching the remarkable healing properties of nature’s essential oils.
(Worwood, 1990:10)
What is interesting about this commonly deployed anecdote is its performance of

the respectability and legitimacy of aromatherapy by attaching it to the figure of
the ‘gentleman scientist’, a common trope in the history of the professions (Haber
1991; Weber 1987). First, we are told that Gattéfossé was not any quack but a
‘chemist’ engaged in ‘scientific studies’. Second, he was in a position to suddenly
‘dedicate his life’ to the study of oils; thus presumably Gattéfossé was a man of
independent means, or at least was unhampered by the need to make money for
a living. In these depictions, Gattéfossé is positioned as the ‘gentleman scientist’
driven by the disinterested calling of science, rather than commercial interests.
This gentrification of aromatherapy is performed by unleashing a few other
‘pioneers of the scientific development of aromatherapy’, mostly French and Italian
doctors, all running ‘clinical trials’ to demonstrate the ‘therapeutic properties’ of
certain oils on medical and psychological conditions (Price 1998; Tisserand 1994).
The deployment of these gentleman scientists not only signifies the respectability
of aromatherapy, but also serves to attach it to medical science.
From the gentleman scientist to the mass

The final important turn in the ‘history’ of aromatherapy is its popularization
from the 1980s and 1990s. The account of the opening up of aromatherapy to
the ‘mass’ draws upon a re-articulation of the amateur, no longer the respectable
gentleman devoting his life to the calling of research, but part of an ignorant or
unscrupulous mass bringing danger and disrepute to the practice. In particular,
danger is signified by conjuring up the unscrupulous supplier or practitioner,
driven by profit motives, and the naive ‘home amateur’, driven by altruism, two
positions which I refer to here as ‘the quack’ and the ‘amateur’, respectively.
The popularization of aromatherapy in the last decade or so is harnessed to
signal, and warn against, several conditions that makes aromatherapy potentially
dangerous and therefore best left in the hands of the professional practitioner.
The increasing popularity of aromatherapy has created a mass market for essential
oils attracting the ‘unscrupulous’ suppliers. Adulterated, fake or ‘second rate’ oils
are said to abound (Ryman 1991; Price 1998; Worwood 1990), and this
‘proliferation’ of ‘aroma’ products is condemned as being both confusing and
dangerous (Price 1998). Indeed, the availability of (potentially toxic) oils to the
undiscriminating mass through untrained shop assistants was often called upon
as a scandalous practice in the NVQ course. Oils should only be made available
to the public through the expert judgement (or ‘expert nose’; Ryman 1991:30) of
the aromatherapist, grounded in the knowledge of their chemical components,
botanical names, therapeutic effects, toxicity, contra-indications and potential
harmful effects (Price 1998).
The popularization of aromatherapy has also led to a proliferation of short
courses and popular books, all available to the lay person who may then set up as
an aromatherapy practitioner:
Many people attend a one or two day ‘course’ in aromatherapy to enable

them to help themselves at home. The danger is that some begin to offer
advice. As a result, those receiving such unqualified advice may not benefit
as expected and may come away thinking aromatherapy is a load of rubbish,
or even dangerous!…it is important that such people do not step beyond
their sphere of knowledge and offer a general service to the public.
(Price 1998:257)
These untrained or poorly trained therapists are impersonated in the figure of

the ‘home amateur’ driven by altruistic motives, or the ‘quack’ motivated by
lucrative prospects. As Sharma (1995) notes in her study of complementary
therapists, the ‘home amateur’ driven by altruistic values and enthusiasm is held
in equal contempt as the unscrupulous quack driven by profit motives by the
professional practitioners. Both symbolize danger. Indeed, aromatherapy writers
(as well as our teacher and various guest speakers on the NVQ, course) all seem
to have at their disposal a vast repertoire of anecdotes to impress the ‘danger’ of
amateurism upon students and readers.
These stories of the danger of essential oils in the hands of the untrained,
however well intended, perform a number of functions. First, they signal the
potency of oils, and the ‘seriousness’ of aromatherapy (as discussed later, this is
important in negotiating a place for aromatherapy in the field of ‘medicine’ rather
than ‘pampering and beauty’). Second, the embodiment of ‘danger’ in the figure
of the unscrupulous quack or naive home amateur also serves to detach accusation
of harmful practice, misuse and abuse from aromatherapy itself. As Price (1998)
insists, in response to stories of harmful effects or obsession with ‘toxicity’ in the
media, what is dangerous is not aromatherapy itself (which she continuously
reminds the reader is ‘the controlled use of oils’), but its abuse and misuse in the
wrong hands; thus ‘…even the “forbidden oils” are beneficial to the health when
used in the correct dilution, in the right hands and in the right circumstances’
(Price 1998:127). Third, this emphasis on ‘correct use’ and ‘the right hands’
serves to ground aromatherapy, or at least its proper practice, in a body of

‘knowledge’. Thus in the NVQ course, knowledge of the therapeutic properties
of oils, of their centra-indications, chemical composition, toxicity, methods of
extraction, provenance, proper dosage, as well as of botanies and anatomy, was
deemed essential to the responsible practice of aromatherapy.
Thus invoking the figure of the quack and the amateur serves an important
function in conjuring up the danger and seriousness of aromatherapy, and in
performing the legitimacy of the professional practitioner. Here it is important to
note that the amateur and the quack do not need to exist, at least in the terms in
which they are imagined, to perform their legitimizing function, and, indeed,
Sharma’s (1995) study suggests that they may well be mythical figures.
As suggested earlier in the chapter, the amateur is not a self-defined, pre-existing
position but is actively constructed by professional discourse. To end this section, I
would like to explore briefly some of the work of positioning that goes into performing
the amateur and the quack as dangerous, and therefore best replaced by the
‘responsible professional’. Of particular relevance here is the inscription of the
amateur and the quack in the ‘mass’, the populace, bringing corruption to the
heritage of aromatherapy. The articulation of a sense of crisis, threatening the ‘purity’
of a practice is a common motif in the culture of the professions (Bledstein 1976)
and one which also finds expression in aromatherapy writing:
Sadly, in the ten years or so that aromatherapy has regained popularity in

Britain…the therapy’s true origins and values have been eroded. Anyone
can now take a brief course, or invest a few thousands pounds in oils and
set up as an aromatherapist. This is an appalling situation showing a
disrespect for the therapy and is an insult to those who want to believe in
its efficacy…Aromatherapy was once a proper therapy because the oils
were pure and natural essential oils, having been water distilled…Through
the demands of commerce though, many distillers are now using volatile
solvents rather than water to extract the oils…Many inexperienced therapists
do use these oils, not questioning or caring about the method of extraction
and the purity of oil.
(Ryman 1991:29)
In aromatherapy, as in other professions (Robbins 1992), this sense of crisis is

performed by invoking the threat of populism. What ‘was once a proper therapy’
is in danger of degenerating into ‘commerce’ as the mass (‘anyone’) are let loose
in its field. If the amateur scientist of the early twentieth century was represented
as being driven by the noble motives and calling befitting a ‘gentleman’, the
contemporary quack and home amateur seem to lack such social credentials.
Although the social class or gender of ‘quacks’ is not alluded to, the fact that they
are (imagined as being) attracted by ‘commerce’ rather than the more noble service
ideal turn them into impersonators of the base motives of the ‘mass’. As for the
‘home amateurs’, they may be middle class (especially if they provide their services
for free) but in the anecdotes belittling the enthusiastic amateurs related in the
class or in books, they are imagined as female. The use of gender position to
demean the home amateur is also as illustrated by the following quote from a
complementary therapist in Sharma’s (1992) study:
I am very much against alternative practitioners who are housewives [sic]

gone on a six-week course or weekend course and start to practice
hypnotherapy, reflexology or whatever. I think they are positively dangerous
and I am really set against them. Herbalists—you know, you get these
housewives who say they are herbalists, patients come in and they haven’t
got a clue.
(Male osteopath, quoted in Sharma 1992:173)
Social divisions such as class and gender get enrolled in the construction of the
amateur and the quack in terms that ridicule them, and call for their replacement
(Taylor 1995). The articulation of ‘professionalism’ and its positioning in relation
to the amateur and the quack serve to index the responsibility of the professional
therapist. The following two sections explore how these positions are deployed in
negotiating aromatherapy’s place in the market, and in relation to orthodox
medicine.
Commercialism and re-enchantment

The distancing from the market through the appeal to the ‘service ideal’ is central
to the self-definition the professions (Weber 1987),5 but is problematic for
alternative therapists relying on the ‘market’ for clients (Sharma 1995). Alternative
therapists may seek to distance themselves from base profit motives by invoking
the figure of the quack, ‘in it for a quick buck’, or stressing their commitment to
(alternative) values such as holism (Sharma 1995); but it remains that they have
to deploy commercial skills to survive in the market, and to charge an unregulated
fee for a service which is itself only loosely regulated. In what follows I argue that
the idea of professionalism, and its distinction from the practice of the naive
amateur or unscrupulous quack, is deployed to legitimize the taking of payment.
In particular, the naive altruism of the home amateur is enrolled as a measure of
irresponsibility against which charging a fee (commensurate with the ‘professional
standing’ of the therapist) becomes an index of professional competence and
responsibility.
In the NVQ, course, not charging a fee, or charging too little, for our services
was strongly condemned as ‘unprofessional’ and bringing disrepute to the name
of aromatherapy. Similar messages are repeated in the ‘business columns’ of
professional journals such as the International Therapist or the Journal of
Complementary and Alternative Therapies. The representational work on which such
argument relies is most forcibly illustrated by the image of the ‘bob-a-job’
therapist invoked in a letter to the editor of the International Therapist. In this
letter, the contributor suggests that the Federation of Holistic Therapies set
minimum fees for treatments, to be respected by all members, in order to stop
the ‘bob-a-job therapists’ charging ‘ridiculously low fees’ and damaging the
professions (or becoming ‘social/professionally destructive parasite’) (International
Therapist 1999:21). In these arguments, the unchecked altruism of the amateur
is presented as being as damaging as the profit motives of the unscrupulous
quack; and both are contrasted to the commercial discipline of the professional.
Amateur altruism, or at least not charging a fee high enough, is translated into
naïveté and irresponsibility, against which ‘proper’ practitioners can hook their
own responsible conduct. In particular, it is by appealing to ‘reality’ that the
‘free or cheap service of the amateur’ can be translated into irresponsible conduct,
and that professional discipline and responsibility can emerge. The importance
of being attached to ‘reality’ is illustrated with the following extract from the
regular column on management and financial advice (‘Tom’s Tips’) in the Journal
of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (JACM): ‘It goes against the grain for
most healing professionals to ask for payment for service rendered. But the
reality is you are either running a business or you are running a charity’ (JACM
1989:42, quoted in Sharma 1992:135).
Enrolling ‘reality’ to signal the responsibility of the professional and the naïveté
of the ‘amateur’ is another common trope in the culture of professionalism (Robbins
1992). For example, middle-class professional archaeologists invoked the
‘aristocratic roots’ of their ‘amateur’ counterparts to symbolize the latter’s
disconnection from the reality of the modern world (Taylor 1995). In the case of
aromatherapy, or holistic therapies, calling upon the ‘reality of business’ serves to
undermine the legitimacy of those who are reluctant to charge (enough) for their
treatment by translating their altruistic motives into naïveté.
The above quote from ‘Tom’s Tips’ does not only legitimize commercial
practices by appealing to ‘reality’, but also serves to represent holistic therapists
as essentially driven by altruism, and only reluctantly subjecting themselves to
the ‘discipline of business’. A similar move was deployed in the NVQ,course to
both conjure up and reconcile the ‘paradox’ between asking for payment and
practising ‘holistic care’. Thus we were addressed as if we were motivated by
altruistic concerns and would be unwilling to charge a fee for our service.6 However,
charging a fee was presented as a mechanism of self-discipline, a practice that we
owed to ourselves, our professions and ultimately our clients, whilst not charging
an appropriate fee would damage the name of aromatherapy. Similar arguments
were made in relation to the effective use of time and resources. Indeed,
performativity, in Lyotard’s (1984) sense, is central to the definition of professional
competence in the NVQ, framework and is articulated around various
performance indicators.7
However, performativity, sanctioned by the ideal of professionalism, is also
mitigated by the emphasis placed on self-regulation which ensures that the ‘true
values and origins’ of aromatherapy are respected and passed on to the public. In
the absence of state regulation, ‘professional therapists’ have to discipline
themselves by choosing to respect the codes of ethics and standards of conduct
issued by professional bodies. For example, the handout we were given on the
‘Industry Code of Practice’ in the course read:
Although the Code of Practice is not legally enforceable, it is highly recommended

that we abide by it. There are several reasons for this:
• We have a duty to ourselves, our profession and our clients to keep good
hygiene standards.
• Respecting the Code of Practice helps building public confidence and respect
from other professions. In the long term it will help the professional
development and reputation of aromatherapy.
Here the professional discipline of ‘client care’, indexed by various non-

enforceable codes, is presented as more than just the mechanistic operation of
rules; it calls upon one’s sense of moral duty. Indeed, it is the very voluntary
nature of discipline that serves to perform the professional therapist as motivated
by something grander than the pursuit of commercial interests. As others have
noted, the emphasis on self-discipline is central in establishing the professions’
disinterest and the legitimacy of their project (Osborne 1993; Robbins 1992).
It is by invoking self-imposed discipline that the professions can perform their
‘higher calling’, and can demonstrate that they are professing in the name of
something beyond their own interests (Foucault 1989). In the case of
aromatherapy this higher calling is performed by reference to the value of holism,
the appreciation for the ‘vibrant’ energy’ (Price 1998) or ‘life force’ (Tisserand
1994) of essential oils, or, as was highlighted in the previous section, the respect
for ancient wisdom and traditions. Thus, self-discipline is not just about adopting
sound commercial practices but is also about a commitment to values for it is
to better ‘re-enchant’, to borrow an expression from Robbins’s (1992) discussion
of the culture of the professions.
As suggested earlier, nostalgia (for the cultural heritage of aromatherapy) and
crisis (the erosion of aromatherapy’s true values and origins) are common elements
in the ‘history of aromatherapy’. This sense of crisis is not only signalled by the
figures of the quack and the home amateur threatening to corrupt the practice,
but also by invoking more generally a world which has become dominated by
the cold rationality of science and commerce (Price 1998; Ryman 1991; Tisserand
1994). Thus many aromatherapy books make some reference to the drive of
money and science (including medical science), and its fateful effects on modern
lives, in a way reminiscent of Weberian pessimism:
We have arrived at a point where money, power and scientific fact have
become ends in themselves, instead of being means to bring about a more
comfortable, peaceful and happy life…As doctors increase their knowledge
of disease so disease become more tenacious and widespread. As new drugs
are formulated and marketed, the harm done by such drugs increases
proportionally…We went too far in one direction, and we are just beginning
to redress the balance.
(Tisserand 1994:6)
This sense of crisis provides the background against which the ‘disciplined’
professional can emerge as bringing the values of aromatherapy from distant
civilisations to a disenchanted modern world. By drawing together images of the
ancient past of aromatherapy, its spiritual and holistic use, the colonizing effects
of science and commerce, and the degenerating effects of the mass, the narrative
of professionalism serves to represent ‘disciplined’ aromatherapy as reenchanting
a world which has lost its sense of values.
Positioning aromatherapy in relation to orthodox

medicine: health and ‘pampering ’
Although this may seem at odd with the disparaging view of scientific medicine
expressed in the above quote from Tisserand (a point to which I return shortly),
all books in the field stress that aromatherapy is not to replace the service of the
medical practitioner (Price 1998; Ryman 1991; Tisserand 1994; Worwood 1990).
For example, only two pages after launching his attack on ‘doctors’, Tisserand
(1994:8) warns that ‘anyone who is seriously ill should consult a medical
practitioner’. In the NVQ, course, professional conduct certainly seemed to involve
knowing one’s subordinate position in relation to orthodox medicine, and this
relationship of deference was performed by the insistence on checking
contraindications, and seeking ‘GP’s consent’ when clients were found to suffer
from certain conditions. Aromatherapy, we were told, was not to be considered
as ‘alternative’ but as ‘complementary’ to conventional medicine. This deference
to medicine is clearly inscribed in professional conduct through its explicit
articulation in the code of ethics (of the Federation for Holistic Therapists):
A member will not treat any person who to that member’s knowledge is at
the time under the care of a medical practitioner for a condition likely to be
affected by the treatment, without the knowledge and consent of that
practitioner…All duly constituted medical and medical auxiliary bodies shall
be respected, and endeavours made to merit the esteem of medical and medical
auxiliary practitioners with whom the member may come into contact.
If this relationship of subordination is marked by the articulation of ‘professional

conduct’ around due respect for orthodox medicine, it is also performed through
the demarcation of the field of aromatherapy in relation to health. As suggested
earlier, invoking the figure of the quack and the amateur, this time on the part of
orthodox medicine, has played an important role in pushing alternative therapies
out of the field of health, or at least to its margins. More recently, the medical
profession has expressed its tolerance of the ‘caring’ aspect of complementary
therapies, as long as they confine themselves to clearly defined areas of competence,
and abandon more ambitious claims about the ‘alternative’ approach to health
(Cant and Sharma 1995; Saks 1992a). For example, orthodox medicine came to
‘tolerate’ acupuncture by translating it into an effective treatment for acute pain
(practised under ‘medical supervision’) rather than as an alternative system of
health embedded in the philosophy of Chinese medicine (Saks 1992b). Similarly,

the professionalization of homeopathy has involved the identification of the
conditions for which it is deemed most effective (Cant and Sharma 1995).
We see a similar process with aromatherapy which is portrayed by the medical
profession (and to some extent portrays itself) as specializing in the provision of
comfort through the power of touch:
Physical contact plays an important part in human communication. Parents

‘kiss away the pain’ of the injured children...A particular example of the
use of deliberate techniques of this kind is given by aromatherapy, which
seems almost entirely to be based on the caring, reassuring and pleasing
effects of touch.
(British Medical Association 1986; reproduced in Saks 1992a:230)
By juxtaposing it with ‘kissing away the pain’, the BMA portrays aromatherapy
as a well-meaning but effectively marginal ‘health’ practice. Any serious claim
that aromatherapy may have over medicine is undermined by its association
with the ‘caring, reassuring and pleasing effects of touch’ (rather than with the
therapeutic properties of essential oils foregrounded by aromatherapist writers).
Aromatherapy emerges as being closer to ‘pampering’ than to the field of disease
and health which remains the preserve of medical doctors. As mentioned earlier,
the definition of the field of aromatherapy as lying outside the domain of
medicine is reinforced by its institutional location in the beauty industry in Britain
(Price 1998). This emphasis on beauty is reproduced to some extent by the
introduction of a special chapter on ‘skincare’ in some aromatherapy books
(Tisserand 1994; Worwood 1990). And in the NVQ course, there certainly was
an emphasis on the relaxing and ‘pampering’ effects of aromatherapy through
massage.
However the positioning of complementary therapies is far more ambivalent
than is suggested by this deference to orthodox medicine, or self-confinement to
the areas granted by medicine discussed so far. Thus the association of
aromatherapy with stress and ‘pampering’ can easily be translated into the more
serious concern of health maintenance. In response to a call published in the
pages of the International Therapist urging complementary therapists to concern
themselves with problems more serious than mere ‘pampering’, an aromatherapist
re-positioned ‘pampering’ as central to health:
As an aromatherapist I have helped clients with a variety of medical

conditions as well as those feeling stressed and in need of a treat…Today’s
climate sees stress ever increasing and the need to relax is paramount to
promote good health and prevent stress leading to more serious physical
illnesses. Yes, we are pampering our clients, but while providing a valuable
contribution to the client’s welfare as a whole…I shall certainly not be
removing the word ‘pampered’ from my vocabulary as a therapist.
(International Therapist 2000:20)
Furthermore, as suggested earlier, enrolling the ‘founding fathers of medicine’

and ‘modern scientists’ in the ‘long history’ of the practice positions aromatherapy
as having a firm hold over the field of health. This position in ‘health’ is something
that many aromatherapy writers are at pain to establish. Thus, by defining
aromatherapy in terms of the ‘controlled use of oils’ (with or without the touch of
massage), writers in the field try to distance the practice from the emphasis on the
‘pleasing effects of touch’ to which the BMA report above confines it. Indeed,
Price (1998:255) exclaims that ‘the definition of aromatherapy is assumed by
most people to be “a massage with essential oils”. It would be a little strong to say
that nothing could be further from the truth, but this definition is only one-fifth
of the story’. Price (1998), as many other writers in the field, proceeds to describe
the many forms of application of essential oils (‘inhalation, bath, compresses, self-
application and massage’; 1988:255), and through the obligatory ‘therapeutic
index’ lists the wide range of ‘medical’ conditions for which they can be used (for
example, the therapeutic cross-reference used on the NVQ, course—modelled on
Price, 1998—lists the conditions to be treated under the following headings:
‘circulation, muscular system, joints, digestion, genito-urinary system, nervous
system, skin, respiratory system, head’).
Finally, aromatherapy’s claim over the field of health is also legitimized by
invoking the iatrogenic effects of orthodox medicine as well as the various
conditions over which it has had little success or interest (Price 1998; Ryman
1991; Tisserand 1994). For example, ‘women’s problems’ are often flagged up as
one particular domain in which orthodox medicine has been ineffective but where
aromatherapy can be used to great effects (Price 1998; Worwood 1990).
Furthermore, as illustrated with a quote from Tisserand (1994) earlier,
aromatherapy writers never miss an opportunity to stress the limits of orthodox
medicine by pointing to its devastating effects:
A great number of people in hospital are there because of the side effects of
the drugs they have been given—not because of the original condition. There
have been more deaths as a result of the action of medical drugs than there
have been people even slightly ill as a result of using essential oils.
(Price 1998:123)
These representations of the scientific and technological excess of orthodox

medicine are enrolled to call for a return to ‘soft medicine’, to holistic and natural
approaches to health, including aromatherapy. Thus aromatherapy may be
complementary to ‘medicine’ but the domain of its complementary is made
expandable by invoking the limits of orthodox medicine, and the loss of public
support for its intrusive and damaging technologies (Price 1998; Tisserand 1994).
Conclusion
This chapter has illustrated how the idea of professionalism acts as a resource in
performing the legitimacy of a marginal health practice, and has suggested that
‘professionalism’ does its work of legitimation by conjuring up the figures of the

quack and the amateur in terms calling for their replacement. The ‘amateur’
proves to be a flexible resource for professionalism and serves to mark different
positions as it is re-imagined throughout history and mapped over different social
divisions. Thus the shifting representations of the amateur are made to symbolize
the ancient-ness of aromatherapy, its higher calling and commitment to values,
and its imminent corruption in the hands of the modern quack or ‘home amateur’.
It is against these various positions that ‘professional identity’ is constituted, and
legitimized to the public and the medical profession. The professional practitioner
is performed as the embodiment of responsible conduct, protecting the public
and the heritage of aromatherapy against the irresponsibility (naïveté or
unscrupulousness) of the modern amateur and the quack.
However, professional discipline proves to be a resource that is deployed to
ambivalent effects. It may perform legitimacy (to the public, the media, the state,
the medical profession), but at a cost. While the idea of professionalism is deployed
to manage the problematic position of alternative therapies on the market by
signalling its higher calling, it remains that to secure a place in the market at all,
they have to present their ‘calling’ very carefully. Professionalism may be deployed
to signal commitment to values rather than mere commercial interests, but these
have to be values that ‘sell’, or provide entry to the health market. Professionalism
is about performing legitimacy to relevant actors in terms they deem acceptable;
and for aromatherapy, this means performing acceptability to the medical
profession. Professionalism plays an ambiguous role in positioning alternative
therapies, marking on the one hand their commitment to values (and saving
them from accusation of rampant commercialism), and on the other hand their
responsibility to the public in terms sanctioned by orthodox medicine.
Thus the articulation of professional identity in alternative therapies involves
knowing one’s subordinate position to orthodox medicine, and confining one’s
practice to specialized (and marginal) areas granted by orthodox medicine, such
as stress, massage, skin and maybe ‘women’s problems’ in the case of aromatherapy.
Cant and Sharma (1995) draw a similar conclusion by suggesting that the pursuit
of legitimacy in homeopathy, articulated around professionalization, has
undermined the oppositional or alternative values of the practice (in particular its
emphasis on holism) by involving the delineation of an area of specialist
competence. The legitimacy granted by professionalism relies on the delineation
of a particular sphere of competence, for the profession’s right to profess is based
on their expertise ‘in something’. By establishing a domain of competence,
professionalism also marks the boundaries beyond which the professional
practitioner is not to venture. Unlike the amateurs who may choose to wander at
leisure, following their ‘calling’, professionals have to agree to their own
sequestration, they have to trade independence for legitimacy, to discipline
themselves in the name of those to whom they claim to profess (Foucault 1989).
Thus the professions stand open to common accusations of ‘political self-betrayal’
(Robbins 1992:3), selling out their ideal for recognition, status or a living. My
experience of aromatherapy resonates to a large extent with these narratives of
de-radicalization. Although I did not expect to find a hotbed of radical fervour in

a (NVQ) course on aromatherapy, nor did I expect such tameness, such deference
to orthodox medicine or insistence on the discipline of sound commercialism.
However, as Robbins (1992) argues, professionalism may have more ambivalent
effects than envisaged in the ‘selling out’ scenario; at least there is no reason to
believe that this scenario captures everything there is about professionalism. Thus
professionalism may well serve self-interests (such as securing a place on the
health market) and involve the taming of oppositional or alternative values;
however, this is not to say that it does not have other effects, or serve other
purposes, or that it has to abandon all claim to alternative values. In the context
of alternative therapies, it is partly their position as ‘alternative’ to orthodox
medicine which has accounted for their popularity and established their legitimacy,
at least in the eye of (some of) the public. And this leads me to a final point;
professionalism may be about establishing legitimacy, but to a constituency which
is divided (orthodox medicine, media, the state, the public, none of which are
themselves monolithic entities) and may not share similar concerns, values and
interests. These divisions and plurality of interests may place a check against
professional practitioners ‘selling out’ to the highest bidder.
Notes
1 The National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) were introduced in the UK in the
mid-1980s in an attempt to harmonize and promote post-16 education. NVQs are
competence based qualifications and have been developed for a wide range of
occupations, in consultation with industry led bodies. NVQs are awarded for five
different levels of ‘competence’ (NVQ 1 to NVQ 5), from basic standard to ‘higher
professional level’, with Level 3 being seen as the equivalent of ‘A level’ qualification,
Level 4 of Degree qualification, and Level 5 of post-graduate Qualification (see
Harrison (1992) for a broad overview of the NVQ system in the UK). Within the
field of complementary therapies, there are NVQs in aromatherapy, reflexology
and body massage, and plans to expand NVQs to other therapies such as shiatsu
and reiki. At present the highest NVQ that can be achieved in these therapies is at
Level 3. Although there are degree qualifications in some of the best established
‘alternative therapies’ (in the UK) such as homeopathy and osteopathy, there is no
degree qualification or post-graduate qualification in aromatherapy. In addition to
the NVQ system there is a proliferation of ‘Certificates’ and ‘Diplomas’ in
aromatherapy offered by private schools and awarded by the various bodies claiming
to represent the profession.
2 In this chapter, I use the term ‘complementary’ and ‘alternative’ interchangeably,
recognizing that this is a controversial issue and that the terms can be used to index
different types of relations to orthodox medicine (Cant and Sharma 1995; Saks 1992a;
Sharma 1995). I certainly do not want to diminish the significance of this debate,
and indeed will return to the issue later in the chapter. However, it is not within the
scope of this chapter to adjudicate on the use of labels or on the proper position of
complementary/alternative medicine in relation to the medical profession. What is
more important for the purpose of the chapter is to note that first, the complementary/
alternative field is highly divided and encompasses a wide range of practices from
the more established and prestigious (such as osteopathy or homeopathy) to those at
the margins such as aromatherapy, reflexology and more recently in Britain reiki or
shiatsu for example. Second, what makes these different therapies complementary/
alternative is their subordinate relationship to orthodox medicine. Third, what
constitutes the alternative/complementary field is not immutably fixed but is
historically and culturally contingent (Larner 1992). Thus as discussed earlier, what
became ‘orthodox medicine’ was intimately related to other practices (which became
‘alternative’), whilst some ‘alternative therapies’ such as ‘osteopathy’ are becoming
part of the ‘orthodoxy’ (Saks 1992a).
3 Alternative therapies can be provided under the NHS on GP’s referral, however this
is a small—if growing—part of the alternative ‘market’ (Sharma 1995).
4 In 1999, the AOC counted ninety-five member training establishments covering
some 6,000 aromatherapists. In 1994, the AOC developed a core curriculum for
aromatherapy demanding a minimum of 180 class hours over no less than nine
months, and comprising of ‘eighty hours of aromatherapy, sixty hours of massage,
and forty hours of anatomy and physiology plus ten to fifteen case studies over fifty
treatment hours’ (AOC 1999).
5 Although as many have argued, this needs to be taken with caution for invoking the
‘service ideal’ serves as a strategy to legitimize professional privilege (Johnson 1972)
and there is little evidence that medical doctors for example have a stronger service
orientation or level of altruism than members of other occupations (Freidson 1975).
6 And indeed, when we had to charge a relatively low fee (paid to the college) to the
‘clients’ we used to build our portfolio of evidence, we occasionally conveniently
‘forgot’, or paid for the clients ourselves. However, this had more to do with our
embarrassment at asking for payment to people we ‘used’ as ‘case study material’,
rather than with our altruistic motives.
7 Means—end calculations and the maximization of output—input ratios characteristic
of performativity were indexed through various performance indicators in the NVQ
framework such as ‘take action to improve efficiency’, ‘demonstrate cost effectiveness
by minimizing waste, ensuring that maximum benefit I obtained from the input’,
‘carry out treatment in commercially acceptable time to the satisfaction of the client’.
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8 ‘The romance of lonely
dissent’
Intellectuals, professionals and the
McUniversity
Martin Parker
The more passionately thought denies its conditionality for the sake of the
unconditional, the more unconsciously, and so calamitously, it is delivered up
to the world.
(Adorno 1974:247)
Introduction
This chapter is about a group of workers who might be conceptualised as a classic
profession: academics.1Yet, as the chapters in this book demonstrate, the term
‘professional’ is historically and conceptually contested. To anyone even remotely
persuaded by the linguistic turn in social theory, this will hardly come as a surprise.
The words that human beings attach to the worlds they live in are not timeless or
foundational. Indeed, if we rid ourselves of this preconception from the start, we
are more likely to be able to explore what these words do ‘to’ us, and what we can
do ‘with’ them. So let us be under no illusions, these are political matters. In
etymological terms, to ‘profess’ was to put forward an individual claim to faith
(and to confess is to put forward such claims together, with another). The former
term then develops by the sixteenth century into a claim over the mastery of
knowledge, as in a professor, and later into a class of people: professionals.
Definitionally then, when speakers or writers use the word ‘professional’ they are
making a claim about ownership of knowledge. These claims also usually involve
suggestions about hierarchically organized boundaries and identifications, about
the work that particular persons are engaged in, and (of course) how much status
and reward they consequently wish to receive (Johnson 1972). But the question
for this chapter is more specific, largely because I am concerned with the conjunction
between the term ‘professional’ and the term ‘intellectual’. Now in some sense
these are overlapping descriptions. To put it simply, that which is defined as
professional work usually has intellectual elements, and many (if not most)
intellectuals would probably also call themselves professionals (because they are
‘academics’).2 But this does not mean that the words mean the same things, and in
the argument that follows I will be seeking to widen the gap between the two in
order to comment critically on life within the contemporary McUniversity.
The romance of lonely dissent 139
In general though, professional intellectuals usually give themselves a rather

central place in their theories. Like Plato’s ‘philosopher kings’, the importance
and leadership of the thinking classes is assumed by the thinking class themselves.
A century ago, in the work of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber for example, we
find some rather grand positions accorded to professional and intellectual labour.
For the former, the value systems of professionals might provide a solution to the
problem of anomie. Notions of service and duty act as a deontological counterweight
to the corrosive utilitarianism that follows from the division of labour (1991:xxxi
and passim). For Weber, in his essays on politics and science as a vocation, the
practice of being an intellectual involved a responsibility, a devotion, to the service
of science (Weber 1948). In both these cases, and many others, we find a suggestion
that professionals have a very particular relationship to their labour, one which is
predicated on a certain kind of duty, and a certain sense of authenticity. As Foucault
puts it, this tradition positions the intellectual as ‘universal’, ‘exemplary’, ‘just-
and-true-for-all’ (Foucault 1984:68). Now this is rather a flattering self-image for
those who would like to call themselves both professionals and intellectuals. It
implies that they, unlike many other labourers, are motivated by something higher
than mere self-interest. It also suggests that their labour has autonomous and
creative elements that are not easily reduced to the contemporary demands for
public accountability that have ‘proletarianized’ many other occupational groups.
In what follows, I will begin by critically evaluating these rather smug claims
with respect to contemporary academics in the UK. In doing so, I will be following
Marx rather than Durkheim or Weber. Marx and Engels claimed that:
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured
and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the
lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.
(Marx and Engels 1967:82)
At the present time, it seems to me that the move towards a mass higher education,
the audit of research output and administration, and a career-oriented transfer
market has changed the institutional climate of professional academic labour
very substantially. Universities are increasingly managerial, and driven by the
demands of a technocratic state. This creates considerable problems for the survival
of the self-governing professional, and even greater problems for the critical
autonomous intellectual. Perhaps professional intellectuals are now merely highly
paid self-interested technocrats; or, as Bennett (1998:6) puts it when writing about
cultural studies, state-funded ‘court jesters’, noisy, but largely ineffectual. So how
might one justify the term ‘professional’ and/or ‘intellectual’, in times when both
identities are (perhaps justifiably) castigated in the name of accountability and
performativity?
The chapter will begin with an outline of the contemporary McUniversity,
and the generally hostile environment it provides for both professional self-
governance and intellectual autonomy. I then move on to a discussion of some of
the formulations of neo-Marxist intellectuals that can be found in the writings of
140 Martin Parker
Karl Mannheim and Antonio Gramsci. Both of these authors were concerned to
establish that progressive social movements relied on some kind of intellectual
cadre, whether ‘socially unattached’ or ‘organic’. The following section looks at
cultural formulations of the distinction between intellectual and the mass, in order
to establish that a certain elitism has been a condition of possibility of the self-
identity of intellectuals—of whatever political persuasion. In the final section, I
attempt to articulate the interaction between critical and technocratic interests,
and of demands for both professional (‘internal’) and public (‘external’)
accountability by means of a classification of the subject positions which seem to
follow from these intersections. The essay concludes with some rather pessimistic
thoughts on the tensions between a sociology of knowledge and a principled
defence of the category of intellectual.
The McUniversity
I will begin by describing the world of the contemporary academic in fairly
disenchanted terms. I want to establish that many of the changes that have
happened in UK higher education3 add up to a tightening of state, institutional
and discursive control over academic labour. I am not especially concerned to
theorize the causes of these developments, and neither do I want to worry over-
much about their generalizability across the higher education sector. Indeed, it
may be argued that my premise, the generalized McDonaldization of the university,
is flawed on the grounds that there is much more resistance and complexity than
I am allowing (Prichard and Willmott 1997; Barry et al. 2001). Quite possibly,
but this chapter does not intend to put forward a nuanced empirical argument. In
this section, I simply wish to establish that the image of the autonomous intellectual
does not sit easily with current tendencies to state sponsored rationalization of
professional labour.
UK higher education has undergone something of a revolution over the last
twenty years. The situation during the 1960s and 1970s was largely based on the
assumption that a university education was an elite matter, with polytechnics
provided for the more vocationally oriented elite. However, from the early 1980s
onwards, a series of changes were set in train which were to radically alter the
shape and structure of the sector as a whole. Direct state control was strengthened
through the abolition of the University Grants Committee, and a number of
attempts were made to get institutions to become more enterprising and industry-
focused. Efficiency gains (cuts) were demanded, followed by a drastic increase in
student numbers and consequently in part-time teaching and research staff.
Courses became increasingly comparable through the activities of the National
Council for Vocational Qualifications, the Credit Accumulation Tariff points
mechanism, and widespread modularization and semesterization. The Research
Assessment Exercise was introduced as a method for auditing the productivity of
academic researchers, and the various research funding councils began to focus
on the deliverable and performative outcomes of funding decisions. Various
versions of the Quality Audit Agency developed procedures for auditing
administration and teaching at institutional and departmental levels. The number

of degree-awarding institutions increased dramatically as the polytechnics and
some colleges of higher education were given the title and powers of universities.
Lately, despite a change of government, the state support to students continues to
dwindle and subject benchmarking is being presented as an exercise to ensure
comparability of curricula across institutions.
Clearly, this context is one that has resonances with a widespread restructuring
of the UK welfare state since 1979. The increasing importance of management,
the ‘loose-tight’ structure of nominal institutional autonomy combined with strong
centralized controls over budgets, the growth of the machineries of audit and
accountability, the demand for ‘value for money’ and a generalized suspicion of
professional monopolies can be seen across a wide variety of sectors from opticians
to the issue of passports. I do not propose to comment on the general aspects of
these changes, or adjudicate the merits of the specific impacts they have had on
UK higher education. For some they can be seen as an expansion, rationalization
and democratization of a previously expensive and elitist system. For others,
they represent labour intensification, intellectual commodification and
underfunding on a massive scale (see, for example, Hartley 1995; Jary and Parker
1998; Parker and Jary 1995; Willmott 1995). Whatever the overall evaluation,
the point for this essay is simply to note that the context of academic activity has
been changed very substantially.
The point may be made rather simply by suggesting that academics, like other
professionals, are now becoming more ‘externally’ accountable. One of the claims
traditionally made by professionals was for self-governance at an individual and
collective level. The professional, because of the level of complexity of their task,
could not be open to surveillance from ‘outside’. The accountability was instead
to a putative community of practice, to one’s peers. This was justified through
arguing that the ‘outside’, whether general public or state, would simply not be
able to comprehend the kind of things that the professional did and hence be in
a position to make reasoned judgements on good or bad practice. Professionals
had to be trusted, not disciplined. Hence the professional code, qualifying
association and peer pressure were deemed to be the only mechanisms of internal
accountability which could exert control over expert labour. Most teaching and
research (and, indirectly, administration) within old Universities was therefore
not subject to external surveillance. That they were in the polytechnics until
1991, through the CNAA, indicated the relative weakness of those institutions in
terms of their professional capital.
But, as is clear, public accountability and professional accountability are
contradictory moves. One opens up, flattens and classifies materials in order that
they be made visible, the other closes them off and demands hierarchical
separation. At the time of writing, it seems that visibility and classification are
winning the day. In each domain of academic activity, measurements of
performativity are being introduced. For teaching and administration there are
processes of subject review which demand—in the name of quality—detailed ‘aims’
and ‘objectives’. Each lecture, each module, each course, each department, each
142 Martin Parker
institution must have a clear indication of what it is trying to achieve. As Lyotard

put it some years ago:
The question (overt or implied) now asked by the professionalist student,

the State, or institutions of higher education is no longer ‘Is it true?’ but
‘What use is it?’ In the context of the mercantilization of knowledge, more
often than not this question is equivalent to: ‘Is it saleable?’ And in the
context of power-growth: ‘Is it efficient?’.
(Lyotard 1984:51)
The clarity of aims, and the measurability of objectives, must then be supported
through documentation (minutes, policies, handbooks) which explicitly
demonstrate what is being done, why it is being done, and whether the outcomes
are successful or not. This is ‘total quality management’ (see, for example,
Doherty 1994). There is no room for endearing vagueness here, nor space for
the liberal notion of ‘improvement’ or nostalgic defence of professional
autonomy. All loops must be closed, performance indicators must be both
indicated and performed, transferable skills (problem solving, numeracy,
presentation skills and so on) must be made clear and skilfully transferred. The
student—as consumer, tax-payer, representative of the state—must know what
they are getting. The product must be clearly labelled, fit for the purpose it was
advertised, and there must be mechanisms for redress at the level of consumer
and state.
Research is a little more difficult to make accountable, but not much. The
same technical moves have been used to make it visible and classified. Its visibility
can be ensured by defining the key performance indicator as written texts,
clearly labelled as the property of an author and disseminated through a variety
of hierarchically ordered outlets. First, journal articles in a ranked series of
journals, then books published by ranked academic publishers, finally chapters
in edited collections ranked according to editor and/or publisher.4Other forms
of dissemination are of little relevance, since these three are deemed to be (in
virtually all disciplines) the only visible outcomes of research (see Agger 1990;
Mills 1951). Personal, departmental, and institutional success or failure can
then be measured through a combination of the number of items produced and
the ranking of their machinery of dissemination. Rather like the top twenty
pop charts, the more hits, and the higher the hits score, the better. Again like
the charts, the rankings are constructed and monitored by the producers
themselves. The difference is that measures of consumption (sales or citations)
are used relatively rarely—though they do seem to be increasing in prominence
as time goes by.5
So, through a series of state sponsored changes, notions of academic
professionalism have been altered substantially in the UK over the last twenty
years. This is not to say that academics are no longer professionals, by any common
sense meaning of the term they clearly are. Perhaps it is rather to suggest that the
meaning and experience of their professional labour has changed. Indeed
Montague and Miller (1973), commenting on US sociology almost thirty years

ago, distinguish two forms of professionalism. The first, the ‘historic construct’ is
the classic model of altruistic humanism which they celebrate as providing the
platform for a critical sociology. The second, the ‘hustling construct’, is corporate
sociology, highly exclusive and career-oriented. Whether the ‘historical construct’
ever existed in some pure form is a moot point, but the general shift is clear
enough. As academic work becomes increasingly subject to standardized controls,
to scrutiny and redress by consumers and the state, so do the assumptions about
the nature of the job. To be a professional academic means playing by the explicit
rules of the game, advancement is based on conformity to an established set of
standards, to what C Wright Mills once called ‘Brains, Inc.’ (1951:142). Or, for
Bennett, academics are merely:
those whose objective position is that of salaried government

employees…working within large organisations (universities) governed by
elaborate committee procedures and engaging in all the usual aspects of
professional academic activity (attending conferences, publishing, grading
and assessing).
(Bennett 1998:3)
In which case—though there are aspects of this work that, like all professional
groups, involve intellectual labour—in what sense can we justify a description of
academics as intellectuals?
Defending intellectuals: Mannheim and Gramsci

According to Raymond Williams, the use of the word ‘intellectual’ to refer to a
class of people rather than a specific faculty of understanding dates from the
early nineteenth century (1961:52; 1983:169). It seems no coincidence that
industrialization, and the division of labour, should lead to the category of
intelligence being applied to a specific group, and hence implicitly subtracted
from the vast majority. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations:
In opulent and commercial societies to think or to reason comes to be, like

every other employment, a particular business, which is carried on by a
very few people, who furnish the public with all the thought and reason
possessed by the vast multitudes that labour.
(cited in Williams 1961:52)
Indeed, it is very difficult to conceive of this word being used in way that does
not imply a degree of elitism of some kind, an inflated claim to self-importance
made by a certain kind of person. Yet being an ‘intellectual’ is now somehow
out of fashion, which is the logical continuation of Smith’s market logic.
Knowledge is now ‘purchased in the same manner as shoes or stockings, from
those whose business it is to make and prepare for the market that particular
144 Martin Parker
species of goods’ (Williams 1961:52). Indeed, in the McUniversity, to claim

that one is an intellectual sounds both old-fashioned and pretentious at the
same time.
Yet there is a older body of neo-Marxist thought which attempts to directly
oppose this logic by providing resources for thinking about the intersection between
social criticism and the category of intellectuals. In general, this writing can be
seen as a response to formulations of Leninist party organization and the
consequent denial of intellectual autonomy in the name of the working class as
the repository of historical truth (Lukács 1971). The problem we are presented
with is whether, and to what extent, intellectuals (as individuals or class) can free
themselves from their own conditions of possibility within capitalism. Indeed, for
Karl Mannheim, the problem of the intellectual is part of the general sociology of
knowledge. In Ideology and Utopia (1960), Mannheim asserted that what counts as
knowledge depends on social context; hence understanding modes of thought
means understanding their social origins. This commitment involves a general
suspicion of psychologistic or individualist accounts of thought:
Only in quite a limited sense does the single individual create out of himself
the mode of speech and of thought we attribute to him. He speaks the
language of his group; he thinks in the manner his group thinks. He finds
at his disposal only certain words and their meanings.
(Mannheim 1960:2)
All people, then, are trapped within their own conceptual universes and their
thought necessarily reflects its social origins. For Mannheim, the single individual
does not think, rather ‘he participates in thinking further what other men have
thought before him’ (Mannheim 1960:3). Thought is therefore ideological, not
in the strict Marxist sense of class interests, but in the sense that it reflects the
interests of the social group (or status position, or generation) who are doing the
thinking. The sum total of fragmentary individual experiences, attitudes and
judgements, of knowledges, can therefore be reconstructed as the ideology of a
group.
This structuralist or social determinist position on knowledge generation and
analysis provides a powerful way to think about collective modes of thought. Yet
it also contains a major difficulty. If all thought is socially determined, then this
must also apply to the thoughts of the thinker. In other words, the category of
intellectual who carries out the sociology of knowledge must also be socially
determined, and therefore ideological in its turn. Mannheim’s solution is to propose
a category of the ‘socially unattached’ or ‘free-floating’ intelligensia:
unlike preceding cultures, intellectual activity is not carried on exclusively

by a socially rigidly defined class, such as a priesthood, but rather by a
social stratum which is to a large degree unattached to any social class and
which is recruited from an increasingly inclusive area of social life.
(Mannheim 1960:139)
This group, because it lacks a clear social location, is capable of systematically

understanding the grammar of ideology. This is a clever turn, since it translates
a putative detachment from social contexts into a form of objectivity, or at least
‘elevation’ from the ideologies of the day. It also allows some intellectuals to
promote the interests of socially underprivileged groups and aim their thought at
future forms of social reconstruction. Hence, socially unattached intellectuals can
evade the reproduction of the dominant ideology, and aim towards utopian modes
of thought that challenge the status quo.
Now this is rather a nice attempt to argue for the possibility of politically
progressive intellectual activity without denying some form of social location. Yet
consider Mannheim’s biography. He was a politically radical Jew born in Hungary,
who taught in Germany, and fled to England in 1933. Being socially unattached
was a fact of his life, but does it follow that such a turbulent background is a
condition of possibility for utopian intellectuals (Turner 1999:119)? For rather
more sedentary inhabitants of the contemporary McUniversity it might be that
detachment from social location is not an everyday experience. In any case, the
romanticism and elitism of Mannheim’s position is not difficult to discern. The
self-styled ‘outsider’ is a social location too, however hard it might be denied, and
hence subject to the charge that the heroic and tragic utopian is representing no
interests but their own.
A rather less detached version of the intellectual can be found in the writings
of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Imprisoned by Mussolini in the
1920s, he was hostile to the state model of party leadership, and to economic
determinist accounts of social change. For Gramsci, enduring social change
must happen from below, through changing the ‘structure of feeling’ of the
subordinated class by contesting the cultural hegemony of the dominant class.
As a result, one of Gramsci’s central concerns was to argue the case for a
category of ‘organic’ intellectuals who could represent the interests of this
latter class. In saying this, he was concerned to begin from the position that
everybody was, to some degree or other, a ‘philosopher’. That is to say that
language, common sense, religion, popular beliefs and superstitions, folklore
and so on all involve manifestations of wisdom, of intellectual activity. This
was ‘spontaneous philosophy’ which was intimately related to specific historical
conditions. Yet this form of philosophy is often accepted passively, ‘imposed
mechanically by the external environment’ and Gramsci wished to propose a
second form within which one can ‘work out one’s own conception of the
world consciously and critically’ (Gramsci 1957a:58). But there is not one
form of this second philosophy, but many. These competing philosophies
reflect the interests of different historical classes and occupational groups who
have their interests legitimized by ‘intellectual cadres’ who ‘specialise in
conceptual and philosophical elaboration’ (Gramsci 1957a:67). ‘All men are
intellectuals, one could say; but all men do not have the function of intellectuals
in society’ (Gramsci 1957b:121).
So, how do we choose between competing philosophies? For Gramsci, this
becomes a political question which is tied to the specific social conditions which
146 Martin Parker
the intellectual class inhabits, not simply a scholarly exercise of a-historical

intellectual activities. The feudal lords had their ecclesiastics to legitimize religion,
education, justice, charity and so on. So does the capitalist have ‘the industrial
technician, the political economist, the organiser of a new culture, of a new law,
etc’ (Gramsci 1957b:118). These are the organic intellectuals of their class:
they generate the ideology that legitimizes the interests of their group at a
particular historical stage. It is no great leap then, for Gramsci to suggest that
there could be organic intellectuals that represent the great majority of people
and are capable:
of re-living concretely the needs of the ideological community of the masses,

of understanding that the mass cannot have the quickness and agility of an
individual brain, and so succeeds in formally elaborating the collective
doctrine in a way which is most akin and appropriate to the modes of
thought of a collective thinker.
(Gramsci 1957a:73)
If we follow Gramsci on this, then academics, the occupational category of
university employees, are likely to be intellectuals. However, since they are
organic to the ruling classes they are also likely to be merely the ‘propagators
of already existing traditional and accumulated intellectual riches’. Indeed, he
says, this kind of intellectual is being produced in increasing numbers, is
represented by ‘professional self defensive organisations’ which demand ‘huge
cuts out of the national income’ in the name of ‘scholastic overproduction’
(Gramsci 1957b:125). Within Gramsci’s analysis is a substantial degree of
scepticism about the ability of academics, or any professional group, to be
organic to any class but their own. Admittedly, the possibility is there. It is not
disqualified by his analysis that organic intellectuals of the mass could work as
academics, but they are not seen as the primary source for this kind of activity.
They may share a ‘structure of feeling’ that is sympathetic to the enlightenment
principles of freedom and reason, but there is no reason why this should
necessarily be oriented towards the emancipation of the masses (Holub
1992:162). Indeed, it might well be argued that their institutional position makes
this less, rather than more, likely.
Yet, where they do exist, the defining characteristic of the ‘new’ ‘critical’
intellectual is that they are not trapped within scholasticism. These new intellectuals
(Renate Holub terms them ‘critical specialists’) will be ‘actively involved within
practical life’. Their audience is the mass and they are interested in sponsoring a
popular understanding of capitalism. Hence, they organize, persuade and construct
on behalf of the subordinate class, all the time attempting to demystify ideology,
exercise leadership and establish a new structure of feeling amongst the people
(Gramsci 1957b:122). This critical specialist is not a ‘technocrat of advancing
capitalism’, not only a specialist, but a member of a ‘critical community’ which
attempts to grasp and re-present social processes in the name of social change
(Holub 1992:168). So, within Gramscian theory, the possibility of critical
intellectuals inhabiting McUniversities is there, but it is by no means an easy
balancing act. In order to maintain some sense of being organic to the subordinated
classes, the critical specialist will have to work against the gravitational pull of
institutional and professional validation. They must find ways of speaking and
acting outside the academy. To be sure, their enlightenment structure of feeling is
a powerful resource, but it does not guarantee that their work will not become
incorporated into reproducing the hegemony.
For both Mannheim and Gramsci, the category of the intellectual embodies a
powerful potential critique of the existing social order. Yet they are both forced to
concede that most intellectual activity is not politically progressive and hence
need to elevate a specific form of utopian, or populist organic, intellectuality as
being in some way different from the technocrats of capitalism and the thought
of the masses. Once again, but in a more specific sense, the centrality and leadership
of the (critical) thinking classes is assumed by the (critical) thinking class themselves.
As the Polish philosopher of ‘communist intellectuals’, Leszek Kolakowski put it:
‘Intellectuals who create the theoretical foundations of political action are, therefore,
not merely “helpers” in the workers’ movement, but an indispensable condition
for its existence’ (Kolakowski 1971:178).
While all these neo-Marxist intellectuals engage in some complex mental
gymnastics, their arguments end up by necessarily deploying a distinction between
‘elite’ and ‘mass’. ‘They’ need ‘us’ to do their critical thinking for them; to express,
in Agger’s heroically romantic term, ‘lonely dissent’ (Agger 1990:24). In the next
section, I will consider whether this division is a condition of possibility for the
term ‘intellectual’ itself.
Intellectuals: mass and popular

As I said earlier, I am not particularly concerned to engage with a defence of
conservative and elitist versions of the intellectual. Or rather, to put that in a
more careful way, I do not intend to do so. But is it possible to defend intellectuals
without embracing elitism? For Mannheim and Gramsci, the concept of the
intellectual was so important because it allowed them to justify what they were
doing ‘without either persisting with merely conservative elitism or embracing
a partisan socialism’ (Turner 1999:125). Yet, for well over a century now, many
intellectuals have condemned mass culture, and modernity itself, for the dangers
it presented to their values. Any formulation of ‘the masses’ reflects an
assumption of prescriptive elitism. This is simply because the writer and the
assumed reader are, implicitly or explicitly, not of the mass. The division that
is performed requires that ‘we’ are defined as different, more discriminating,
less likely to be duped and so on (Parker 1998). Despite this rather obvious
snobbery, there are many commentators from both the left and right who have
attempted to articulate the dangers of mass society and, in doing so, to elevate
some version of an intellectual elite.
Arnold, Leavis, Eliot, Nietzsche and others on the ‘right’ have suggested that
the masses threaten to submerge ‘the best that has been thought and said’.
148 Martin Parker
Industrial societies tend to homogenize the cultural hierarchies that allow elite
artefacts and practices to exist, hence the mass suffocates individual genius. For
these cultural conservatives the loss is that of the superior culture of a distant
past. An early example is Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1867), which
defended a definition of culture as a set of preferred beliefs and practices against
the danger of moral anarchy if these practices were submerged in mass culture.
In England, this defence of a high cultural tradition was developed through books
like F.R.Leavis’s Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1930) or T.S.Eliot’s Notes
Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). The civilization of the bourgeoisie is
contrasted with the beastly carnival of the masses. At the same time, intellectual
culture is seen as in some way transcendent of the merely contemporary, since it
is so obviously aesthetically superior and also the mediator of a social comment
or expression of the human condition that is somehow timeless and hence
canonical.
From an opposing political perspective comes a version of the ruling class
ideology thesis to which Mannheim and Gramsci are indebted. It has both its
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions, the former being represented by the Frankfurt School
(particularly Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse), cultural critics like Postman
or even gleefully pessimistic postmoderns like Baudrillard. The ‘softer’ version
can be seen to originate in the socialist utopianism of individuals such as William
Morris and John Ruskin and leading to the social comment of George Orwell
and C.Wright Mills. Both approaches are united in condemning consumer
capitalism’s construction of false needs. Mass production and consumption are
seen as an opiate for the wage slaves of capital, and thus a contribution to
political quietism through distraction. Since intellectuals are increasingly the
wage slaves of capitalism, whether as technocrats or cultural commentators
selling their wares in a competitive marketplace (Agger 1990), their work is
increasingly commodified too.
Though these condemnations are similar, the causes are rather different. In
the former case it is industrial society, modernity itself, that is the problem. For
the radical theorists a particular variant of modernity is to blame—capitalism. Yet
in both cases it is rather easy to accuse mass culturalists of elitism, whether
defensively nostalgic or offensively modernising. Take, for example, Alan Bloom’s
Closing of the American Mind (1987). Bloom’s polemic articulates a diagnosis of
intellectual decline based on the general debasement of contemplative intellectual
discourse. The legitimation of scholarship is no longer possible because the
turbulent populism of the 1960s has eroded the centuries of tradition that made
it possible. On the other hand, Russell Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals, published in
the same year, puts forward an analysis which sees the university as colonized by
technocratic capitalism. The public sphere within the academy is falling victim to
esoteric professionalization and the demands of the military-industrial complex
(see also Agger 1990; Boggs 2000; Mills 1951). Though Bloom’s intellectual is a
cultural conservative, and Jacoby’s a radical political commentator, they seem to
end up in very much the same place. External forces—debased populism or market
capitalism—are polluting the academy. Intellectuals who are critical of the present,
whether in the name of an imagined past or a utopian future, are being gradually
erased from the academy and the public sphere.
Yet Bloom’s book does point towards a different conception of the
intellectual, even if he frames them negatively as vulgar populists. The growth
of cultural studies, and a series of cultural turns in the social sciences and
humanities, explicitly attempted to move away from judgemental mass
culturalism in articulating a much more positive assessment of the value of—
what were initially called—the ‘popular arts’. Just as ‘mass’ implied the beliefs
of someone else, and an inferior culture at that, so a ‘popular’ cultural
perspective came to suggest a description or analysis from the inside, as a fan,
or at least a sympathetic observer. In England, writers such as Richard
Hoggart, Raymond Williams and Edward Thompson are now seen as
important early statements of this approach. All, to a greater or less extent,
provided sympathetic reconstructions of Gramsci’s ‘structures of feeling’ of
ordinary people. Initially implicit, but later explicit, is the sense in which this
sort of approach is directly opposed to the aesthetic and political judgements
that are so central to mass culturalism. The central theoretical difference here
could be said to be the analytic and descriptive stress on human agency,
particularly the agency of the supposedly ‘powerless’. Various determinisms
are evaded by characterizing structure as no more than a set of ‘limits and
pressures’. This was important, particularly with regard to structuralist Marxist
formulations like those of Lukács or Althusser which reduced ‘mind’ to no
more than a function of the economic base and therefore potentially no more
than an epiphenomenon of the mode of production. Instead, if culture were
seen as a product of a humanist ‘creative mind’ then any cultural product
becomes as worthy of investigation as any other, the capitalized ‘Arts’ deserving
no particular priority over the lower case ‘popular’ or vice versa. In practice
however, the dominant route that (what became professionalized and
institutionalized as) Cultural Studies has taken is the investigation of non-elite
cultural forms, whether these be the leisure habits of the Victorian working
class or more lately, the search for resistance in Internet surfing.
Now, through an odd slippage, many of these formulations of resistant
consumers have been joined to a grand historical periodization. Within some
theories of (what is sometimes called) ‘post-modern’ society it is suggested
that consumption has replaced production as the central site of identity
construction. Many of these writers promote the actor to a position within
which they are empowered to challenge the supposed permanence of social
structures. There are no master narratives anymore, merely a series of
possible positions from which we can pick and choose in a democracy of
equivalent tastes. Local, weak, knowledge is celebrated as an alternative to the
intellectual authority of traditional centres. The old rules are breaking down
and cultural production and consumption involves subversively playing with
the codes. As Zygmunt Bauman has put it, this means that the intellectual is
no longer (can no longer be) a ‘legislator’ but merely an ‘interpreter’
(Bauman 1987).
150 Martin Parker
But of course, this is precisely Bloom’s problem. If the intellectual is to exist at

all, then they must take their responsibility as ‘legislator’ seriously. To adopt the
manners of the mass is to abdicate the special position which is necessary for
their work. The frantically contemporary ‘cultural studies’ intellectual, however
hard they try, can be no more than a distraction from the serious investigation of
timeless problems. Hence, to deny the existence of the mass is deny the existence
of the intellectual as well. Perhaps rather predictably, we can find a similar analysis
from the left. The commodification of intellectual production within universities
means that:
writers write not for expressive and political reasons but to please editors
and publishers concerned both to maximise profit and enforce social
control…text has become another product next to the toothpaste and
toiletries. Its value endures no longer than it takes to flip though magazines
and paperbacks whilst standing at the checkout counter…
(Agger 1990:25)
Or, for Carl Boggs (2000:308), this means that the ‘postmodern’ intellectual
has ‘degenerated into modes of research and analysis befitting intellectual cults
with their own insular circles, highly esoteric jargon, and strictly academic
venues’. Elements of this criticism can also be found in Tony Bennett’s recent
work on cultural studies. He suggests that the separation of academics from
policy matters has grave consequences. If academics believe they inhabit a
distinct domain, free-floating from government and the state, then they tend
to detach themselves from policy matters. If they misrecognize themselves as
inhabiting ‘an autonomous, uncontaminated realm of critique’, then they
unwittingly relegate themselves to being court jesters (Bennett 1998:6).
Explicitly referring to Bauman, Bennett asserts that intellectuals must take
their responsibilities as ‘legislators’ seriously and move beyond ‘the cloistered
exchanges of the seminar’. They must use their institutionally privileged
positions to engage in programmes of ‘cultural management and
administration’ that benefit the dispossessed (Bennett 1998:103–4).
It seems then that the very category of intellectual is highly contested
precisely because of its complicated mapping onto conceptions of elite and
mass. Whether defending the elite against the mass, or occupying a vanguard
position on behalf of the mass, the intellectual is a category which, to a
certain extent, could not exist without the division of labour which produces
those two terms in the first place. As Hughes has elegantly put it, the
European intellectual assumes that they:
should survey with Olympian calm the social doings of his fellow men
and, after a suitable parade of literary and historical learning, and a minimum
of reflection on his presuppositions, come to certain rather majestic
conclusions about what constituted the true, the beautiful and the good.
(Hughes 1967:405)
This is the social terrain from which the category of intellectual has
developed, and into which various self-consciously politicized senses of
intellectuality seek to reinscribe themselves as a man (and it usually is) who
‘bears the values of all, opposes the unjust sovereign or his ministers, and
makes his cry resound beyond the grave’ (Foucault 1984:71). Yet this is not
all that is going on, simply because such a description does not take into
account the complex relation between intellectuals, professionalization and
contemporary demands for public accountability. It is to this that I will turn
in the final section below.
Choosing intellectuals
Etymologically, intellect comes from inter (between) and legere (choose or judge).
Intellectuals are those with the specific capacity to judge between competing options
or theories. So, at this point in the chapter, I wish to do my own choosing. So far,
I have presented a series of formulations, problems and contexts within which
the category or class of intellectual is often positioned. But how can I choose
between them? Or, more specifically, what kind of intellectual might I wish to
champion in the context of the professional academic working within a
contemporary McUniversity?
To get back to where I began, with the distinction between academics,
professionals and intellectuals. It may seem that matters are now more confused,
not less. Certainly the mapping of these three words onto one another is not a
simple matter. Nonetheless, I wish to make some distinctions which seem to suit
my purposes. All academics are professionals; that is a matter of everyday
occupational classification. In this sense, professionalism means something like
‘technocratic intellectual’ (Boggs 2000), and can be extended to refer to a wide
body of credentialized groups whose work involves the production and
dissemination of certain knowledge practices which are deemed important within
contemporary capitalism. Following Gramsci, this is to say that all work—whether
paid or not—involves intellectual practice, but certain occupational groups have
managed to elevate the status and reward of their particular version of it. As
MacDonald (1995:160) notes, there is an etymological link between ‘mastery’
and ‘mystery’. The success of professionalization projects is intimately related to
the extent to which a particular group manages to claim that their work is a
mystery, practised only by initiates, and hence gains cultural and legal validation
for their social and economic status.
However, it does not follow from this that all academics are ‘critical intellectuals’
(Boggs 2000), or indeed that professionalization is a timeless historical category.
The growth of the McUniversity, precisely the situation that prompted the writing
of this chapter, is complicating matters substantially. In the diagram below, I try
to lay out some of these issues in a schematic form (Figure 8.1). The main
distinctions I am operating with are between ‘technocratic’ and ‘critical’ interests
with regard to the status quo, and professional (‘internal’) or public (‘external’)
versions of the accountability of the labour that is conducted. To be clear, each
152 Martin Parker
Figure 8.1 Academics, professionals and intellectuals
box that is produced is not exclusive, nor does it refer to a particular class of
people. They are perhaps something like ‘subject positions’, constellations of
assumptions about the nature and role of intellectual activity.
The modern model of the professional is here represented by the ‘technocratic
professional’, a partially autonomous worker who claims access to a particular
intellectual or practical mystery. Though they are accountable, their accountability
is largely restricted to a group of equally privileged peers. It seems to me that this
form of professionalism has been substantially eroded—though certainly not
destroyed—by the demand for a public form of accountability that denies the
mystery. The outcome of these demands would be the end of the professional,
perhaps in all but name, and their substitution by the ‘accountable employee’
who might be understood through Lyotard’s conception of generalized
‘performativity’ (Lyotard 1984). No doubt these employees will engage in more
responsible autonomy than direct control, and still be able to claim higher status
and reward than other employees, but the historical moment of the self-determining
professional group seems to be on the wane. At the bottom half of the diagram
we have two versions of the critical impulse, which includes both conservative
and radical critics. One is the ‘critical specialist’ (the term from Holub (1992), but
see also Montague and Miller (1973)), a worker who claims the mystery but uses
their position within an elevated professional group on behalf of some form of
social criticism or change, which would include mass culturalists of most
persuasions. The final group is concerned with a different version of accountability,
to the masses themselves. This necessarily involves the disavowal of the mystery,
and makes claims to represent the popular in the name of articulating social
transformation and critique. This is an odd version of accountability, since its

parameters of surveillance are not clear, but it assumes an essential open-ness to
determination by the Other.
This diagram inevitably oversimplifies, but it points towards some general
tensions in terms of defining and defending critical intellectual practice. I do not
want to simply adjudicate that one of the four positions is ‘better than’ the others,
though my sympathies certainly lie with the critical positions and not the
technocratic ones.6 That said, both accountability and professionalism can be
used in productive ways. The status and power/knowledge that generally attaches
to the professional is undoubtedly useful in providing a platform for the critical
specialist to interrogate the particular mechanisms and developments within their
area. Indeed, much academic work in the institutionalized social sciences can be,
and has been, prefixed with an implicit ‘critical’ as critical professionals question
the hegemonic judgements of legality, fairness, aesthetics and so on within their
fields. This might be what Foucault means by the ‘specific’ intellectual, who he
sees as replacing the ‘universal’ intellectual (Foucault 1984:70). The problem is
that the very position which allows for such work to take place often silences its
wider effects. Its specialization, its specificity, amounts to a kind of closure as its
technical language, limited distribution and restricted aims effectively mean that—
for the vast majority (including other critical specialists)—this work is never heard.
As Mills put it half a century ago:
The professionalisation of knowledge has thus narrowed the grasp of the

individual professor; the means of his success further this trend; and in the
social sciences and the humanities, the attempt to imitate exact science
narrows the mind to microscopic fields of enquiry, rather than expanding it
to embrace man and society as a whole.
(Mills 1951:131)
For those who wish to be heard, there is Gramsci’s organic intellectual.7 This is
a version of open-ness, of being accountable to nameless others, which drives
towards popular language, wide distribution and general aims. Yet, in a fairly
symmetrical fashion, the lack of clarity about the institutional and professional
status of such a position leaves it a hostage to fortune. By definition, the organic
intellectual will not solicit technocratic support or professional legitimation,
but in the absence of any other form of status or technology of representation
they may often be generally marginalized, and subject to specific ridicule by
academics themselves.8
It seems then that this kind of matrix of forces, of possible subject positions,
leaves me with a rather predictable dilemma. Mills described it as the response
of the ‘free intellectuals’ to the essential facts of defeat and powerlessness—the
choice between ‘the cult of alienation and the fetish of objectivity’ (Mills
1951:159). If you want to sup with the devil, then you should use a long spoon.
If you want to reach out beyond professional legitimacy and technocratic values
then you often need to borrow the spoons that that are already made and
154 Martin Parker
owned by the powerful. In any case, whether you use ‘their’ spoons or not, the
problem of representing the masses cannot be evaded. Speaking ‘for’ nameless
others, accepting the accountability to their gaze is a comfortingly heroic position,
but one that always runs the risk of being no more than hubris. My preference,
and I can do no more than state it, is to support and to work towards some
version of the ‘organic intellectual’; but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? And
ironically, my response to this has merely involved writing another chapter in
another book. As has probably been implicit throughout this essay, there is a
moral hierarchy of accountabilities deployed here. The wider and more open
the gaze of the Other, then the more authentic I deem the intellectual engagement
to be. Narrow versions of professionalism, or institutional position are then
somehow positioned as ‘self-ish’, because they are closer to the social interests
of the academic or employee. So escaping from that self-interest, and accepting
the definition of interests proposed by ‘Others’ is ‘self-less’. In a strange way,
this ends up where I began, with Weber’s suggestions about ‘the Puritan ethic
of vocation’ (Weber 1948:332). The calling of the ‘rational ascetic’ is not with
mere worldly matters, but to something higher, something more distant,
something which Mannheim would perhaps call ‘utopian’. Yet, at the same
time, since this calling is so intangible its self-lessness can also be understood as
an inwardness which is not dissimilar to mysticism, as raising the accountability
of self to its highest principle and, in so doing, beginning to disappear from
complicity to the world.
In summary then, there is no essential intellectual that can somehow be
detached from the social conditions of its possibility. As the epigraph from
Adorno points out, there can be no unconditional denial of conditionality that
does not deliver us back into the world in some way or other. Hence, to parallel
the remarks I made about ‘professionals’ at the beginning of this essay, the term
‘intellectual’ is also historically and conceptually contested simply because the
words that human beings attach to the worlds they live in are not timeless or
foundational. Indeed, if I rid myself of this preconception from the start, I am
more likely to be able to explore what these words do ‘to’ me, and what I can
do ‘with’ them. When I use the word ‘intellectual’, I am making a claim about
ownership of a mystery. This claim also involves suggestions about hierarchically
organized boundaries and identifications, about the importance of the work that
I am engaged in, and how much status and reward I wish to receive. Of course
I, as this self-styled intellectual, am not very happy with these conclusions. As
Mannheim concludes in his attempt at a defence of the intellectual, the ‘matter-
of-factness’ or ‘realism’ which dominates the age involves the ‘transformation
of utopianism into science’ and the ‘destruction of the deluding ideologies which
are incongruent with the reality of our present situation’ (Mannheim 1960:230).
Like Mannheim, I hoped to articulate something different, a principled defence
of ‘lonely dissent’, but it all got sociologized away. In any case, I will be entering
this article onto my curriculum vitae, as will all the other contributors to this
volume. Reflexivity about identity may be a slim defence, but the temper of
this chapter leads me to nothing else.
Notes
1 Thanks to my fellow intellectuals Peter Armstrong, Bob Cooper, Valerie Fournier,
Simon Lilley and Steve Whitehead for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
2 Though this relation is not necessarily generalizable. In France, the ‘intelligensia’ are
not necessarily attached to universities in the same manner.
3 This is a chapter about the UK experience, but it seems that many of the matters I
am describing might also be echoed in the HE systems of other states too. See, for
example, Mills (1951) for some early comments on the US system.
4 Like the book that you hold in your hand.
5 The logical outcome of this metaphor would be a ranking based entirely on
consumption (citation) rather than production (publication).
6 Not, of course, that I would find this a very credible statement when visiting a medical
doctor, or dealing with an official in a bank.
7 Mills is an interesting example of a possible ‘organic intellectual’ himself, and much
of his writing was clearly intended to reach out to a wider public. It would be
interesting to compare this textually.
8 To which one radical response might be to suggest the ‘de-institutionalization’ of
knowledge and the destruction of the McUniversity itself (Illich 1973; Parker and
Courtney 1998). But that is rather beyond this chapter.
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9 Gender strategies of women
professionals
The case of the US Navy
Frank J.Barrett
Introduction
This chapter explores the personal/political dynamics involved when women

attempt to enter a hyper-masculine professional arena, in this case the United
States Navy. The study is concerned with the various ways that women naval
officers ‘do’ gender and how they negotiate their professional identities within
the gender regime of the US Navy, an environment that is traditionally populated
with men and marked as a site for the display of a dominant masculinity. As this
chapter illustrates, although the women naval officers find themselves subjected
to at times quite oppressive and marginalizing behaviour by male colleagues, the
women do deploy strategies of resistance as forms of coping behaviour. However,
the consequence of being located on the periphery of the organizational culture
while expected to at all times demonstrate assimilation within it, means that the
woman naval officer can never fully expedite her professionalism without gender
being an ever-present variable. The ability to ‘be professional’ in the US Navy
requires, for women officers, the ability to adapt to a hyper-masculine culture;
always being prepared to accommodate oppressive masculine behaviour while
having the skills to negotiate their membership of a professional community of
which they are, a priori, placed as outsiders.
Following discussion of the research method and methodology, I will present
a brief overview of the theory of masculine hegemony and Connell’s (1987)
concept of the gender order as a theoretical framework for understanding gender
ideologies. The chapter then discusses the relationships between notions of
professionalism and masculinity before proceeding to describe the formal and
informal barriers to women assuming professional identifications as US naval
officers. Following this, the chapter details three gender strategies that the women
naval officers draw upon to negotiate their membership of the military.
Research method
The chapter draws on part of a larger study of the experiences of male and
female naval officers undertaken by several researchers over a three year period.
158 Frank J.Barrett
Life-history interviews were conducted with fifty-eight male officers and

twenty-five female officers from seven naval communities (surface warfare,
aviation, submarine warfare, medical corps, supply corps, intelligence and
general unrestricted line). I personally interviewed eighteen men and ten
women. In addition to the interview data, as a civilian member of a naval
institution, I had unique access to the ‘inside’ of this culture. I was privy to
many informal interactions and day-to-day conversations, which served as an
indispensable guide in making sense of many of the themes and meanings
that were to emerge.
The tenure of the participants ranged from six to fifteen years in the Navy.
Since most duties involve two to three-year assignments, both men and women
experienced a variety of jobs, commanders and leadership styles, and working
conditions throughout their careers. The ranks of these officers were lieutenants
junior grade (LTJG), lieutenants (LT), lieutenant commanders (LCDR) and
commanders (CDR). In the US Navy, these rankings are the approximate
equivalent of middle managers. Each interviewee was told that these interviews
were part of a larger effort to study the nature of gender dynamics in the Navy. A
word must be said about the timing of the data collection. These interviews were
conducted between October 1992 and June 1995, a time when sexual harassment
was an explicit concern of Navy leadership. Following the scandal surrounding
the 1991 Tailhook convention for naval aviators in which eighty-three women
were ‘indecently assaulted’ (Tailhook Report 1993), a ‘zero tolerance’ approach
to sexual harassment was adopted which means that anyone found guilty of
sexual harassment would be subject to immediate dismissal. However, although
gender was considered a volatile topic, everyone who was asked to be interviewed
agreed to do so.
The gender self and masculine hegemony

The theoretical basis of this chapter assumes gender to be much more than a role
or an individual characteristic. It is a process that contributes to the production of
social and organizational structures by reproducing sets of norms and expectations
regarding how one ought to behave, decide, think, talk, walk, relate and work.
Moreover, at the level of discourse, gender serves to delineate the very knowledges
that inform the cultures in which we live out our daily lives. Such cultures exist
across both the public and private spheres and include the family, workplaces,
political arenas and the professions. Gender is also central to this process in terms
of it providing an individual with their sense of self-identity. People draw upon
‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ norms and discourses to describe themselves and to
define their activities. Actions are construed within a context of normative
conceptions regarding what men normally do and what women normally do. It
is possible, then, to talk about masculine women and feminine men. In this respect,
gender can be understood as an ongoing social accomplishment, a human artifice,
like language, that serves to organize social life whilst marking groups and
individuals as similar or different (Lorber 1994). The issue of difference is key to
Gender strategies of women professionals 159
understanding the power effects of this process, for difference implies power.
Thus the subsequent separation of women and men also serves to position them
into political categories of being.
The boundaries, norms and rules that define ‘appropriate’ gendered practices
and processes create a gender order; ‘a historically constructed pattern of power
relations between men and women and definitions of masculinity and femininity’
(Connell 1987:98). Within the gender order, there are some forms of masculinity
that are hegemonic, that is, dominant over subordinated and marginalized
masculinities and femininities. Masculine hegemony refers to the assumption of
power by men in a way that seems normal and commonplace. Hegemonic
masculinity emerges from within a dynamic field of contested gender relations
and is reproduced in popular media images, such as Rambo. In fact, media
images are persuasive forces in shaping the ideology of masculine hegemony
(Connell 1987).
One of the ways that masculine hegemony is sustained is through constructing
a dichotomy between images of masculinity and femininity (Barrett 1980). The
hegemonic man in this culture is one who is aggressive, risk-taking, heterosexual,
strong and rational. Such a construction relies on marginalized and subordinated
masculinities to achieve a definition. It also relies on an ‘emphasized femininity’
(Connell 1987), a cultural construction that emphasizes sociability over technical
competence, fragility in mating scenes, compliance to men’s desires, acceptance
of motherhood and childcare. While the image of hegemonic masculinity is
popular in this culture, ‘there is no femininity that holds among women the
position held by hegemonic masculinity among men…it is likely that actual
femininities in our society are more diverse than actual masculinities’ (Connell
1987:187).
Women entering masculine professions

A number of feminist studies have outlined the extent to which ‘most
organizations are saturated with masculine values’ (Burton 1991:3).
Ethnographic studies of women’s experiences have demonstrated that
masculine values are remarkably resilient in spite of women’s increased
presence. Pringle (1989) studied the effects of power differentials between
male managers and female secretaries. Cockburn’s (1983) study of women
entering the British printing press industry illustrates how efforts are made to
sustain a definition of work as a ‘masculine’ occupation. Similarly, Maile’s
(1999) research into public sector management reveals how organizational
transformations, when combined with the greater presence of women
managers, leads to men managers actively resisting equal opportunities
initiatives. Many feminist studies have looked at the effects of these
ideological constraints on women. Kanter (1977) found that women entering
a masculine culture are caught between two contradictory ideals: they are
measured as women and as managers. As a result, they are often cast in
conventional stereotypes of the mother, the seductress, the pet, the iron
160 Frank J.Barrett
maiden. Others have found similar tendencies in a variety of masculine

settings, including the experiences of women police officers (Martin 1980),
women prison guards (Zimmer 1988) and women working in coal mines.
Previous studies of women in the military demonstrate similar consequence of
minority status, including enlisted women (Steihm 1989), women at West
Point (Yoder 1989), and women marines (Williams 1989).
These studies converge around a central theme: in entering a masculine
institution that sends conflicting signals, women are faced with the dilemma of
embracing or denying conventional images of femininity in order to secure an
identity. Many of these ethnographic studies, like the present one, document
how women negotiate between these conflicting norms.
The military and masculinity

The military is traditionally considered a proving ground for the demonstration
of manhood: one is expected to display physical and mental discipline, rugged
individualism, unemotional logic, the endurance of physical and mental hardship
(Janowitz 1960). The system of ongoing tests seeks to maintain a hierarchical
differentiation that separates the weak from the strong. In this respect, the military
is a total institution (Goffman 1961) in which socialization to the male role is
pervasive (Lovell 1964). The US Navy perpetuates a traditional image of
masculinity as one that involves physical toughness, endurance of pain,
aggressiveness, and unemotional logic. Studies of recruits’ indoctrination at Navy
basic training facilities (Zurcher 1967) and cadets’ socialization at West Point
(Lovell 1964) illustrate the pervasiveness of the image of the traditional male
sex role in teaching ‘boys to be men’. There is a ‘cult of toughness and
masculinity traditionally associated with making soldiers out of civilians’. Recruits
are expected to display masculine behaviours, including ‘courage, endurance,
toughness, and lack of squeamishness’ (Stouffer 1949:156). Terms associated
with femininity become the ‘other’ in contrast to which masculinity defines
success. Those who quit or fail become the target of gendered insults; they are
called pussies, faggots, girls. To be associated with passivity or femininity is an
insult in this culture.
Formal and informal barriers to women’s acceptance

Within the Navy there are three combat specialty corps (surface warfare, aviation
and submarines) and four primary support corps (supply, medical, intelligence
and general unrestricted line). The combat specialties have an elite status within
the Navy. These positions hold high symbolic status as well as real power
difference, for only those with combat specialties can achieve an operational
command. Until February 1995, only men could serve in combat positions. While
women could specialize in some combat-related positions, including jet and
helicopter pilots, they were considered ‘combat related’ but could not be designated
combat specialists. For those few women who were trained as pilots, their duties
include support missions (such as supply, medical and logistics) or training men
to prepare for combat assignments. Women who entered the surface warfare
corps could serve only on support ships, such as repair tenders, regarded by men
as a highly undesirable assignment because these ships are not equipped with
high-tech or warfare equipment.
Of the 64,430 active duty US Navy officers, 8,364 are women. Most
women serve in the general unrestricted line community (euphemistically
referred to as ‘gurl’), consisting of a number of administrative support
positions. 1 Officers in this corps assumed position in personnel support
detachments (PSD), public affairs, family service centres, casualty assistance
and other shore-based administrative support jobs. Following Cockburn, such
a gendered division of labour, in which the majority of women assume
support positions and men assume operational positions, creates ‘small
hierarchies, mainly of women, situated to one side of and a little below other
pyramids comprised mainly of men, with no career bridge connecting the two
paths’ (Cockburn 1992:63).
This separate division of labour often becomes the occasion for gendered
accounts of women’s work. Very often, men contrast the life-threatening and
physically demanding work that they perform with the easy less-demanding
support that women provide. One male aviator characterized women’s work
this way:
Women get nine to five jobs. At NORDAC I was used to twelve to sixteen
hour days. They thought that was amazing. I was very goal oriented
compared to them. On a ship there’s no time for excuses. But with these
women it was nine to five jobs. To them it was a job, to me it was career…My
priorities were to get things done. Women were more…into paperwork.
Every woman we interviewed had contact with at least one, and usually
several, men who were very vocal in their belief that the military is a man’s
job and that women should not be permitted to serve equally in the Navy.
Most of the women in our sample did not anticipate the depth of hostility that
men expressed towards them in regard to their appropriateness for the military.
The first women admitted to the Naval Academy were greeted with open
hostility. One female LCDR, a member of the General unrestricted line
community, recalls:
I was in the third class of women to go in, and it was still so new that when
we were Plebes (freshmen), the last all male class was there as seniors and
they had ‘Omni severi’ inscribed on their rings. It means ‘all male’ in Latin,
which they flaunted in your face, and it was the accepted thing to do. [It
was] like being Black in an all White neighborhood in the 1960s. That’s
the best analogy I can give you. They really, truly, hated the women. They
didn’t want us there, and it was a group mentality. It was the little boy peer
pressure thing.
162 Frank J.Barrett
Many women discovered that they were the target of ridicule and disparaging
remarks. The acronym used to describe women’s uniform—WUBA (‘Working
Uniform Blue Alpha’)—was semantically altered by men to refer to ‘Women Used
By All’ and ‘Women with Unusually Big Asses’. When a man referred to a
woman as a WUBA, as one woman said, ‘It was used in the meanest sense,
when you really wanted to get someone or insult someone’.
This hostility is dramatically illustrated in the famous ‘Herndon ritual’, a
symbolic initiation that is enacted at the Naval Academy at the end of every
freshman year. In this ritual, the plebes (Freshmen) climb a large monument and
remove a plebe hat and replace it with a ‘combination cover’, a typical Naval
officer hat with a midshipman insignia. This symbolizes the initiation into the
second year of college, a symbolically significant achievement given all of the
tests and challenges that first-year students face. Many women told a story similar
to this:
Herndon is when the entire class proves their solidarity by working hard
to climb up this obelisk and take off the Plebe hat and put on the combination
hat. It’s a very big deal. It’s when you’re out of Plebedom and really come
together as a class. Well, the day we all formed up to go jump on this
monument and do this very traditional thing, guys showed up in these t-
shirts that said NWOH, meaning ‘No WUBA’s on Herndon.’ They had
matching bandanas and everything. All these guys were out there yelling
‘No Women’ and their goal was to pull as many women down as they possible
could. And these guys were my classmates, the ones that we had been sweating
through this with the whole time. After a half hour of getting pulled down
and having men call you a lot of raunchy things, having them pull your
hair and scratch you, there were the guys climbing Herndon and the women
sort of along the outside, arms folded, extremely angry, just watching it.
And this is the way the following three years proceeded from there.
Note how this traditional ritual has been transformed. For years, the Herndon
climb represented a right of passage ritual that symbolized solidarity and entry. It
is impossible for a single individual, or even a small group, to climb this monument
and attain the cover. The task requires combining skills of a larger group. For
years, it meant that the group of men who had suffered through so many trials
and confrontations in their ‘plebe’ year would solidify together to achieve the
goal. Once achieved, the group would publicly celebrate the ritualized transition
and prepare to pass on the challenges and hardships that they endured to the
incoming class of plebes. However, what we see in the story above is a displacement
and transformation of meaning, a re-drawing in the boundaries of inclusion and
exclusion. With the entry of women, the men are not just signalling achievement
into the next phase of the institution—the venerable status of midshipman with a
new level of rights and prerogatives not bestowed upon others with less status.
They are now signalling their restrictive licence as men. This transformation in
symbolic passage was not accidental or haphazard. Much thought and preparation
preceded it—matching shirts and head wear were prepared. Also, as other women
verified, high-ranking naval officers witnessed this event and did not intervene.
The Herndon climb has been transformed from an initiation ritual into what
Goffman (1979) called a gender advertisement, hyper-rituals that dramatically
exaggerate status differences between men and women. By making the biological
differences between men and women look more important than they need to be
(certainly the women could climb as high as the men), the confidence in the
gender order and the legitimacy of the men’s power status as ‘true professionals’
is reaffirmed.
Women’s gender strategies: adapting to a

hypermasculine culture
It is within this hostile climate that women must attempt to construct a secure
identity as women and as professionals. As the following accounts reveal, this is
often an uneasy balance to achieve. Foucault and poststructuralist approaches
decentre the individual as the origin and locus of meaning and focus upon discourse
systems that individuals draw upon to produce subjectivity (Foucault 1977;
Henriques et. al. 1984). Thus discourse assumes a central importance as a means
or set of strategic tools by which individuals ‘make sense’ of the world and learn
‘be in’ the world. The following section explores three of the discourses that
women draw upon to define their activities, negotiate their identities, and manage
status differences as members of a hypermasculinist professional culture. The
three gender strategies I will outline are the masculinizing strategy, the
accommodating strategy and the degendering strategy. I will also invoke the
labels that both men and women use to label these strategies: the ‘guy’, the ‘lady’
or ‘flirt’, and the ‘professional’.
Masculinizing strategies: ‘the guy’

Since traditional masculine practices are systematically valorized in this culture,
it is impossible for women not to display masculine discourse and practices in
some arenas. Through a series of tests, surveillance, ritual displays, every officer
is expected to display discipline and a ‘command presence’. Displaying a command
presence involves confident, strong tone of voice, determined physical and moral
stature, connotations that resonate with images of masculinity. Every woman in
this culture occasionally displays masculine practices:
You know I didn’t laugh a lot or joke around because I was very concerned
about acting too much like a girl so I totally went the opposite…I always
squared my shoulders and yelled as loud as I could. I tried to do everything
perfect and not let my guard down.
Complying with masculine norms requires a constant effort to be ‘perfect and

not let her guard down’. This naval officer chooses not to laugh or joke: such
164 Frank J.Barrett
behaviours might signify that she is flighty, or not serious enough, or is unable to
accept challenges, charges often associated with traditional conceptions of
femininity. She strives to shape her body just as a man would, standing straight,
squaring shoulders, deepening the voice. Such expansive gestures are a refusal to
comply with the imposed limitation of femininity that require women to be petite
and quiet (Brownmiller 1984).
Women naval officers are often the targets of trials that test whether they are
capable of the same endurance that men are expected to display. Many women
told stories of formative experiences during training in which men tested them
and provoked them by telling them ‘dirty’ jokes and used foul language to see
how they would react. For women officers who find themselves the target of such
ordeals, these are defining moments, a chance to demonstrate that they are fearless
and undaunted in the face of these trials. As one woman put it, ‘You just learn to
put up with it. I wouldn’t cry if it killed me.’
Demonstrating stoic endurance and refusal to display emotion under fire are
classic traits of masculinity (Seidler 1991). This ritual is similar to the working
men in Collinson’s (1988) study of an engineering culture in which men attempt
to secure a masculine identity and achieve group acceptance by tolerating degrading
and humiliating remarks. They demonstrate that they can ‘take it’ when they are
targeted by aggressive, critical, and disrespectful remarks. Following Fine (1986),
‘To ignore a joke, even though it makes you feel hurt or angry, shows strength
and coolness, two primary masculine ideals’ (Fine 1986:148). When engaging in
masculine displays, women seek to demonstrate that they too can ‘take it’, can
endure the same tests as men. What distinguishes this example is that women are
‘tested’ as women. They are the targets of foul language; a practice seen as a
traditional masculine preserve and an ‘unnatural’ activity for women. To pass
these tests is, then, to disassociate oneself from any vestige of traditional femininity,
to demonstrate that they too can ‘take it’.
Sometimes, women choose to extend masculine displays as a part of their
identity. They tend to wear their hair short, wear no makeup or jewellery, wear
unisex pants when out of uniform. When adapting this strategy, women suspend
the markers associated with the imposed limitations of femininity, particularly in
regard to the body. One woman interviewed discussed her refusal to exhibit
many behaviours that would signal femininity: ‘I wouldn’t raise my voice. I cut
my hair very short. I wore pants whenever I could. I even put on weight so I
didn’t have a girly shape.’ Women assume masculine markers as a way to
communicate that they want to be treated like a man. This woman continued:
‘The men get respect, so I wanted to look like one’.
For many, adopting masculine practices is a protest strategy, a refusal to comply
with definitions of woman as the ‘weaker sex’. Many women naval officers excel
at a sport, lift weights or master a martial art, a core feature of hegemonic
masculinity (Connell 1995). Such a display serves to demonstrate competence at
any task for which comparisons can be made to male officers, and to do so based
on the same categories: strength, endurance, logic, and discipline. Many women
echoed this officer who is motivated by a sense of resistance and desire to
demonstrate proficiency in the face of men’s assumptions of women’s inferiority:

‘I suppose there’s something in me that wants to prove them wrong. There’s
always that desire to prove them wrong and to do better and to succeed so that
they can see that they’re wrong.’
One woman recalls her experience in officers training: ‘I’d never drop out of
a run if it killed me. I kind of went through believing that I had to surpass all my
male classmates and I did. And that pissed them off.’ It is not enough for her to
do well when faced with a test, she feels driven to do very well, to overcome any
suspicion that she represents incompetence or frailty. In fact one woman said:
‘the military is filled with over-achieving women. We have to be extra-ordinary
just to be treated as ordinary’
Women who tend to extend these masculine discourse strategies insist that
women should be allowed to serve in combat positions, based on a similarity
argument, that is, there are no fundamental differences between men and women.
They insist that a woman who is physically fit is capable of physically beating
many men. When presented with the common argument that women should not
enter combat because they could be taken prisoner and sexually abused, women
sometimes respond that male prisoners are also raped. One woman argued that
the experience of being oppressed and sexually harassed in the Navy makes
them better prepared for sexual torture than men.
In Hunt’s (1984) study of a woman police officer’s effort to be accepted by
male peers, women often needed to adopt a combat personality, acting ‘crazy’
and taking unusual risks, including aggressive confrontations. Some women naval
officers have occasion to display aggression, roughness, courage, showing that
they ‘have balls’. They go to bars, parties, drink with the men. They participate
in the use of foul language and laugh at the dirty jokes. One woman went to bars
with the men as a way to ‘fit in’. She came to think of them as a ‘bunch of
brothers’ and went so far as to engage in the quintessential male behaviour—
violence:
This bar is a place where you do a lot of drinking. I was there with all these
guys, like a bunch of brothers, forty-eight hours of work with them and
then home to our barracks as a group, like family walking back and forth
each day. In order to fit in, I started drinking with the guys. And I remember
them daring me to hit someone. They thought I wouldn’t have the guts to
do it; they were wrong! And I knocked someone off his chair and after that
I was accepted—one of the gang.
Engaging in uncivil and improper behaviour is an occasion for the display of

masculine traits and an opportunity to achieve status. As in Fine’s (1986) study
of the ‘dirty play of little boys’, this behaviour does not represent a personal,
destructive impulse as much as a ‘showing off’ in the presence of others (Fine
1986:140). In this culture, women experience contradictory pressures that create
considerable self-doubt. In an effort to be accepted by men, women often feel
pulled to engage in traditionally male practices—using foul language, drinking,
166 Frank J.Barrett
engaging in violent displays. These practices temporarily ease the self-doubt and
restore a sense of belonging. However, for most, this feeling is only temporary.
When men witness ‘guys’ demonstrating traits that have traditionally been
the exclusive rights of men, they sometimes express surprise and often, acceptance.
One woman who adopted a ‘guy’ demeanour recalls:
I remember I went out on my first flight and I did really well but I remember
one of the crew, he had to be ordered to fly with me because he had protested
to his boss that he’d leave the Navy if it meant putting his life in the hands
of a woman pilot. But he went because he was told he’d be court-martialled
if he refused a direct order. After we got back he was saying, ‘She’s ok, she
can really fly that bird!’ And it really broke the ice.
Another man officer reported that during training he had vehemently resisted
the admittance of women into the infrantry squad, only surprised to discover
that an attractive woman could display ‘masculine’ characteristics:
One of the girls was very attractive. Until she proved she had the fortitude,
she was seen as an attractive object. This one had got a degree in engineering,
she was smart, tough. If someone made a joke about her she’d fire back
immediately. She never made her womanhood an issue.
A transformation of meanings occurs here. This attractive ‘girl’ defies the men’s
gendered expectations that she might be less capable, reticent, weak, spinning
excuses and tales of victimization to get out of hard work: he notices that she is
smart, tough, and studies engineering. Because this woman exhibited ‘guy’
behaviours, (such as confidence, assertiveness, competence) and she is not offended
by men’s playful banter, but ‘fires back’ at them without complaining, she is
accepted by the officers in this squad. Sometimes men officers compliment women’s
professionalism in masculinized terms. As one put it: ‘I liked working with her.
She was just like a guy.’
Accommodating femininity: ‘the lady’

In their attempts to fit into a masculine professional environment such as the US
Navy, some women employ an accommodating strategy, one consonant with the
image of ‘preferred femininity’ (Connell 1987). Women who adapt this strategy
are often referred to as ‘ladies’. Sometimes they are referred to as ‘flirts’, a
demeaning term in this culture, but used by both men and women to refer to
women officers who appear to exhibit traditional female sex-role behaviours.
This accommodating gender strategy is marked by a tone of co-operation,
compliance, an attempt not to threaten men’s sense of competence or superiority.
Some women consistently identify with this strategy one that is congruent
with the traditional female sex role. They feel that women do not belong in
combat, sometimes citing women’s physical weakness, non-warrior mentality, or
the fear the women could be taken prisoner and raped. These women are less
likely to be focused on career-promotion in the Navy and often choose to leave in
order to raise a family. They tend to emphasize traditional feminine traits in dress
and appearance. When not in formal uniform, they tend to wear make-up, stylized
finger nails, and hair styles that accentuate a feminine appearance. One woman
officer said:
I never try to be one of the boys, use foul language, get drunk. I had a
captain like that. She was a guy in every way. Everybody thought she was
a dyke. She scared me. She was so rough. I’m a lady. I was raised to be a
lady I don’t want to lose my femininity. I wear dresses, I wear make-up, I
like being a woman. I like it when men open the door for me. I like it when
they compliment the way I look.
In contrast, some women felt compelled to adopt feminine strategies to contradict

the masculine norms they observed daily while on duty. They spoke of the
enjoyment of wearing a dress, perfume and high heels as if they were temporarily
escaping the burden of masculine uniforms. One woman described how she and
her friends adopted feminine displays to win men’s attention:
We were very feminine, or tried to be. We would wear make up and we

would wear pretty underwear. We would wear perfume and we would be
very feminine…We were faced everyday with the guys talking about their
beautiful girlfriends, with their longhair (original emphasis).
Women who prefer this gender strategy view women who adopt masculinizing
strategies with caution. One said, ‘I stay away from Judy the Amazon Lady. She
scares me’. They accuse them of being too hard and cold, sometimes openly
suspicious that they must be lesbians:
I know the kind that are ‘guys’. They frighten me. They are so hard core
and unfeeling. Men wonder about them. They don’t like them. The guys
will come up and ask me sometime, ‘Do you think she’s a dyke?’ I wonder
too. The ones who are married, I wonder how, how could they be? They’re
so rough. I’m so feminine, how do they shut off?
Often women who consistently adopt this discursive strategy tend to take on
extra collateral duties consistent with a feminine-nurturer role. They often take
responsibility for putting on parties, organizing social functions, ordering cakes
to celebrate co-workers’ birthdays. Sometimes such women openly seek men’s
approval and attention. Not surprisingly, ‘ladies’ tend to get along well with some
men in this culture. In this sense, this feminine strategy does not threaten the
male ego or sense of identity as strong protector, thereby upholding a paternalistic
masculinity in the organization (Kerfoot and Knights 1993). Many men maintain
friendly, co-operative relations with them, socialize with them and make an effort
168 Frank J.Barrett
to help them. Some women openly acknowledge using feminine sex role
behaviours as a strategy to appease men, admitting that they ‘play dumb’ to get
men’s attention or co-operation:
I had a guy I worked for, an old submarine guy who was on his last tour.
He’d been in the Navy over 30 years. This was his last tour. I came in with
this professional attitude, I wanted to do the job well. I wanted to project that
image. This man did nothing but harp on me. He’d give me things to do, but
was never satisfied with what I did. I noticed we got this new female officer
in and she just charmed him. He didn’t give half the grief. She’d use this high
squeaky voice, playing innocent like ‘oh really? Oh, okay sir.’ She’d come
into the back office and we’d both laugh. So I decided to try it. The next time
I just charmed him and played dumb and innocent and it was very effective.
All of a sudden he liked me and treated me much better.
Unlike those women naval officers who adopt an overt ‘professional’ strategy
and who remain aloof, ‘ladies’ appear to others, especially those in authority, as
acting excessively friendly and warm. ‘Ladies’ appear deferential to male officers
and refrain from angry challenges. These women tend not to confront men who
tell explicitly sexual jokes or remarks. Some appear to enjoy the sexual teasing
and the attention that comes with it. Some see that sexual harassment as the fault
of a few immature men and attribute their behaviour to natural urges. As one
said, ‘Boys will be boys’. Some ‘ladies’ adopt innovative non-confrontive strategies
to deal with sexual harassment. They are sometimes seen as tactful, strategic,
and flexible. For them it is important to get along with men and therefore they
tend not to resort to behaviours that might harm the fabric of the relationship:
I’m usually more direct but you have to kind of roll with the punches a little
bit. Rather than making an issue of everything that’s said, kind of roll with it
or counter it with something sarcastic or just say things back to kind of get
their attention. You know, not pointing out to them ‘Hey, what you said was
stupid’, but ‘Hey, what about so and so?’ Just kind of tactfully work things
in about how you feel rather than putting your finger on somebody’s nose
and saying ‘Look pal, this isn’t gonna work.’ I think that men, when you
point things out to them directly, are more apt to either do it again intentionally
or totally tune you out. Whereas, if you’re kind of tactful and work things
into the conversation, then you get along OK (original emphasis).
While this strategy of ‘ladies’ tending to tactfully negotiate their interactions so as

to maintain friendly relations with men may work with some men in this culture,
other men confide that they have less than complete respect for these women as
naval officers. Although as noted, many men maintain friendly, cooperative relations
with ‘ladies’, they implicitly disrespect their competence and ability to withstand
stress. Some male officers confide that ‘some women, like Laura and Mary, are
flirts…they are really nice and everything, but they play dumb in order to get us to
help them’. One male officer, referring to a ‘flirt’ said, ‘Terry’s okay on the shore,
but she’d never cut it on sea duty. She’d break a nail.’
Women adopting accommodating strategies of ‘niceness’, are engaging in what
Kandioty (1988) refers to as ‘patriarchal bargains’; micro-interactions in which
both men and women acquiesce to existing gender patterns. In this sense, they
do not challenge the norms of hegemonic masculinity that define notions of
professionalism and the power relations within the Navy’s gender regime.
Degendering strategy: ‘the professional’

The third discursive strategy that women draw upon is to create a neutral
‘professional’ demeanour. This strategy is an attempt to disavow associations
with either group of gender markers. Unlike those who adapt a masculine strategy,
those who construct a ‘degendered’ strategy do not attempt to penetrate masculine
borders, nor do they seek to be identified with traditional feminine norms. These
women seek to meet every conceivable expectation that the organization places
on them, to the letter of the rule. They seek to perform their tasks perfectly, to be
above reproach so that, as one put it, ‘no one can accuse us of taking the easy way
out because we’re girls’. As a result, they make an attempt to meet every
requirement, to show up for every meeting and not seek exceptional treatment.
As one woman said, she needs to be vigilant in regard to any behaviour that
could be construed as seeking favours from men:
If the CO or XO exempted me from an AOM [All Officers Meeting] because

it was about aviation stuff or they were going to get chewed out for some
dumb aviation stuff they did. It was like, ‘Oh, sure, did you bat your eyes
real nice to get out of this one?’ And even though they all knew I didn’t
play those games, it was still uncomfortable to be put in the same category
as someone who did.
Adopting this strategy involves creating an aloofness and emotional distance from
men. As one put it, ‘I made a real effort to never be too palsy, joking around or
stuff. I was always on very professional terms with them.’ Women avoid situations
that might be interpreted as sexual or overly friendly. Conscious of sending ‘the
wrong signal’, they tend to avoid situations where alcohol is present for fear of
appearing to invite friendly encounters with men.
Some women officers consciously use aloofness as a strategy to teach men
how to relate to them appropriately, to signal to them not to mistreat or undermine
them. One young woman officer had learned that her age and appearance made
her vulnerable to men’s advances:
I make it a point to be sure that when I arrive at a command or when I

meet new men, I mention my boyfriend’s name so that they know I’m off
limits. I make sure that his name slips into the conversation often. Even
those times when I don’t have a boyfriend, I tell them that I do.
170 Frank J.Barrett
Unlike many male officers who regularly discuss their private lives, when adopting
a professional strategy, women are choosing to separate private and public life.
Yet a woman who wants to be seen as a ‘professional’ in this culture faces a
paradox. She desires to guard against behaviours that reproduce the inequity of
traditional sex roles. However, following the rules of bureaucratic rank, she is
required to obey her superiors, most of whom are male. Some women adopt
inventive strategies to communicate dissatisfaction with male superiors thus
avoiding confrontation. One woman relayed an incident that occured when she
was an administrative officer at a training centre:
The XO [the executive officer] asked me to clean the coffee mugs. He had
people in his office drinking coffee. He came out and asked me to wash the
coffee mugs out. He really liked me and didn’t want me to leave because I
had gotten the place so well organized. When I returned the mugs, I left a
note in his that said ‘Tips are appreciated if you are going to treat me like a
waitress.’ We never talked about it again and he never asked me to do
something like that again. I was very mad. But I was a junior lieutenant
and he was a captain. I had to make a joke about it because he’s very
political. Otherwise I wouldn’t get listened to. He knew I was upset.
Like most women in this culture who do administrative tasks, this woman has a
delicate boundary to manage. A woman doing administrative work for a male
boss connotes an association of the boss/secretary relationship. She needs to invent
a response that at once upholds the requirements of organizational protocol but
simultaneously expresses dissatisfaction. She needs to engage in a status
management in such a way as to ensure she does not lose face.
One of the dilemmas for those who pursue a professional identity through
aloofness is that they have difficulty creating good working relationships with
men. They refrain from playful banter, sociability, and the display of affect, all
signals that might be seen as invitations to men. Male officers often interpret
women’s aloofness and efforts to be above reproach as ‘ballbusting’ and ‘bitchiness’.
As one male officer put it: ‘Laura and Kathy are so concerned with being so-
called professional. They’re a pain in the ass. They’re always out to prove
something, to show what they know.’ One male surface warfare officer told a
story of his experience with a woman who he thought was trying too hard to
demonstrate professional competence and remained cold and aloof, hardly
acknowledging the men. He was serving bridge duty when women from a tender
ship (a vessel that supports the combat fleet with supplies or repair capability),
came on board to perform some exercises:
Once we had these women come over from a tender ship to do some
exercises on our bridge. This one woman was out of control, like she knew
everything. She had this attitude, like ‘I already know all that.’ We were
thinking, get this idiot out of here. We’re trying to help her. But of course
you can’t say that to a woman. If it were a man, we wouldn’t have tolerated
that attitude. After she left, we all talked about her, said what a bitch. We
spend all this time at sea, she comes out here and she knows everything.
It was not only the woman’s apparent determination to demonstrate what she
knew that alienated this man, as well as others on the ship. There is none of the
playfulness, banter, inquisitive exchanges between the men and women who might
adapt a different gender strategy. Further, there is little possibility of repairing the
relationship: this male officer now feels that he cannot help her understand the
intricacies of steering this ship and cannot let her know that her interpersonal
demeanour does not fit in this culture. There is no recourse to ease the tension
through teasing or a joking relationship (Radcliffe-Brown 1952), resources that
are readily available between men. If it were a man, this male officer said he
would freely tell him to ‘knock it off’.
This points to one of the dilemmas facing those women who work at sustaining
their professional demeanour in this masculinist setting. While some women
may well win men’s respect by demonstrating confidence, competence and
endurance through this strategy, they also sometimes alienate the very men whose
support they need in order to develop the knowledge necessary to acquire
competence. Often they are not party to insider information through informal
social interaction, an important source of privileged knowledge in this culture.
Men are less likely to ‘take them under their wing’, give them tips about how to
handle the pressures of the job. Further, because they have less informal
socialization, they do not learn when and how to bend the rules.
Conclusion
Succeeding as an officer in the US Navy is difficult for anyone. But women face
barriers and obstacles that men do not face. Most women would prefer to be treated
equally on the job, to adopt professionally acceptable performance strategies similar
to men. But they do not have the same freedom to manoevre, the same access to
informal socialization, the same opportunities to make mistakes, and until recently,
the same access to prestigious jobs. While the women who were interviewed for this
sample expected to be assuming limited (non-combat) roles, they were unprepared
for the degree of hostility and challenges they were to meet in their careers.
As outsiders in this culture, they are confronted with a paradox. On the one
hand, every military officer should be the same—strong, wilful, disciplined,
confident, unemotional—traits associated with masculinity. In this light, women
are subject to many of the same tests that men are subject to. However, women
cannot go too far in being like men, or else they are seen as ‘unnatural’. If a
woman engages too extensively in ‘masculine’ behaviours, she risks being cast
by both men and women—as a lesbian. Women face a core contradiction in this
culture: the more that men witness women successfully ‘doing masculinity’, the
more they are vulnerable to charges of lesbianism. Other women, anxious to
disassociate from such a label and assert their heterosexual identity, might also
collude in targeting other women officers as lesbians.
172 Frank J.Barrett
On the other hand, women receive messages that tell them that they are
different. From the different uniforms that occasionally emphasize their femininity
to the different physical fitness requirements and non-access to operational
specialties, they receive the message that they are not expected to be the same as
men. But if they choose to conform with the traditional images of femininity,
they can risk going too far in this endeavour as well. Women who rely regularly
on an accommodation cannot then use feminine strategies as they would not
respected as ‘true professionals’ by men or women. They are accused of using
their sexuality to manipulate and flirt their way through the organization. Men
suspect that such women officers are prone to traditional ‘feminine’ behaviours,
such as crying, expressing emotions, deference—behaviours that are severely
marginalized and deemed unacceptable in this professional community. This can
lead to a cycle of deteriorating performance: the woman is not taken as seriously,
she has fewer opportunities to interact and learn, she experiences more self-doubt
and less confidence in her ability to perform which leads to fewer displays of
confidence and fewer opportunities.
Some women seek to resolve this paradox by disassociating with either gender
pole and adopting a perceived ‘gender neutral’ strategy, one which lays stress on
an ‘aloof professionalism’. However, this strategy also exacts a price. Such women
officers often alienate men and have no access to informal interaction, an
indispensable source of learning in this culture. Given that many men see them
more as women than as naval officers, it is no wonder that many women feel
they are prone to being cast as stereotypes rather than individuals. For women
officers to ‘do gender’ is, then, a delicate balancing act. They need to display
enough femininity so that they are not considered lesbian, yet if they display too
much femininity they are not considered credible leaders. In this way professional
identification remains a fragile if not elusive identification for women Naval officers,
caught as they are in the complex web that defines and structures the gender
order of the US Navy.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Bob Connell, Nancy Roberts, Gail Fann Thomas,
Reuben Harris, Bill van Buskirk and Bill Haga for comments on an earlier draft.
Notes
1 In 1994, the general unrestricted line designation was eliminated. Most who held
this designation were newly designated fleet support.
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10 Omega’s story
The heterogeneous engineering of a
gendered professional self
Attila Bruni and Silvia Gherardi1
Introduction
What makes us who we are within the particular historical gender arrangements
and organizational culture dominating the community of practices to which we
feel that we belong? How do we learn to embody and enact the gendered
professional selves required by and considered appropriate to particular workplace
situations?
Answering such apparently simple questions becomes more complex once we
abandon essentializing modes of thought about gender and identity for a
conception of them as cultural achievements located in material and semiotic
practices. This shift entails the treatment of notions such as culture, organization,
identity, gender and knowledge not as ‘substances’ but as ‘achievements’ performed
in—and through—sociotechnical relations.
In fact, the notion of individual identity, with fixed and enduring properties,
has been problematized as a modern institution (MacIntyre 1980), while the
features of a post-modern concept of identity have been outlined as constituted
theatrically through role-playing, image construction (Rorty 1989), and
performativity (Butler 1990, 1999). The autonomous self of the romantic and
modernist tradition, the centre of consciousness, the agent par excellence, has been
relativized and dismissed as conviction, as a way of talking, as a product of
conversation. The ongoing idea of a relational self situated in actual performances
and discursive practices produces the notion of self-identity as a narrative (Giddens
1991), the self as story teller (Bruner 1990), identity as performance of
autobiographical acts (Czarniaswka-Joerges 1995) and identity as a ‘cyborg’
(Haraway 1991), an unstable assembly of human and non-human elements.
Identity can thus be analysed as the product, unstable and only partly under the
individual’s control, of what Law calls a ‘heterogeneous engineering’ which
arranges human and non-human elements into a stable artefact. Following John
Law we can assume that:
Each one of us is an arrangement. That arrangement is more or less fragile.

There are ordering processes which keep (or fail to keep) that arrangement
Omega’s story 175
on the road. And some of those processes, though precious few, are partially
under our control some of the time.
(Law 1994:33; original emphasis)
Continuing this line of thought, and assuming a sensibility moulded by anti-

essentialist assumptions inspired by ‘actor-network theory’, we may state that
identity is the effect of a network of relations which give material form and
stability to an artefact. Identity therefore is not a substance but an enactment
performed into being as heterogeneous practices are engineered into an action
net. The idea is not that enactments are deliberate and motivated performances—
even though they may partly be such—but that subjectivity and objectivity are
produced together. Performativity and belonging are concepts central to the
feminist debate (Bell 1999; McNay 1999), and ‘actor-network theory’ has
borrowed them for the purpose of problematizing the notions of subject and
agency.
These processes have not yet been satisfactorily identified and described
empirically, for several reasons. In the first instance because a theory of
identity as performativity is still in its infancy, given that the concept was first
introduced by Judith Butler (1990, 1999) and further developed within an
actor-network sensibility (Law 1994). In second instance the organizational
literature on culture and gender—even in its interpretative and symbolist
tradition—was largely gender blind until the poststructuralist and postcolonial
turn (Calàs and Smircich 1996). As a consequence, few attempts have been
made to conduct empirical research intended to describe how performativity
is accomplished in practice.
The aim of this chapter is to describe the attribution and stabilization of
a gendered professional identity to a young woman as the effect of her
performance in an actor-network. In learning how to master professional
practices, a novice learns how to enact the professional identity that his/her
community of practice judges appropriate to the situation at hand.
Workplace learning is therefore a social and situated process that takes
place in a context of participation. It may be described as ‘unhampered
participation in a meaningful situation’ (Illich 1971) involving commonplace
discursive and practical activities. From this point of view, learning is a
social process which takes place within a community of practitioners and is
mediated by artefacts; it is not a cognitive process. Lave and Wenger are
the main exponents of so-called ‘situated learning theory’, and they define
a community of practice as:
a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in
relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice. A
community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of
knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretative support necessary
for making sense of its heritage.
(Lave and Wenger 1991:98)
176 Attila Bruni and Silvia Gherardi
Knowing is therefore a matter of displaying competencies defined in social

communities (Wenger 2000) and negotiating our belonging to them (Bell 1999).
A community of practice may represent the appropriate organizational level for
analysing the culture of practice which produces, maintains, reproduces and
changes the values, norms, symbols, rituals and artefacts that sustain a professional
identity. Since organizational cultures ‘do gender’ and have codes for performing
professional gendered identities which differ greatly even within the same
organization (Gherardi 1995), the analytical level of the community of practice is
the one which enables study of the arrangements and the ordering processes
which keep (or fail to keep) a professional identity aligned. Practice is a concept
which articulates both the spatiality and the fabrication of knowing, and reconciles
doing with being (Gherardi 2000). It is starting from a situated practice that a
community of practices takes form as an actor network of more or less precarious
and partial accomplishments of order.
The community of practices we studied consists of four persons responsible
for a long-standing consultancy project within a branch office of an international
consulting company. We ‘shadowed’ a young woman for three months during
her affiliation to a group of men.
The status of novice is a vantage point for getting to know a culture of practice
and for forgetting how it was done. For Schutz (1971), the phenomenological
understanding of the status of novice parallels that of the ‘stranger’, who is better
equipped to construe another culture because s/he does not belong to it. In the
shift from novice to expert—in the acquisition of affiliation—innocence is lost and
the knowledge thus acquired is taken for granted and no longer seen. We shall
describe how acquiring a professional identity is a construction that conceals its
genesis. In learning how to belong, the tacit and collective agreements that perform
and sustain a professional and gendered identity within a community of practices
is obscured and taken for granted.
Central to the description will be the performance of a gender identity situated
in a context of work practices connoted as a male dominated environment. The
ethnographic study of the trajectory of becoming an insider in a community
of practice will report what happens when the insider is female, and when
aligning a gender identity and a professional identity requires competence and
experience to cope with the requirements of the ‘dual presence’, i.e. the ability
to stage both a professional self and a gendered one. This ability will be described
as competence in gender switching, i.e. in positioning oneself discursively as
the masculine subject, or not, according to the situation at hand. When
competence in crossing gender boundaries is achieved, then the practicalities
of how to do it and the associated emotions become ‘black boxed’ and the tension
comes to a closure.
The knowledge yielded by the article should therefore be twofold. On the one
hand the intention is to continue reflection in gender studies which consider
gender to be a practical accomplishment (West and Zimmerman 1987), a
persuasive performance (Gherardi 1994, 1995). On the other hand the intention
is to offer a critical contribution, based on a practice-base theorizing of knowing
Omega’s story 177
(Gherardi 2000) to studies on communities of practice, since these to date have

not considered gender to be one of the social practices of a community and a
body of practical knowledge learnt and transmitted internally within it.
Professional identity as a network effect

The ‘decentering of the subject’ has been one of the major achievements of post-
structuralism, and for many feminist poststructuralists (Butler 1990; Calàs and
Smirchich 1996) it is only in the dynamics of inter subjectivity and interobjectivity
that the subject’s gender and sexual identity is achieved, even if such ‘identity’ is
always contingent and precarious. Therefore the social agent can be thought of
as being constituted by an ensemble of subject positions that:
can never be totally fixed in a closed system of differences, constructed by

a diversity of discourses among which there is no necessary relation, but a
constant movement of over-determination and displacement.
(Mouffe 1995:318)
Consequently, every subject positioning (Davis and Harré 1990) is constituted

within an essentially unstable discursive structure. An actor-network approach
has another dimension to add to this debate: the materiality of the practices
which perform the subjectivity.
Actor-network theory (ANT) is a ‘relationally materialist sociology’ (Law, 1994)
which conceives the subject as an effect generated in a network of heterogeneous
materials. Even if materiality was already present in Foucault’s (1977, 1984)
definition of discourse, it becomes more radical in actor network theory: ‘an
agent is a network of different materials, a process of ordering that we happen to
label “a person”’ (Law 1994:24). Then how that effect is generated becomes an
important topic to address in empirical research. For this purpose we may take a
definition of ANT which focuses on method, or in Latour’s terms (1999:20), ‘a
crude method to learn from the actors without imposing on them an a priori
definition of their world-building capacities’. Under Latour’s definition, ANT is
a theory that states that we can obtain more by following circulations than by
defining entities or essences. As Gomart and Hennion (1999) have done in their
study of music amateurs and drug users, instead of focusing on capacities inherent
in a subject, we may observe the emergence of a subject-network through the
tactics and techniques deployed in situated practices. Latour has noted:
Subjectivity seems also to be a circulating capacity, something that is

particularly gained or lost by hooking up to certain bodies of practice.
In order to understand how identity is generated we shall examine the
practices—both material and discursive—which support a subject position,
since practice is the theoretical and material locus which articulates doing
and being.
(Latour 1999:23, original emphasis)
Although we borrow the concept of ‘community of practice’ from Lave and Wenger
(1991) and Wenger (1998), we intend to criticize their concept of identity and to
point out their neglect of gender. Wenger’s book opens with a vignette describing
a community of practice from the standpoint of a participant, Ariel, a claims
processor, who is said to be a woman but is composite in character. We know
nothing about the gender composition of her co-workers, nor when reading about
identity (to which one-third of the book is devoted) do we learn anything about
the negotiability of gender or associated issues. It appears that a community of
practice transmits a neutral code of professional identity. When Wenger asserts
that learning is the vehicle for the evolution of practices and the inclusion of
newcomers, and that it is the vehicle for the development and transformation of
identities, he refers to theories of identity as the stable social formation of the
person in a context of mutual constitution between individuals and groups. By
contrast, relying on ANT and poststructuralist theories of identity, our aim is to
demonstrate how understanding gender identity and professional identity as
practical accomplishments within a community of practice contributes to an anti-
individualistic and anti-essentialist theory of knowledge.
We therefore assume that gender identity, too, is a precarious achievement
and that it is learnt and enacted in appropriate situations (Gherardi 1995).
Moreover, professional identity, as a collective achievement, can, or cannot, be
coherently inscribed in the same symbolic universe as gender identity.
The culture of practice expresses the codes for a situated professionalism at
the level of artefacts, of behaviours, of ethics and symbols. Absorbing and been
absorbed into the culture of practice may require knowing:
who is involved, what they do, what everyday life is like, how masters talk,
walk, work, and generally conduct their lives, how people who are not part
of the community of practice interact with it, what other learners are doing,
and what learners need to learn to became full practitioners.
(Lave and Wenger 1991:95)
But we should consider that organizational cultures are not gender neutral, and
that also ‘professional identities’ are therefore forged within gendered practices
which may be more or less sexist. Here we shall examine the dual presence in the
case of ‘crosswise’ presence (Lorber 1999), since we are interested in understanding
how gender identity and professional identity are handled when they clash, as
often happens when a professional woman enters a male-dominated culture of
practices.
The ‘dual presence’ (Balbo 1979; Zanuso 1987) is a category invented by
Italian feminists in the 1970s to indicate cross-gender experiences and the
simultaneous presence (in the consciousness and experience of women) of the
public and the private, of home and work, of the personal and the political. The
expression ‘dual presence’ denotes a frame of mind which typifies a growing
number of adult women who think of themselves in ‘crosswise’ manner with
respect to different worlds—material and symbolic—conceived as differently
Omega’s story 179
gendered and in opposition to each other: public/private, the family/the labour

market, the personal/the political, the places of production/the places of
reproduction (Zanuso 1987:43). More and more women find themselves operating
in a plurality of arenas in social practices; they break with traditional role models;
they create a space which is practical and mental, structural and projectual, adaptive
to given constraints and productive of new personal and social arrangements. In
short, the boundaries between the symbolic universes of male and female became
fluid, negotiable, they intersect and they merge. Handling the dual presence may
therefore be conceived as a practical capacity, a skilful practice of gender enactment.
The concept of dual presence enables us to deconstruct essential gender
identities and to recognize the contingency and ambiguity of every identity and
the political conflicts associated with the permeability of boundaries between
female and male symbolic universes. In the ethnographic study described below
we shall describe the modes of handling the dual presence by a professional
woman, and we shall show how she resolved to assume (or reject) a ‘masculine
subject position’. For Kerfoot and Whitehead (1998:436), ‘the term “masculine
subject” best exemplifies those men, and women, who seek to invest their sense
of being in masculinist discourses’ (see also Whitehead 2002). We like the idea
that the masculine subject positioning may be assumed either by men or women.
But we prefer to see this process in more dynamic terms as a temporal and fluid
enactment which sometime aligns the person and the subject position within the
same symbolic universe of gender, sometime fails to do so, and sometimes create
new crosswise hybrids.
The concept of the masculine subject as a performative accomplishment allows
us to see masculinity as a practice and not an attribute. Patricia Martin
(forthcoming) proposes the concept of ‘mobilizing masculinities’ in interpretation
of ‘the practices wherein two or more men jointly bring to bear, or bring into
play, masculinity/ies’. In mobilizing masculinity/ies at work men may mobilize
the material and discursive codes of practice of the profession. The ritualistic
repetition of these normalized codes gives materiality to belonging to the
community and may explain the persistence of masculinist discourses, jokes,
behaviours, styles even in mixed gender practices. The counterpart of mobilizing
masculinity becomes competence in handling the dual presence.
Taken together these are all practices of heterogeneous engineering of gender
and professional identity. We shall describe them by means of an ethnographic
account of how gender is learnt and enacted as a situated practice, and of how
the codes of a professional gendered identity are passed on to a novice.
An ethnographic approach to gendered practices

The focus of the study was the ethnographic observation of the trajectory of
learning of a novice in a community of practice, since at the time we were interested
in the circulation of organizational knowing, and in organizations as distributed
communities of knowledge. The organization studied was a branch office in
northern Italy of an international company (‘Alpha’2) which divided into two
large groups providing consultancy services on tax and organization. It was the
latter that was the specific context of research. It was selected for study because
of the knowledge-intensive nature of the organization: since ‘expertise’ is the
central aspect of organizational consultancy, we expected to observe a community
which based its main practices on the management of knowledge, and we had no
expectations nor hypotheses regarding the relationship between gender and
knowledge.
In order to observe the learning of work practices, it was decided to flank—or
to ‘shadow’—a newly-hired employee. By coincidence, the management of Alpha
had selected a team which was about start a new project and had also just hired
a young woman for her first job as consultant. If the newly-hired employee had
been a man, this article would probably never have been written. In research as
in life, plans and surprises are inextricably linked, and following casuality can be
a research rationale (Becker 1994)
The employee was shadowed through every stage of the consultancy project.
For ten weeks, three days a week, one of the two authors (the male) followed the
Analyst in the office, on visits to the client, and in other organizational situations,
so that her process of learning could be watched in itinere. In the case of this
organization, in fact, newly-hired personnel are immediately involved in the
management of a consultancy project, working with a group of several expert
consultants. The path followed by a newcomer forms a situated curriculum
(Gherardi et al. 1998) of acquisition of practical knowing of the group’s codes of
practice, and it is through work practices that the novice may legitimately assume
the professional identity intrinsic to those practices and recognized as competent
behaviour by the group.
The community of practice studied consisted of the following:
• Omega, the Analyst (a young woman, 27 years old, recently hired by the
company);
• Delta, a ‘Consultant’ (a young man, 29 years old, hired in the past two years,
but who was already experienced);
• Gamma, a ‘Manager’ (a man, about 40 years old, an expert consultant who
closely supervised every phase of the project);
• Beta, a ‘Partner’ (a man, about 40 years old, an expert consultant in charge
of the project and who ‘signed’ the project agreed with the client’).
We would emphasize that gender difference was an important factor in the

ethnographic observation in that as the researcher (male) sought to adopt the
perspective of the novice (female), he contaminated his sense of male self. In
postmodern ethnography, the relationship between the observer and the subject
observed is a reflexive reciprocal construction. Reflexive ethnography uses data
collection techniques which respect the subjectivity of the Other, combined with
critical social theoretical ideas. The relation between the ethnographer and the
subject observed is a relation of reciprocal implication and participation: while
the researcher observes, s/he is observed, so that ethnography can be viewed as
Omega’s story 181
the result of a textual collaboration, as the outcome of this dual hermeneutic

process. The ethnographer is considered to be engaged in a symmetrical reflective
exercise (Linstead 1993) and, far from being an ‘alien’, the ethnographer conveys
cultural assumptions and preconceptions, and enjoys an active presence which
makes his/her role different from that of the ‘professional stranger’ (Agar 1980)
as an ‘uncontaminated expert’ (Van Maanen 1988; Tedlock 1991). ‘Shadowing’
someone of a different gender from one’s own, for example, may be an opportunity
which reveals the gender bias acting in the relationship.
When presenting our field observations we will give voice to Omega by
drawing on an interview recorded during the last day of our fieldwork using
the technique of the ‘interview with the double’. The ‘interview with the double’
is a projective technique (Oddone et al. 1977; Gherardi, 1990, 1995) in which
the interviewee is invited to imagine that s/he has a double and sends him/her
into the office in his/her place. The interviewee must therefore instruct his/her
double on what s/he should and should not do in order to prevent the switch
being noticed. The text of the interview (which has been abridged for reasons
of space) will sometimes be interrupted by ‘text boxes’. These are excerpts from
the ethnographic notes taken during the shadowing. In the text, the researcher’s
speech is enclosed in brackets, while Omega’s is written in italics. The ‘text boxes’
can be read in another sense: to paraphrase Latour’s use of the term, in the
creation of a professional identity as an effect of an actor network all kinds of
ambiguities, conflict, ambivalent emotions are forgotten (text-boxed) after the
closure or completion of the project. And also for the ethnographer the text-
boxes represent the location of his reflexive labour.
We would emphasize that this format is not intended to suggest that the
ethnographer’s point of view is ‘truer’, or that it is objective while Omega’s
is not. Quite the opposite. We believe that the same situation can be
interpreted in a variety of ways, and that it is much more interesting to
dwell on the relations among these interpretations, rather than to assert
their ultimate truth. The ethnography is one of several possible stories—
more ‘plausible’ than ‘true’ and intended to emphasize inconsistencies and
contradictions, rather than a model’s adherence to reality. Every
ethnography is ‘essentially contestable’ and ‘intrinsically incomplete’, to
quote Geertz (1973:29), and it is practically impossible to ‘step outside’
one’s own research experience to adopt a ‘professionalized distance’, as
suggested by Silverman (1972:189). Ultimately, the reason for ‘selecting one
methodological approach over another is an issue of aesthetic choice,
involved more with what a researcher desires to study than with how she or
he will do it’ (Rosen 1991:21; original emphasis).
Practices of gendered signification

Omega has just been hired by Alpha. She has a degree in business studies and
has already completed a six-month internship (while preparing her degree thesis)
at Alpha. One month after graduating she officially began her job at the company.
Two months have passed and Omega has completed her first consultancy project.
It is my last day of ‘shadowing’, and I ask Omega if we can go over what has
happened in an interview.
Being Omega’s double in Alpha

‘Let’s pretend that I am your double…I want to know what I have to do so that
no-one realizes that I am not you.’
Right…you have to go into the office on the ground floor and say ‘ciao
(name of the person in the lobby)’; go upstairs and say ‘ciao Sigma’, ‘ciao
Tau’ (two secretaries)…then you have to go to a free desk and put down
your computer, your briefcase, your hand-bag…
Text box 1
Together with an ‘identification number’, on the first day of work each
consultant receives a large briefcase made of maroon leather with the Alpha
logo gilded on the inside. Together with the portable computer, this
briefcase constitutes the consultant’s essential equipment. Each briefcase
contains pens, pencils, stationery, a notebook, and various documents.
Omega only kept her briefcase for half an hour and then gave it to Delta,
who wanted to have a new one. In any case, she did not like it because
it was cumbersome, had little room inside, had to be kept away from the
body because of its bulk and could not be slung over the shoulder. They
gave it to me because they said it was comfortable…but as long as they tell me that
I have to carry it like part of the uniform, that’s all right, but if they tell me its comfort-
able…
‘So I go into the staff room and where there’s a place I sit down?’
That’s right, you sit down, put your things on the desk and switch on your
computer. You switch on your computer and the first thing you do is check
your e-mail…to see if someone has sent you a memo…it often happens in
the evening that the managers or the people you work with send you memos
from home, so you read them the next morning…(…) You stay there a
couple of hours or even more, then at about half past ten you go up to the
third floor, you get some water and you bring it downstairs, you say hello
to everyone who comes into the staff room, the managers…(…)there may
be other people who know the projects you do and ask for details…
Omega’s story 183
Text box 2
On the first day, a consultant comes into the staff room to advise Omicron
(a man, also just hired) to ‘draw inspiration’ from a presentation that he
had just prepared for a project similar to the one that Omicron is developing.
Omicron says that the consultant is highly qualified and also very likeable.
Beside work information, in fact, he circulates games, files of images and
porno clips.
‘Do you greet everyone in the same way?’
Yes, yes, a ‘ciao, how’s it going?’, cool…, and at about ten to one, a
quarter to, your stomach tells you its time to go to lunch…you have a
sandwich, ask your colleagues what they’re doing, what they aren’t
doing…
Text box 3
It is Omega’s first day at work and together with seven other
consultants (males) we go off to eat at a restaurant. During lunch they
talk about work and/or how to make money and/or how others make
it. Omega joins us after some time because she has had some personal
matters to attend to. She arrives when lunch has almost finished, in
fact, but sits down at the table anyway. Two consultants jokingly (and
provocatively) ask her if she would buy a ‘Lady Piss’, a gadget which
enables women to urinate standing up. After some joshing they ask her
about her first consultancy project.
‘Do I take an hour for lunch?’
An hour’s lunch break…it depends, it may be an hour and a quarter, or it

may be ten minutes…it depends on the situation, on the day, but you
usually take at least half an hour. (…)You come back from lunch, perhaps
you check your e-mail to see if you have any messages, and you get back
to work on what you were doing before. You try to concentrate as much as
possible until mid-afternoon, by which time you’ll have finished your water
and you have to go back upstairs to get some more. Until you’ve finished
what you’re supposed to do (unless you decide to finish it the day after),
you stay in the office until half past seven, eight, nine, ten.
Text box 4
On leaving the offices, I notice that Omega has brought trainers and a
track suit, hiding them in the office as soon as she arrived, to go running.
If she had to go home to change she would never make it. She did not
get changed in the office, but in the basement before leaving. I thus realize
that Omega has the keys to the office, and she tells me that she was given
them by Sigma (a secretary introduced to me as the ‘historic and living
memory of the organization’) on her first day at work. In theory, you don’t
get the keys until you are a ‘Senior’, but she has them and finds them very
useful, because she can work on Saturdays or at times when the offices
are shut.
Being the ‘double’ in the project
‘And when I’m not on-site, that is, when I’m not in the office but with a client, is
there anything I should know in particular?’
The situation differs according to what you’re doing in the client company,
whether you’re on your own or accompanied by the Senior or even the
Manager of the project. Until now there have been two types of situation.
Situations in which we’ve gone to make presentations of a general kind
about the project…or presentations on things arising from the project, and
situations in which we’ve done interviews. So, in the former case my role is
a role, I’d say, more marginal than that of the project Manager and Senior.
I usually try to listen, to grasp everything presented and the comments
made about the project. But unless I’m asked some thing…or there’s
something that I feel that I really must say…I don’t usually speak. Not
because someone has explicitly told me not to but because I think…I don’t
have any experience, I have a specific role and the client knows it; the role
of Analyst…the junior in the project…(…)the person…who, I don’t know,
the person who’ll write the minutes of the meeting, the person who’ll
contribute but doesn’t take the decisions about the project…a person who
physically writes the questionnaire, or who helps with the content, a person
who ‘grinds out’ administrative matters…Or the person who’s led by the
others, the youngest person, therefore with least experience, who’s growing
with the company, who perhaps knows something because she’s got a
qualification, or a specialization, but who knows less about the typical aspects
of the project. So, because it’s explicitly stated in the project proposal, the
client knows that there’s a Manager, there’s a Senior and there’s an Analyst,
they’ve already got a clear idea of the persons and the roles. ‘But I know
that you made all those calls to arrange appointments…’
Omega’s story 185
Text box 5
Omega is in the office to draft the final version of the questionnaire.
She searches the net (the consultants are linked by an intranet) for a
project that might give her some ideas, but fails to find anything. [I
notice that for every project the names of the Partner and Manager
are given, but not those of the Analysts or Consultants, for whom the
term ‘Team’ is used]. She leafs through the material given her by the
client, she searches for other information by computer, further
information she marks in her notebook, she attaches coloured post-
its to some photocopies. Then she writes an e-mail to Gamma and
Delta telling them about the new interval schedule in the client
company.
After the lunch break, Omega again sits down at the computer to choose
the colours to assign to concepts so that they can be differentiated in the
questionnaire. In the afternoon, Delta calls her to finish the work to be
presented. We go up to the first floor and sit around a table. [I note an
advertisement for Alpha published in Sole 24ore in 1996. The caption reads:
‘Is your organization in shape?’ and the picture shows a shoal of fish
arranged in the shape of a shark]. Omega shows Delta what she has
prepared this morning. She complains that she too little information and,
speaking about the forthcoming interviews, says, we’ve got to really squeeze
them!
A telephone call arrives to change an appointment fixed for the
following day, which means that diaries will have to be rearranged. While
Omega reports on Delta’s appointments, she tells him: I feel like I’m your
secretary… He answers: In that case I’II feel you up (laughs).
Gamma calls, agitated because he thinks that Omega has already gone
home. [Two consultants have told him that they have seen Delta and
Omega leaving a room with briefcases and computers and thought they
were going home]. When the telephone call is finished, Delta and Omega
begin working on the advice given them by Gamma. Their client
company does not know how to ‘attract’ the customer (because it is
expensive, it does not offer anything new, it does not explore the market). Delta
comments: like a woman who treats you bad! (laughs). Omega nods. Delta
and Omega continue their discussion and reach the conclusion that the
Consortium is a way to make the others come, and Omega makes a pun on
‘come’.
Delta says that he thinks that he should be at the presentation as well,
because Beta tends to cock these things up… Omega reassures him, saying that
in any case she will be there as well. Yes, but since they know that you’re the
Analyst… Omega says, indeed, but Beta will be doing the presentation.
Exactly, if I’m there as the Consultant…then Beta can do the presentation and I’ll
intervene from time to time.
Yes, as project secretary I do some interviews, make appointments, see you

on day x, that sort of stuff, but it’s no big deal. Now that we’re drafting the
questionnaire I’m the person who talks most with the client about what to
put in the questionnaire…what to write here, what to write there, but these
are ‘administrative’ matters, I don’t know what to call them…a bit of basic
information for the questionnaire.
Text box 6
We are in the car on our way to the client.
Delta asks what he should say if they ask whether this is the first time
that they have done a project of this kind. Omega says that they could say
that the individual parts we’ve already done, but we’ve never combined them in a single
project…which is half true and half untrue.
(Delta) Meaning?
(Omega) Well, this is the first form of integration, the perfect response to the client’s
needs, (they laugh)
We have almost arrived, and Omega and Delta review the various stages
of the project, from when they were happy for the first time to when they
were depressed because the client had rejected their first project. Joking,
they say that they could put together all the projects that they have prepared
and presented in the past. Omega adds that then we really would be whores
(they laugh), referring to the fact that they have always catered to the client’s
desires. Delta concludes by saying that, anyway, he has never presented a
project on any solid basis, he has always had to improvise.
On arriving at the client company, Omega exclaims: Come on guys, let’s go
for it…!
Being the ‘double’ in gender

‘According to you, is consultancy work for a man?’
I get the impression that everyone conceives a ‘consultant’ as a man. So in

this sense there’s a perception of the male consultant, which if you like is a
cultural characteristic or a common bias, so it gives me the idea that women
have to conquer…the authority to do this job. I’ve talked about it with two
or three other women at Alpha…with one in particular, a Senior Consultant
who’s about to be promoted to Manager…who’s had considerable difficulties
in her career, because she said to me: ‘Men get further ahead in their careers!’
There’s the idea that women are a bit…then you should realize that
there are certain aspects of being a woman that restrict you in a job of this
kind. Mainly the family…it’s obvious that it’s quite heavy work, with lots
Omega’s story 187
Text box 7
It’s Omega’s first day in the office and she tells me that she hates cigarette
smoke.
(Omega): Just think that (in the office) there are four smokers and one non-
smoker…
(Omicron): And you’re a woman, so you’re doubly in the minority!
A little later, while looking for some files in the computer, Omega says:
Omicron, are you under (name of a female consultant) or under (name of another
female consultant)? The question (which refers to folders in the computer)
prompts the inevitable jokes from the other three (male) consultants in the
room. After laughing at Omicron’s ‘pleasurable’ position, they respond to
Omega’s timid protest with: ‘But you really asked for that one!’
of travelling, which requires time, which takes up a lot of time. Because as

well as your work you also have to promote the company, you have to keep
in contact with universities, you have to try to…update your knowledge,
read the newspapers, there are lots of aspects to this work that drain what
I call your psycho-physical energies…And if you want to have a family you
have to devote part of your energies, affection and psycho-physical energies
to your family. Because that’s right, according to me. Because if you have
children…you’re a mother!…that certainly limits you a bit. Its basically a
limitation. Symptomatic of this is that one day…(…) I was at a work meeting,
the day after I graduated, and I didn’t feel very well because the day before
I’d been drinking, what you always do on graduation day…I arrived late at
the office with my head exploding and a stomach-ache, your normal post-
degree hangover. So I found it difficult being in a darkened room with the
slides, the air…I felt sick. I stood up and left the room for a breath of fresh
air. At that moment my reference Partner, Beta, arrived, he saw that I wasn’t
feeling very well and asked (without any malice): ‘You’re not pregnant, are
you?!’ So if I have some doubts about these limitations…that was
symptomatic. Having a child is a problem, could be a problem. There are
some aspects, plus the fact that you have to cope with a heavy workload,
cope with the stress, cope with the travelling…there’s no gender, it’s the
person, absolutely, that’s my opinion, I’m convinced.
Discussion: how Omega became competent at ‘gender

switching’ and unaware of it
The episode recounted by Omega at the end of the interview highlights, ironically,
that the community of practices has marked ‘gender’ characteristics. It suffices to
‘switch’ Omega’s story into the masculine (imagining that the protagonist of the
situation is a man) to realize that Beta’s remark was based on certain gender
assumptions. That a person of female sex, the day after her graduation, feels ill,
is interpreted as a ‘symptom’ of an unexpected pregnancy (girls don’t drink!).
This suggests that, if the protagonist had been a man, Beta could have ‘inferred’
with equal certainty that his discomfort was due to a hangover (men don’t get
pregnant!). Beta’s irony was not directed simply at Omega’s malaise and her
absence from the meeting, but at both things in relation to her being of female
sex. Beta relates to Omega on the basis of her ‘gendered self’ and her effective
capacity to participate in the community’s practices.
Doubt concerning the ability of a woman to participate competently is stressed
also by Omicron3—the other newly hired person but of the ‘right sex’—when he
labels Omega as being twice in the minority because she is non-smoker and
woman (Text box 7). Apparently Omicron’s remarks refers to smoking, but there
is no doubt that he is also comparing himself to Omega, and despite their being
both newcomers he bears only ‘one minority’ condition. His competent
participation in the community was already underlined (Text box 2) when he
gave to Omega the tip on the consultant circulating porno clips. Assuming Omega
was not interested in joining that exchange of materials, what Omicron was
symbolizing was his status of ‘insider’ in a masculinity mobilization, while Omega
did not share that secret knowledge.
Omega denies her status of minority by gender by adopting a genderless stance
when she states at the end of the interview, ‘there’s no gender, it’s the person’: as
if to say that gender is one of the aspects suppressed while learning a ‘professional
self’ which pretends to appear ‘neutral’ but is masculine to the point that it is
unwilling (and unprepared) to differ. This process lies in the background to the
protagonist’s entire socialization to the community, and it is therefore advisable
to foreground practices in order to show how the positioning of the masculine
subject is the effect of the actor network which sustain the ‘Alpha consultant’
identity.
Consultancy as a ‘masculine’ job

Immediately evident of a male-dominated environment is a ‘quantitative datum’.
In her everyday work, Omega almost invariably has to deal with persons of male
sex. The only exception is her relations with the administrative department, where
there is a normal probability of encountering a person of female sex. This feature
probably reflects the gender division still distinctive of the Italian labour market,
and in Alpha it is surrounded by an aura of ‘normality’ which impedes its
discussion and recognition. Thus the gender arrangement of the organization
and of daily practices of organizing remains invisible to most of those inculcated
with its discursive practices.
Masculinity is also apparent at the symbolic level and is practised and circulated
in discourses, artefacts and in the physicality of the space. Consultancy work,
with its characteristics of ‘winning the client’ is represented as typically male
terrain. It is made explicit and justified by the categories of ‘rationality’, ‘efficiency’
and ‘strategic acumen’, ‘killing the competition’, ‘squeezing the others’. It is also
Omega’s story 189
reflected in material artefacts (as Omega explains, the ‘briefcase’ issued on the
first day at Alpha contains corporeal constraints, a script which presupposes a
male body), in verbal artefacts (the jokes among the consultants, the imaginary
object called Lady Piss, the sexual innuendo and the sexual metaphors privileging
men’s bodies) and in the internal decoration of the organizational setting. In the
advertising of Alpha, when the organization is in shape, it takes the form of a
shark (Text box 5). It compels those who participate to be constantly present (it is
considered legitimate to make work phone calls during the week-ends, work late
at night) while the ‘private’ is dismissed as a residual category.
To be a man in such an environment yields rent from keeping all the previous
elements aligned without putting much effort into aligning them. Masculinity
constitutes a position rent for the arrangements of all the masculine materials in
a network that is male dominated. For a person of another gender or for non-
hegemonic forms of masculinity such an environment is demanding in terms of
legitimation and appropriate gender enactment.
That Omega’s learning comes about in a ‘masculine’ setting is therefore a
matter of importance, especially in her circumstances as a ‘novice’ or someone
who has not yet fully mastered the community’s practices. But Omega, in giving
instructions to her double, glossed out all the masculinist style aspects of her
working environment, as is done in editing work. How did Omega learn to ‘edit’
her participation in order to support the mobilization of masculinity, how did she
learn to handle her dual presence without losing face as a gendered person and as
a competent professional?
We shall now examine two processes (previous mentioned in passing) which
apparently predominate in Omega’s learning path: (1) constructing (internally to
the community) a ‘gendered self’ and a ‘professional self’; and (2) handling the
tension between the two and thereby demonstrating competence in becoming a
member of a masculine community of practice.
Aligning a gendered self with a professional one: knowing

how to keep your place in the community
Omega is still unable to handle the community’s practices with ease, not
only because she is a ‘novice’ but also because she belongs to a category
(‘woman’) which has only residual citizenship rights in the community. The
possibility of legitimate peripheral participation in the community’s practices
is made even more unlikely by her being ‘doubly in the minority’, as her
colleague Omicron points out (Text box 7). The social distance between her
colleagues and herself is too wide to consider her on the same footing. But
at the same time in order to be recognized as a member of the community
she must differentiate herself from the other women—who are secretaries—
and whose image is used by her colleagues to undercut her professional
identity. For Omega to handle the dual presence—to enact her gender
competence and her professional one in a male dominated environment—
requires coping with a double bind (Watzlawick et al. 1967), while her male
colleagues simply do not see the problem since she does not enter into their
area of social comparison. In a work setting connoted as male territory for
men the problem of social comparison with a group—women—perceived as
distant may not arise at all, while these men compare the professional woman
with the group of women making up the administrative staff.
The concept of social comparison (Berger and Luckmann 1969; Festinger
1954; Tajfel 1981) may be of help in explaining how the process of alignment
performed by the subject-network Omega differed from that of a male newcomer.
Social comparison, and the sentiments associated with it, operate in accordance
with the individual personality, but also and especially in accordance with the
social distance among persons or social groups. For comparison to take place, the
social distance must be perceived as minimal, and the Other must be knowable
and known on a plane of social proximity. Societies organized into rigidly distinct
social classes favour an objective conception of distance and therefore foster social
comparisons only within the same class. The same applies to the rigid gender
(class or race) division which imposes social comparison and the sentiments of
competition or emulation only among persons of the same gender. In other words,
maleness yields a ‘position rent’ and a ‘competitive advantage’ to the point that
embracing its stereotypes and values can be cited as an example of competence
and likeableness (Text box 2).
In trying to mobilize a professional identity aligned with the material and
semiotic practices of her community, and thereby proving to her colleagues her
competence at doing it, Omega takes up a masculine discursive position: she
produces double entendre and puns and complies with their time requirements
and male style (Text boxes 5 and 6). But using verbal expressions at odds with
her gender identity may provoke scorn whenever a colleague wishes to show that
she cannot share the community’s linguistic and discursive practices (Text box
7). Her participation in the community is in jeopardy whenever she tries to save
her gender identity and her professional membership. Mobilizing masculinity is
an exclusion practice performed whenever Omega is compared to a secretary,
compelled to do secretarial work, and symbolically forced to join the group of
‘the other women’.
As recounted in the interview, and as shown by various ethnographic ‘asides’,
the only female figure contemplated by the community is that of the ‘secretary’:
a support figure which recurs whenever mention is made of ‘peripheral’ practices
(arranging appointments, keeping the work flow constant) and which male
‘rationality’ typically relegates to female ‘relationality’. Omega refers to this figure
when she complains about the marginal role assigned to her in management of
the project. She could have complained for being treated as the last incomer, or
the youngest, or the less experienced; instead she did so by comparing herself to
a secretary. The fact that she compares herself to a ‘secretary’ and not to a generic
‘newcomer’ is an effect of the acquisition of a gendered self and at the same time
the expression of her need to perform a process of differentiation.
During Omega’s first months of involvement in the project, it is repeatedly
pointed out to her that she belongs to a gender not contenanced by the
Omega’s story 191
community. Omega notes that her colleagues relate to her on the basis of gender
models and that her organizational position is directly influenced by that fact.
That Omega views her situation as that of a ‘secretary’ is therefore an effect in
terms of social categorization: an orientation which helps define an individual’s
specific place in society (Berger and Luckmann 1967). In Omega’s case, she
compares herself with those who, like her, are ‘gendered’ in the community:
‘the secretaries’. It is both ironic and cynical that on the only occasion when
Omega explicitly states the relation that ties her organizationally to another
member of the community (‘I feel like I’m your secretary’, Text box 5), the
latter answers that ‘In that case I’ll feel you up!’, which implies an obligatory
component in all relationships between ‘managers’ (men) and ‘secretaries’
(women).
At this stage, Omega realizes that her biological gender makes her
‘gendered’, and that a ‘gendered self’ is a stigma (Goffman 1959) in that
community. Enacting a ‘professional identity’, therefore, can only pass through
a process of differentiation from persons in the (gender) category to which
Omega sees herself as belonging by gender, not by profession. The
differentiation, however, cannot take place at the level of work practices,
because the peripheral position occupied by a ‘newcomer’ prevents Omega
from participating fully, and it tallies (too much so) with archetypal models
of gender relations like boss/secretary. The enactment of her differentiation is
staged for the audience of her colleagues and it is discursively achieved by
joining in a masculine positioning.
On the other hand, membership of ‘another’ gender places Omega in ‘another’
community. And to some advantage: it is through Sigma, a secretary (the gate-
keeper of the community of secretaries) that Omega has obtained the keys for
the basement where she stashes her track suit for after-work jogging, even though
she was not yet a Senior (Text box 4). Her gender identity is recognized by the
community of women, and this enables her to share a secret and to indulge in a
non-canonical practice with another community.
For Omega, assimilation and differentiation are processes which are never
complete; on the contrary, they are constantly ‘managed’ both by her and by all
the other actors (or actants) in her network of gendered and professional
relationships. We use the term ‘gender switching’ to denote the dynamic by which
Omega takes up a masculine positioning, acts from within it, leaves it and defends
her gender identity, is second-sexed by her colleagues, affiliates herself with other
women or differentiates herself from them. Any gendered subject positioning is
unstable and precarious, and keeping all the elements aligned is a collective
achievement.
Professional self: the tacit knowing of gender switching

Omega’s strategy is therefore to share the community’s discursive practices and
become an expert in gender switching. These discursive practices represent a
reality with markedly masculinist characteristics, and endorsing them may provide
entry for those (like Omega) who find themselves ‘doubly in the minority’.
According to the interview and the field notes, this acquisition of discursive
practices moves through two fundamental and intertwined stages: acquiring
‘macho’ language, and consequent symbolic participation in the project and the
community.
In the course of the project Omega’s language gradually changes. Not only
does her ‘technical’ vocabulary become more graphic, but she develops an ability
to deploy humour and avoid expressions that might provoke the scorn of her
‘more expert’ colleagues. The episode when Omega and Delta work together on
an organizational analysis (Text box 5) is exemplary: after Delta has twice made
a ‘gender translation’ of what Omega has said, it is the latter who notices a
double entendre in her words. When the two visit the client for the last time,
Omega compares the consultancy business with prostitution (Text box 6): not
that there is any explicit moralism, merely the easy-going humour with which
males indicate the (female) capacity to ‘accommodate’ a client. The ‘amiability’
and the ‘non-judgementalism’ arise from the reformulation of people’s work in a
different symbolic universe of gender. The expression is ‘professional’ insofar as
the person who says it simultaneously demonstrates knowledge of the male
symbolic universe in which the community inscribes itself and an ability to act in
accordance with it, regardless of that person’s gender membership. Omega uses
a male stereotype to identify herself vulgarly with a typically female category,
and doing so enables her to differentiate herself from the category itself of ‘woman’,
equally gendered, shared by the community.
Omega’s competence at taking and leaving a masculine discursive positioning
is signalled by her being no longer aware of doing it; it is what enables her in
the course of the interview (which was recorded, note, when the consultancy
had been concluded) to review the stages of her first two months as member of
the community in absolutely ‘genderless’ terms. The work of an ‘Analyst’ seems
to be a purely functional role performed in an organizational setting shorn of
any attribution of gender. The view of Omega’s work group as a ‘community
of practice’ would be weak if it were based solely on what emerges from the
interview. It is symptomatic that the only truly ‘intimate’ detail furnished by
Omega on how to be her ‘double’ was that he should ensure a regular supply
of water. Not that Omega was being untruthful, but her ‘professional’ rhetoric
produced a reconstruction of events which sometimes appears very distorted if
compared with what was observed during the ethnographic fieldwork. The
most evident discrepancy is between Omega’s account of her participation in
the project and what is described immediately afterwards by the excerpt in
Black box 6. In fact, Omega’s duties and participation do not seem to result
from a pre-established sequence of tasks, but rather from the contested
management of her participation. On this occasion too, a tension arises between
a perceived gendered self and a sought-after professional self. Omega complains
that she is given gendered tasks (arranging appointments), while at the same
time she interprets her peripheral participation as necessary to acquire improved
professional skills. Symbolic participation in the project, therefore, takes place
Omega’s story 193
not through particular ‘legitimizing’ practices but through differentiation from

one’s gender milieu. Symbolic participation in the project consists in the
newcomer’s ability to figure in a community to which she still does not belong,
and to adopt a masculine positioning in defining the boundaries and parameters
of evaluation.
Omega’s interview at the end of the project expresses that her reconstruction
within a professional identity has been succesfully accomplished, all the elements
have been aligned and the stabilization of the network has been achieved. Therefore
the black boxes come to a closure and in her process of engineering a gender
identity and a professional one the knowledge of how to do it becomes tacit
knowledge. Gender switching is now just a tacit competence…but remains always
unstable.
‘Consultants’ or ‘mothers’? A ‘professional’ solution

We have seen that learning to enact a professional self enabled Omega to ‘by-
pass’ certain ‘gendered’ aspects of her ‘apprenticeship’. During the interview,
Omega makes no mention of gender: she only starts talking about it when the
researcher asks a specific question. Her answer is unequivocal: everyone ‘perceives’
a consultant as a ‘man’, to the point that the phenomenon assumes the features of
a gender bias at the cultural level. Women must ‘conquer authority’ (Omega
continues) in order to become a professional. Thus formulated, the expression
evokes the dimensions of power and conflict within the performance of professional
competence, and it implies that masculinity has hegemony in them. This hypothesis
seems to be borne out by the episode cited by Omega as an example, when a
‘man’ seems to have a ‘genetic’ advantage in ‘building a career’. But Omega’s
remark has a further significance.
If the ‘authority’ of which she speaks is already given to men, this means that
the ‘struggle’ for legitimation only takes place among women. In a dispute, if the
object of contention is already ‘possessed’ by the two parties, then s/he is
automatically the winner. Hence women must contend among themselves under
male rules, in the hope of being able to occupy the territory. This is exactly what
Omega does in the cases described, and it is the solution to the tension that arises
(in the final phase of the interview) between awareness of a gendered self and the
construction of a professional self. This tension can be viewed as a continuum between
the two extremes of (gendered) ‘mother’ and (professional) ‘consultant’. The
tension of the continuum consists in the fact that the two terms comprise a
symbolically contradictory relation which prevents intermediate positions from
being taken up and compels self-location at one of the two extremes. Motherhood,
for example, is presented as inevitable and natural, and as a constraint on one’s
professional positioning. The discourse proceeds as follows.
Omega says that ‘there are certain aspects of being a woman that restrict you
in a job of this kind’. Put this way, the image conveyed is one where a ‘job’, the
main actor in the discourse, is restricted in its development by certain typically
female characteristics. The family is mentioned, but Omega continues by listing
the characteristics of her job, which is highly demanding in terms of time, travel,
workload and stress in general.
The image gradually changes: the initial (and presumed) neutrality of work
practices acquires gendered meanings, and relational dynamics move back to
centre stage. This happens narratively when Omega cites a personal episode as
an example. Her assertion of the central importance of motherhood in a woman’s
life (‘you’re a mother!’) clashes with the organizational reality of her community
of practice.
The instability and the precarious alignment of gender and profession become
evident if we try to formulate the initial sentence in reverse. What would have
been the meaning of that phrase if Omega had said that it is the job that restricts
certain aspects of being a woman? We believe that it would engender an image
which places at centre stage a person whose aspirations may be restricted by
several factors, and in Omega’s case by a particular kind of job. But this image
would be at odds with the ‘gender practices’ of the community, and it would
impede Omega in her endeavour to construct a coherent and competent
professional self. As long as Omega wants to keep her belonging to a male-
dominated professional culture she needs to keep her gender and professional
alignment in an unstable but stabilized order.
Conclusions
We have described the heterogeneous engineering of a professional identity as
the effect of the action net which performs it. In the activation of the subject-
network, Omega is only one of the actants4 alongside other people and a set of
artefacts which ‘make’ the consultant, like the computer, the briefcase, the projects
developed by other consultants but which can be recycled, and the staff room.
Omega’s professional identity is sustained as much by her colleagues as by Alpha’s
clients and its administrative staff. We may therefore say that her professional
identity is the effect of the engineering of heterogeneous elements which has
fitted together Omega+artefacts+specialist knowledge+a community of
practice+an organization+a market.
All these elements are assembled symmetrically 5 so that one does not
predominate over the others, but the arrangement is precarious and can only
ever be achieved momentarily, and then through constant and active identity
work. That is to say, if social (or sociotechnical) relations are to fulfil their relational
work of fitting together they must be ‘performed’.
To describe the learning process of acquisition of a professional identity within
a community of practices as mastering the skilful engineering of heterogeneous
elements yields deeper understanding of the following points:
• how the decentring of the ‘self’ as the privileged site of thinking and knowing,
of identity and gender may be pursued further by stressing the material and
the discursive construction of the subject position within situated practices of
subjectivization and objectification;
Omega’s story 195
• how gender and identity are staged through the workings of power and how
a subject position is constituted by power relations,
• how belonging to a community of practices is highly negotiated and how
belonging is inscribed in ritualized semiotic and material practices,
• how achievement of belonging is a construction that conceals its genesis and
obscures the collective agreement which sustains a situated professional
identity.
In Omega’s story we see how she developed a social competence at gender

switching: being able to take up the male subject position in discursive practices
and at the same time trying to save her gender competence. Behind gender
switching as a social practice, that, in male-dominated environments only women
are forced to perform in order to maintain gender and profession alignment, lie
the workings of power and the meaning of masculinity as a position rent.
In male-dominated environments belonging to the ‘right’ gender makes a great
deal of ‘doing’ unnecessary: the male subject position is taken for granted and
with it the repertoire of rights pertaining to the male discursive position and all
the resources for domination over the non-masculine or the non-hegemonic
masculinity. The alignments hold with less effort even when the male is younger
or inexperienced. If Omega were a man, many of the interactions we have
described would have never occurred. For example, whenever Omega joins her
colleagues in sexualized conversation and assumes the male subject position, she
may either be accepted (and her belonging to the community ratified) or
disqualified as regards both her gender identity and her professional competence.
Her participation and belonging are constantly at stake, and any man at any
moment may call her competence into question.
Masculinity, therefore—like capital or land—by birthright gives men a rent
position that may be spent in a sociotechnical network dominated by male
values, symbols and artefacts. The effort required of men to align materials
that are heterogeneous but inscribed in the same symbolic universe of gender is
not comparable with the effort required of women to achieve a nodal point in
the articulation of power. In this sense, the politics of identity is a concern for
both women and men. Masculinity may very easily be mobilized, especially in
a male-dominated organizational culture, to exclude or marginalize women.
Therefore, how to handle the dual presence is a matter of micro-politics of
everyday life for women and for those men who do not wish to reproduce
hegemonic masculinity.
Notes
1 The present paper is a totally collaborative effort by the two authors whose names
appear in alphabetical order. If, however, for academic reasons individual responsibility
is to be assigned, Attila Bruni wrote sections 2, 3, and 4; Silvia Gherardi wrote the
introduction, section 1 and the conclusions. The authors wish to thank Mike Dent,
Judith Lorber, Patricia Martin and Steve Whitehead for their helpful comments and
for the time they devoted to the discussion.
2 The names of the persons and the organization are imaginary, the outcome of an
elementary abstraction from the specific which ensures the anonymity of the people
concerned.
3 Unfortunately we could not study Omicron’s entry in his community of practice
and compare the two processes. He came into contact with us only when he was
present in common organizational spaces and, given the nature of the project, this
did not happen very often.
4 Semioticians, and ANT, use the notion of ‘actants’ for all the elements which
accomplish or are transformed by the actions through which the narration evolves.
5 The notion of symmetry was first introduced in the sociology of science (Bloor 1976)
and was developed further by ANT in order to explore the creation of social, natural
and technological phenomena without distinguishing a priori between human actors,
on the one hand, and technical or natural objects on the other.
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Part III
Maps and knowledges

for the ‘new’
professional
11 ‘New age’ religion and
identity at work
Catherine Casey
Introduction
The world of work has undergone profound changes in recent decades. These
changes, much explored by social analysts of work, continue to present implications
and consequences in diverse arenas of social and personal life. Indeed, many
regard the technological and organizational changes in production and work as
composite of complex patterns of social and cultural change in modern society
more broadly. The intersection of changes in the institution of work with changes
in the practices and processes of self-identity constitutes a dynamic arena of contest
and creativity as well as fragmentation and uncertainty. The means and rudiments
of self-identity creation are in flux, generating possibilities, and dilemmas, for self
creation in unprecedented ways and forms.
Among the many sites and dynamic processes in self-identity construction
are those of workplaces and work organization activities. My research on these
activities and workers brings to light some significant emergent practices among
highly skilled and professional employees in contemporary organizations. These
practices contest and oppose modern rationalities typically expected in modern
bureaucratic and technocratic organizations. For instance, the current emergence
of diverse religious expression in corporate workplaces—from ‘new age’
idiosyncratic reconstruction of fragments of older traditions, to revitalized
orthodoxies, and ethnic revivalism—is an unexpected counter-modern
occurrence. These diverse practices offer competing rationalities and
insubordinate discourses which may enable self-identity constructions among
professional organizational employees that are contestational to those
traditionally corporately, professionally, designed and desired. In this chapter, I
discuss and analyse these developments and consider the ways in which some
of these neo-religious goings-on in formal organizations and among professional
employees are enacted and effective.
Identity, work and profession

Questions of self, identity and social institutions have long engaged the attention
of thinkers and scholars. Such interest, evident from classical times to the
202 Catherine Casey
Enlightenment, became most especially developed in nineteenth and twentieth-

century modernity. Yet in recent decades a considerable new interest among social
scientists and cultural critics in questions of self and identity has arisen. As
modern societalization largely triumphed over pre-modern and traditional
societies, the traditional institutions of self-identity, powerfully derived from the
institutions of inherited governance (e.g. monarchy, tribal chiefs, feudal lords
and so forth), of gender, social class and occupation have encountered
unprecedented contestation, disruption and dispersal. Modern industrial society
encompassed vast social and economic changes, yet, as with all change, a degree
of continuity endured. Ready recognition and identification of persons with
occupation or village or kinship may have dramatically changed, but modern
society, even more than its pre-industrial contester, privileges the role of
production and work in social organization and in individual identity formation.
Modern forms of self-identity are typically seen as constructs of increasingly
rationalized, secularized and de-traditionalized social processes, and increasingly
as matters of individual choice (Castells 1997; Gergen 1991; Giddens 1991;
Lash and Friedman 1992). Now modern forms of identity are themselves
undergoing further challenges and reconfiguration, in conditions which many
commentators term the postmodern or late modern society (Bauman 1992;
Harvey 1989; Huyssen 1984; Lyotard 1984).
People in modern societies continue to significantly define themselves, and are
socially identified, by the type of work that they do, and often the organization
for which they do it. The dynamics of modern society continue to present social
and cultural conditions in a state of flux in which many modern institutions,
notably those of economy, production and work manifest not only the effects of
technological developments but altering patterns of meaning, value and normative
human participation in work. The institutions of work in increasingly postmodern
cultural conditions present new arenas of contestation and, surprisingly,
counterpoint. Now, the efficacy and desirability, for many people, of work-derived
identities is altering. That discussion continues momentarily but at this point an
explicatory comment on modern institutions of work, especially those of
occupation and profession, is useful.
Occupations and professions are well discussed in a modern sociological
literature, notably that of the mid-twentieth century, describing and analysing
their development and in particular their modern role (see Hughes 1958;
Merton 1957; Mills 1956; Parsons 1960). Professions as a category of
occupation have come to be regarded as distinct institutions playing a role, as
occupations, in social stratification and class, as much as in economic
production. Professions, claiming a cultural heritage in public service and
altruism, are particular occupations which typically attract or claim higher
status in a socially structured occupational hierarchy. In sum, a profession is
typically a defined group of skilled workers possessing certain characteristics
claimed by the profession and more or less societally recognized as such.
Members of a profession possess a body of knowledge and skill approved by
the regulatory authority of that profession. They profess particular codes of
‘New age’ religion and identity at work 203
practice, and they profess an ethic of concern for their clients over crude
economic self-interest. Traditionally, professional workers possess a relatively
high degree of personal autonomy in exercising their professional knowledge
and organizing their workplaces and schedules, and professional bodies claim
a high degree of self-regulation over their members. All of these rudiments of
profession, and the dynamics of professionalization and de-professionalization,
are variously retained or rejected by contemporary commentators or persons
identifying as professionals (Handy 1997; Reich 1991; Willmott and Alveson
1994). They nonetheless provide a useful framework from which to discuss
current dynamics and processes of self-identity in working life.
The small number of ‘classical’ professions, such as medicine, law,
architecture, banking, and the like, has been significantly expanded in the
twentieth century. Now, diverse occupational groups from teachers and
builders to massage therapists and used car dealers endeavour to claim the
social status, recognition and assumed respect accorded to professions. As new
occupations have emerged and old ones declined, and as the organizational
forms of production have considerably expanded, the role and demarcation of
professional groups have undergone disruptive change and display
considerable uncertainty.
The unprecedented rise of very large corporate organizations and global
economic operations in recent decades has facilitated and required the
development of new organizational forms and highly skilled managers. These
‘new’ managers, often possessing a range of skills drawn from previously
distinct professional occupational knowledges, such as engineering and finance,
are successfully claiming the status and recognition of the ‘new’ professional
(see Whitehead and Moodley (1999) on this point). Yet the claim for
professional status of managers is always a contested one. While managers
possess highly developed knowledge and skills (duly credited by professional
business schools) which are potentially transferable, their performance is always
and necessarily exclusively in the service of their employing organization.
Imperatives incumbent in the ‘old’ professions of science, medicine or law
guiding activity to ‘higher’ ends such as contributing to pure knowledge, client
well-being, or justice, are excluded or relegated. The overriding function of
organizational managers is the service of the company objectives and the
maintenance of organizational survival. These structural imperatives are co-
constitutent of the modern economic, technical and instrumental rationalities
of production organizations. Their cultural and discursive variation and even
symbolic displacement cannot entirely obscure their underlying persistence and
effectivity. Notwithstanding the high skill of management work or honourable
character of individual managers, the organizational structural framing of the
tasks of management work opposes an autonomous professional imperative in
self-regulated practice. This ineluctable condition presents tensions and
dilemmas for professional-status seeking, highly skilled, managers. As powerful
organizational officers, these ‘neo-professionals’ are nonetheless structurally
circumscribed in their professional-identity creation efforts.
204 Catherine Casey
Modern bureaucratic organization, as we have observed since Weber,

privileges the rationally and technologically efficient use of all resources in its
production, including, as organizations now brazenly admit, ‘human resources’
as utilities for organization ends. ‘Human resource management’ is now
apparently widely accepted as a legitimate function of organizational
management, routinely taught in business schools, and assumed by
organizational technocratic rationalists, as unproblematically accepted by similarly
rationalized, technologized, instrumental employees and public in highly modern
society. The expansion and transmutation of bureaucratic instrumentality into
all domains of life has generated various responses and accommodations.
Professionals in some production and service institutions such as education and
health care more visibly contest the encroachment of bureaucratic organizational
rationalities into their professional spheres and codes of practice. Many wish to
decline absorption as utilities in production and a number of small professional
companies or shared practices continue to maintain professional identities and
standards of practice. But for persons possessing occupational and professional
codes and identities drawn from an earlier modern formation and who are now
employed in large corporate organizations from universities to hospitals to
engineering companies, the struggle for occupational or professional identity,
indeed for self-esteemable identity, in acutely rationalized organizations is
diminishingly effective. New sources must be sought.
There is a body of critical literature endeavouring to analyse and contest these
corporate organizational developments and their effects on employees (see for
example Casey 1995; du Gay 1996; Jermier et al. 1996). Moreover, there is a
body of literature that obscures or denies the effects of acutely rationalized
corporate organizations on employees by arguing that such organizations are
discursive cultural constructions in which rational instrumentality is readily
countered by ‘other conversations’ (Broekstra 1998). A full discussion of these
debates is beyond my task here, but the extant literature in organization and
management studies fulsomely reiterates these currently popular
pronouncements.
My own observations of, and discussions with, a number of corporate
employees in a range of organizations presents some unexpected (to a modern
social scientist) findings. In contrast to either modern contestation through the
institutions of profession and occupation, that is, through allegiance to
occupational unions, professional ethics, competing imperatives and
constituencies, and to postmodern denial—at least in academic organizational
studies of oppressive organization structures, I observe emergent practices of
alternative contestation in corporate organizations. These practices draw from
a range of repositories of knowledge and historical practice, including the
religious and spiritual. They are at once enabled by broader contestations to
modernity, including postmodern cultural forms and consumer choice, and by
diverse disaffection with modern economic hegemony. In order to develop that
discussion below the sociological understandings of religion are briefly
reviewed.
Religion
Modern sociology has predominantly accepted the Weberian thesis that processes
of societal modernization entail progressive rationalization in all spheres of life.
Gesellschaft fragments and displaces Gemeinschaft, rational secularization laicizes
and disperses religion into a private realm of individual need and choice. Modern,
rational social organization and individual choice displaces traditional social
organization and obligatory social ties. Indeed, Weber’s prognosis is succinctly
expressed in his renowned lecture, ‘Science as a Vocation’:
The fate of our age, with its characteristic rationalization and

intellectualization, and above all the disenchantment of the world, is that
the ultimate, most sublime values have withdrawn from public life, either
into the transcendental realm of mystical life or into the brotherhood of
immediate personal relationships between individuals.
(Weber 1948:155)
For Weber, and for many others from Nietzsche to Evans-Pritchard, secularization
and rationalization is inevitable as people come to realize the unscientificity of
religious belief and to develop reasoned explanation for the formerly inexplicable.
By the mid-twentieth century, modernization had achieved, in the view of that
generation of social theorists, near completion of secularization and wide
acceptance of rational social organization. Production organizations, including
professional work organizations, epitomized rational, scientific, efficiency and
order. The conventional, institutionalized, interpretation of Weber remains widely
held in the academy, and indeed the practices and practitioners of rational social
science eminently attest to its veracity—or at least render it a self-fulfilling
prognosis.
Yet within sociology, some have argued alternatively for the Durkheimian
thesis that ‘there is something eternal in religion which is destined to survive…’
(Durkheim 1915:474) against the conventional interpretation of Weber. The
Durkheimian tradition argues that modernization entails a transmutation of forms
of religious and collective life rather than total secularization and individualization
(Nisbet 1966; Seidman 1985; Thompson 1990). Thompson (1990), in particular,
extends this argument to theorize the persistence of the sacred (that which is set
apart as ultimate from the ordinary/profane), in both traditionally religious and
non-religious manifestations in modern society, that demonstrates a dialectical
relationship between secularization and sacralization. Against the Weberian
tradition’s over-emphasis of instrumental rationality and reasoned secularization
as inevitable and characteristic of modern societalization, Thompson argues that
the decline in traditional religion in modern culture and the plurality of
metanarratives of meaning and choices of identity in post-modern culture represent
a laicization of the sacred rather than an eradication of the sacred. Others, including
Wuthnow (1998), Wexler (1996a, 1996b) and Roof (1993), develop similar
analyses.
206 Catherine Casey
In contemporary, postmodern conditions, the metanarrative of progressive

rationalization and ‘emancipation’ from traditional and religious forms is no longer
widely operant. A fragmentation and pluralization of meaning systems at once
evident of and enabled by postmodern disjuncture has generated a laicization of
the sacred as well as, and distinct from, secularization. There is considerable
evidence of the former in what is popularly described in the Western world as
‘new age practices’. These practices include various interests in, and selective
appropriation of, Eastern or pagan religions, mysticism, tantric practices,
meditation and various alternatives to Western science and medicine such as
acupuncture, mind/body therapies, homeopathy, divination and so forth.
Notwithstanding their diversity, these practices share a project that seeks both a
revitalization of the experience of organic, bodily being’ (Wexler 1996a:160),
and a ‘spiritual seeking…outside established religious institutions’ (Wuthnow
1998). Perhaps most ironically there is evidence that contestations to and refutations
of modern rationalities are emerging in the context of work, that most eminent
site of progressive rationalization, technocratic instrumentality, secularization and
alienation.
Desecularizing impulses include the uses of the laicization of the sacred
presenting in the diversity and idiosyncrasy of experiences and expression of
spirituality or sacralization characteristic of new age practices (see Csordas 1994;
Roof 1994; Wuthnow 1998). There is evidence, too, of a restoration and
revivification of traditional cultural, ethnic and religious forms in contemporary
social practices. These include notably the revival of fundamentalist, and orthodox
religions, tribalism and revitalized ethnic, regional and communalist identities.
Although these trends importantly intersect with ‘new age’ laicized religious and
spiritual practices, discussion of these phenomena must be deferred. My attention
in this chapter is on the influence of ‘unchurched spiritualities’ and laicized religious
expression (including magicalism) in contemporary corporate work. It may be
that these practices indicate an important counterpoint to progressive
rationalization and secularization that social analysts have been slow to recognize
and interpret.
In the midst of an intensification and globalization of instrumental and economic
rationalities in the sphere of production and work, there are competing and counter
rationalities, plural meaning systems, communalism and desecularization emerging
in otherwise typically capitalist instrumental production organizations. Such
contemporary developments in corporate organizations apparently defy Weber’s
totality of instrumental, economic rationality. Their implications for meaning
and self-identity construction at work are immense.
Work, organization and neo-religious identifications

The changes in the world of production and work are now widely discussed.
Technological developments, particularly computer-aided production and control,
enabling the restructuring and dispersion of work, and the globalization of
production and financial systems have generated dramatic alterations to modern
practices of work, its performance, its organization, its productivity and its value
(see, for example, Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994; Aznar 1990; Casey 1995; Gorz
1989; Rifkin 1995).
Discussions of work for this and earlier generations of sociologists and critical
social theorists, have typically involved questions of alienation—abstraction,
estrangement and loss of human power and agency—resistance and struggle against
oppression in production relations, and everyday disputation over the conditions
in which production takes place. Despite decades of struggle against the conditions
of alienated labour in the West, and a slow defeat of organized movements in
everyday relations and practices of work, the rhetoric of counter-alienation through
political struggle continues. These efforts include, now, professional workers
endeavouring to protect domains of activity and self-identity from hegemonic
bureaucratic managerialism. Of course, within contemporary fields of organization
theory, business and management studies, notably in the United States, yet
increasingly far-reaching, an entirely opposing view is advocated and practised.
Corporately organized efforts to eliminate political contestation and to incorporate
employees into an espoused unitarist, familial, ‘neo-professional’ team organization
now prevail. In the academy, these ideologies and neo-functionalist pragmatics
are widely taught, and practised. Alienated self-identity, and compromised
professional identity, is apparently to be mitigated by belonging to a familial,
team organization.
At the same time, conventional modern sociological theorizations inadequately
analyse many contemporary practices of work and organization. For example,
while advanced technological developments, including globalization, in production
and exchange continue to attract most analytical attention other cultural practices
of work and organization are ignored or functionally interpreted. Importantly,
the conventional sociological underestimation of the continuing significance of
non-rational communalism, not only in opposition but in meaning-making and
psychic motivation in production, has hindered serious analytic attention to the
deliberate regeneration and rehabilitation of communalist—and desecularized—
experience and expression in now deliberately designed corporate organizational
cultures.
In the face of the intensification of economic and instrumental rationalities
and incorporation of employees under postindustrial conditions, many critical
analysts of work, organization and production continue to seek and find evidence
of resistance to intensified, mystified, exploitation and colonization. Critical analysts
have discovered evidence among corporate employees—if not of their incipient
revolution, at least of (typically individualized) resistance against the effects of
corporate designer cultures—and have demonstrated the ways in which corporate
employees shape and delimit the organizational culture in which they produce.
Moreover, analysts of professional workers explore ways in which professionalism
is enacted, or counteracted, in contemporary organizations (Barker 1993; Jermier
et al. 1994; Kunda 1992).
Notwithstanding the modernist agenda of this enduring intellectual and
practical tradition, nor its incorporated defeat—manifesting in research and
208 Catherine Casey
practice that seeks the harmonization of production and workplace relations

through humanized management practices that value and incorporate
employees—the question of ‘resistance’ and counter-alienation is by no means
obsolete. There remains considerable theoretical and political effort to organize
resistance through refurbished, resurgent political movements typical of the
modern context of production, organization and work (for example, trade unions,
professional associations, and oppositional political parties and pressure groups).
More importantly, however, there are other significant efforts to effect human
beings in production and work that demonstrably differ from modern industrial
discipline and control, and its contestation. Importantly, these practices include
the deliberate reconstruction of communalist, and desecularized, organizational
cultures of work.
Organizations are undergoing dramatic changes in social and economic
conditions of considerable flux and uncertainty. Complex paradoxes confront
the organization in the midst of and as a result of the globalizing intensification
of economic and instrumental rationalities. Obstacles to the ubiquitous
requirement to expand production and consumption now appear not only from
expected external environmental forces and traditionally unionized workplaces,
but from within the non-unionized corporate organization through its highly-
paid, highly-trained, and organizationally identified professional middle-class
employees. Scarcely articulated, emergent non-economic disaffection generates
impulses and insurgent counterpoint to the acute productionism of millennial
capitalism.
In the 1980s and 1990s, corporate organizations designed and installed
organizational cultures that promised employees participatory familial and team
workplaces. Incorporating affective and relational needs into organizational
cultures of production simulated communalist identity and belonging (Casey
1995). One of the outcomes of these interventions has been an increased, yet
flexible, instrumentality in the treatment of employees. Simultaneously, in
counterpoint to intensified objectification and utility, is an insurgence of
contestational individualized self-interest and privatized resistance. These
behaviours may indicate not so much resistance to particular organizational or
production activities, or even to the widely accepted subjectification as a human
resource in production, but to total bureaucratization and productionism in which
individual and culturally collective life is incorporated. A number of corporate
employees, notably (but not only) professional and highly skilled and valued
ones, are seeking ways to resist, counter or escape the self-identity erosion
composite of intensified corporatization in unconventional ways.
My own ongoing research into work and organizational practices, and self-
social institutions relations, draws on a number of sources in organization and
management literature and observation; sources in a popular and emerging
academic literature; and first-hand interviews and observations among highly-
skilled employees in contemporary organizations including finance institutions
such as banks and insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical and
telecommunications companies and research laboratories in a number of Western
countries. Data from these sources has brought to light some practices of work,
including self-identity, seldom addressed by analysts of work.
There is evidence that many technological, financial, managerial and other
highly skilled and educated workers in large organizations or secure professions
who have been dubbed ‘symbolic analysts’ and the ‘knowledge workers’ of the
new globalizing economy (see, for example, Handy 1997; Reich 1991; Rifkin
1995) are experiencing or seeking new relationships to work and employing
organizations. But for this largely middle-class, white-collar, overworked group
in the West, the new relationship is one in which they might actively, of their own
volition, find ‘more meaningful’ lives outside the parameters of production or
high-end services provision. These people are regarded by their employing
organizations as valued human resources, typically hold high-status, well-paid
positions in successful organizations. Yet increasing numbers are wanting to alter
their own identity and economic relations with their work, and their employing
organizations. Expressive interests in various seekings of ‘voluntary simplicity’,
‘spiritual growth’, personal development, creativity and new ethics are reported
and valued as constituent of self-identity. Many of these (financially secure) people
have deliberately ‘downshifted’ or opted out of regular participation in modern
organization and routinized work-compulsion (Casey 1998; Laabs 1996;
McKinnon 1997). For those who remain, these interests pose new challenges to
organizations.
‘Spiritual’ capitalism
There is much evidence, too, that the present decade has seen a proliferation of
management and organization texts and applications in workplaces that expound
various new theories of strategic advantage through restructured, culturally
reformed organizations and employees. These activities are not new. But the
content and direction of the latest among the corporate cultural design programmes
does indicate a new trend. The programmes currently extolled by organization
culturalists and management motivators now overtly encompass the utilization
of religio-affective, desecularized, impulses and non-economically rational values
emerging among even the mainstream professional middle class. Religious and
affective dimensions of human experience, so long omitted from the rational
institutions of production and work, are, it appears, now welcome. The
appropriation and application of current ‘new age’ interests in popular culture, to
encourage zealous and devoted employees in service of organizational ends, is
managerially perceived as a cost-effective production incentive in highly
competitive markets.
Among the newly popular writings are titles such as Getting Employees to Fall in
Love With Your Company (Harris 1996), Heart at Work (Canfield and Millar 1996),
Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work (Canfeld et al. 1996), True Work: The Sacred Dimensions
of Earning a Living (Toms and Toms 1998), Zen at Work (Kaye 1996), The Corporate
Mystic (Hendricks and Ludeman 1997) and The Soul at Work (Lewin and Regine
2000). Moreover, prominent organizational academics such as Charles Handy
210 Catherine Casey
(1997) are similarly exploring and advocating the incorporation of spiritual and
‘post-capitalist’ values to the workplace. Organizational consulting firms (especially,
but not only, in the United States) offer training seminars and courses in, for
example, ‘Spirituality in the Workplace’, ‘The Inner Life of Business’, ‘Igniting
Purpose and Spirit at Work’ and ‘The Transformed Organization’ (all advertised
on the Internet). The Hollyhock Spirit and Business Conference, September 1998
sought to encourage ‘business as a vehicle for social change and integrating
spirituality and business’.
At an international ‘Spirituality in the Workplace’ conference in Toronto in
1998, the Chairman of Aetna International gave a key-note address on ‘The
Dollars and Sense of Spirituality in the Workplace’. Seminars and workshops of
this nature are offered not only in the USA, but in arguably more secularized
countries such as the UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, for instance.
Moreover, a number of very large corporate organizations including IBM, Xerox,
AT&T, Nike, Forbes, Apple, Pepsico, General Electric, and others, fund in-house
or off-site employee participation in retreats which include yoga, meditation, mind-
body work, and the like. A prominent yoga establishment in Massachusetts offers
a regular programme of ‘corporate yoga’ to companies and individual corporate
executives. Yoga, which often includes chanting to Hindu deities, is selectively
adapted to consumer needs.
In addition to the popular literature cited above, the illustrations of
organizational experimentation in this unconventional domain, and the buzz of
the mind/body seminars, proliferating are practices among corporate employees
whom I have interviewed and observed that similarly display, and seek, diverse
counter-scientifically rational practices. For some, of course, an older form of
religious faith and practice is retained, but in quintessentially modern organizations
such practices, banished to private life, are omitted or denied in the rational
practices of bureaucratic and professional work. For the ‘unchurched’, however,
the new corporate organizational freedom to explore ‘new age’ activities, including
idiosyncratic cobbling together of fragments of traditions, is overtly displayed.
Serious attention hesitates to dismiss these activities as frivolous, whimsical and
fleeting.
In my research I have observed crystals, Native American ‘dream-catchers’
and statuettes of the Buddha displayed together in corporate cubicles. I have
witnessed human resources managers, social and natural scientists, and
organizational consultants individually using tarot cards (including in the tea-
room of a research laboratory) and ‘listening to their angels’. I have listened to
reports of their consulting of fortune-tellers, astrologers, numerologists and spirit
guides, by formally highly-skilled corporate employees to gain knowledge to
discern direction and aid decision making in their work and for their clients. I
have witnessed senior managers encourage employees in reading ‘new age’ self-
discovery and spiritual literature, and company-funded participation by middle
managers in mind/body spiritual and personal growth programmes.
I have listened to managers and their consultants, oftentimes at very expensive
seminars, invoke and advocate the language of openness to alternative or
competing rationalities. I have observed their partaking in pre-modern tribal rites

and prayers on the premises of highly modern, technologically advanced business
and administrative organizations. I have observed that these activities even offer
opportunities among corporate employees to develop particular ‘professional’
expertise in these knowledges and practices. And there is considerable scope for
employees from particular ethnic minority backgrounds to draw on, embellish
and apply their traditional knowledge in spiritual practices in contemporary
organizational cultures. Spiritual mystification contributes a new source, not only
of self-identity in the workplace, but of power and control. The following vignettes
each illustrate these points.
A senior employee (possessing an MBA) in a public relations and consulting
company informed me that she and some of her colleagues were proficient in, as
she put it ‘reading the “aura” of the person we’re with…’ ‘We do this with clients
or with people wanting to work for our company. I think we’re pretty good at
it…You can tell by the colour and shape of the aura if they’ll be suitable for us…’.
A medical scientist in a research institute in Switzerland reported his experiences
with a figure, invoking the name of a Hebrew prophet and claiming to be an
ancient spirit guide, prophesying through the entranced body of a former computer
scientist on the American west coast. According to my informant, the inspiration
from this mysterious prophet carries over into his research work. An economist
dressed in a fine suit employed in a London bank (after directing me to the
Roman mosaic floor depicting pagan sacred symbols elsewhere in the bank)
reported his practice of ‘playing with the numbers’ (numerology) and consulting
a nearby fortune-teller ‘for a bit of help!’ in his professional work. Further examples
of similar religio-spiritual stories from formally educated, highly trained
professional corporate employees abound in my research data.
It would seem from these examples illustrating corporate involvement in non-
traditional activities such as yoga and meditation, the literature appearing on
managers’ desks (and in their MBA curricula), and in the expressions of spiritual,
counter-scientific rationalities among some professional organizational employees,
that an apparent convergence of interest between employees and organizations in
alternative, non-modern, rationalities is occurring. For employees, these pursuits
may well be undertaken for personal interests in enhancing well-being and
developing knowledges precluded by their performance of rational, scientific,
professional roles and identities. For the corporate organization, these counter-
scientifically rational practices are likely to be invoked or permitted in the service
of enduring conventionally rational organizational production and profitability.
A corporately organized and promulgated programme of neo-religiosity that
commodifies, captures and utilizes affective and spiritual impulses increasingly
popular in a disaffected consumer society, meets an individualistic impulse for
greater opportunities for self-interest and neo-professional autonomy that propels
a shift away from domination by economic rationality. The latter impulse is
simultaneously the impetus for the corporate response as an effort to reintegrate
persistently alienated, distracted employees from the all-consuming tasks of
production.
212 Catherine Casey
In the mid-twentieth century, the ideal-type of corporate employee was a

dedicated professional, scientifically and economically rational, publicly secular,
emotionally repressed individual (Drucker 1946; Whyte 1956). In the 1980s
and 1990s the metaphor describing the desirable employee character type was
that of the familial, caring, team participant (Casey 1995) who had relinquished
strong occupational and professional identificatory bonds. As the new century
begins, it is the mystic and the votary.
Dealienation and new forms of identity construction at

work?
Corporate organizations operate in complex competitive environments that include
the increasing plurality of meaning and value among employees and potential
employees about work and organizational production. Organizational programmes
that offer and gain newly spiritual and affective sensibilities among employees
are engaging a sophisticated, postmodern, organizational strategy. At first glance,
many of these deliberately encouraged affective and spiritual practices that
mutually serve self and organizational interests, may be seen as efforts to restore
elements of human being that have been systematically subjugated and repressed
in typically alienated modern production processes and relations. The widely
practised restoration of affective and sensual sensibilities in the establishment of
familial and caring organizations, notwithstanding the use of emotional needs
and expression for organizational production purposes, has been generally well
received by employees and managers and has already demonstrated its effectivity
in the past decade; until downsizing ruptures the family.
Extending the success of the newly relational organizationally-identified
employee into an encouragement of the ‘corporate mystic’, accompanies and
enables further organizational use of corporate human resources. These
developments, as apparent efforts towards dealienation, assist the corporate
organization to meet its production and profitability goals. Simultaneously
presenting as sensitive and accommodating to dispirited and disaffected
employees, the new programmes enable the organization to respond quickly to
its environment, by enabling a super-flexible human resource management
practice that may downsize, reorganize, restructure (including various
configurations of networks, core-periphery structures, outsourced contracts) with
little traditional opposition. Mystical, soulful employees take responsibility for
their own karmic experiences in organizational participation. Corporate mystics,
according to Hendricks and Ludeman (1997), ‘have a respect and even fondness
for change…At times they may have unpleasant feelings about the directions of
change, but they are careful not to let those feelings limit their ability to respond’.
Corporate mystics have a ‘type of discipline that makes them flexible and
adaptable rather than rigid’.
Encouraging soulful, mystically equanimous employees, simultaneously
appeals to dispirited, overworked and potentially downshifting employees, and
endeavours to rekindle their devotion and service to their work and organization
in increasingly precarious global conditions. The potential freedoms offered by

a new age style of desecularization to jaded employees, whose professional-
identity motivation and values in their work performance have been eroded or
truncated by corporate cultural saturation, may be harnessed and utilized by
the corporation.
A sociological analysis may argue that an expected expansion of secularization
encompasses processes of laicization of the sacred. The activities presenting in
both corporate organizations and among disaffected middle-class professionals,
indicate a heightened interest in alternative rationalities and non-economic values
and may be interpreted as evidence of expanded individual consumer choice,
and as adept organizational practice in retaining and reintegrating producer
employees. An incorporation and commodification, rather than an eradication,
of competing interests, including the diversely (laicized) religious, into organization
production goals manifests flexible, highly adaptable postmodern, post-industrial
capitalism. Furthermore, taking a Durkheimian view, we may interpret these
activities as indicative of a dialectical turn of resacralization, or new designations
of the sacred, in contemporary secularized society. Laicization of sacred, religious
rites has emancipated individuals and communities and generated diverse, plural
arenas for signification and expression. Corporate validation and incorporation
of spirituality, as with affectivity, represent another arena of such expression and
cultural construction. Moreover, drawing on Frankfurt School traditions of critical
theory, we may interpret these activities as further efforts to delimit instrumental
and technocratic rationalities and truncation of self.
Alternatively, a postmodern interpretation may see laicization, in its corporate
use, as further pluralization and erasure of boundaries that renders self and social
constructions matters of choice or chance within discursively determined
conditions. Participation in corporate organizations, as any other activity, generates
sites of contestation and positionings. There may be no agreed upon notions or
values of the sacred, the profane, the self, and the other. These matters are fluid,
undecidable, contingencies of everyday life in which meaning is subjectively and
fleetingly constructed and relentlessly deconstructed.
We can observe that postmodern cultural practices of multiplicity, of pastiche
reconstructions and reconfigurations of the elements of self-identity drawn
idiosyncratically from the fragments of old traditions, the formerly exotic, the
technologically new, the magical and the scientific, are being enacted in the
everyday sites of corporate workplaces. Notwithstanding the potential for
reconstitutions and altered relationships offered by a postmodern discursive
deconstruction, post-modernism’s circumvention of the modern critical problem
of structure may inadvertently facilitate and legitimate hyper-modern
organizational structural dominance of employee selves. In rendering the moral
elements and outcomes of self and social practices irrefutably ‘undecidable’, relative
and contingent, the post-modern theoretical view refuses a self-project—a project
of self-identity that seeks a sense of interiority, consciousness, individuality, agency
and relationality (Taylor 1989)—possessing sustainable, dialectical agency in social
structural processes.
214 Catherine Casey
Conclusion
Bringing spirit and soul to work, as currently advocated in many corporate

organizations, although indicating a desecularization, does not simultaneously
indicate a dealienation and emancipation of self at work, nor a restoration of
domains of ordinary and sacred—the latter unassailable by totalizing, de-
differentiating technocratic rationalities and potentially a domain of resistance,
freedom and play Endeavouring to diminish or obscure alienation at work
through encouraging employees to take responsibility for ‘spiritualizing’ and
‘fun-filling’ their workplaces (Hendricks and Ludeman 1997) is a
contemporary corporate organizational strategy to defend against the much
deeper, and potentially transformative, malaise of industrial and post-industrial
production.
Earlier corporate efforts to shape, measure, constrain and discipline
employees have been evident for many generations. These efforts have taken
various forms from the overt industrial discipline (including whipping), to a
range of psychometric testings and interventions popular in the 1960s through
1980s, to the evangelical-style enthusiastic dedication and familial relatedness
promulgated in the 1990s. The current effort, both on the part of individuals
and of organizations to utilize spiritual seekings and alternative meaning-making
sources, is the latest expression in a long line of contestational practices at
work. For many of the neo-professional seekers and experimenters in new age
spiritualities, constructing neo-religious narratives of self-identity may serve as
alternative sites of resistance, or even of transcendence in the workplace. For
many, the desire to find an inner place of meaning that transcends the
emptiness of either over-controlled, or chaotic contingency, of outer realities of
hyper-productionism in corporate organizations is a defensive effort for self. For
the organization, endeavouring to incorporate the spiritual domain may indicate
that corporate strategists are running out of predictable devices to motivate
employees.
I argue that desecularization at work is an effort to rechannel the disruptive,
effervescent energy (or ‘holy sparks’, in Wexler’s (1996b) metaphor) of
alternative-seeking, disaffected professional employees back into rational
organizational ends. The reappropriation of spiritual interests and impulses
toward conventional organizational ends and modern productionist rationalities
does not generate conditions for reenchantment, dealienation and self-creation
in the workplace. However, the containment, incorporation and utilization of
emerging impulses and demands from dispirited, highly paid employees, manifest
efforts to preempt the potential of these impulses—that are more widely evident
in social practice—to more seriously disrupt the meta-rationality of capitalist
production and economy. Therefore, ‘new age neo-professionals’ in organizations
concerned to explore new sources, elements and configurations of identity,
meaning and value outside those of the conventionally modern, may indeed
utilize these resources and activities to channel ‘effervescent’ energy, as Durkheim
theorized, into self and socially creative, revitalized social practices.
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12 Writing professional
identities
(In)between structure and agency
Damian O’Doherty
Paradoxes abound in the study of professional labour and management. As the

numbers of employees with management responsibilities increase, we are, according
to Grey (1999), ‘all managers now’. In its media and dispersal this growth extends
the domination of a narrow technical and instrumental rationality that, given its
very ubiquity, undermines any pretentious claims for status and exclusivity.
Management today is found (always partially) in the high-street bookstores and
the airports, the newspapers and internet, conferences, workshops, and ‘virtual’
seminars. The exercise of management and talk about this exercise is becoming
confused and the idea of its practice as a substantive presence de-railed by the
infinite regress of media that deconstructs the temporal and spatial separation of
presentation and re-presentation. Research remains part of this media. It could be
argued that management is being made a textual obsession and a virus that morphs
and mutates, seeping and spreading its way into every nook and cranny, inventing
new ‘windows of opportunity’ at times when organizational space threatens to
become over-saturated. However, if it is everywhere, it also has to be nowhere. It
can be neither here nor there, if it is everywhere. Perhaps, as Lennie (1999) has
suggested, we are therefore reaching the stage of something ‘beyond management’.
Given this, it might strike some as a little odd that we are simultaneously confronted
with a lot of cacophonous talk and a lot of accumulating paper, a tumescence that
the shelves of the libraries swell to accommodate. This chapter seeks to add a little
weight to the burden of this collective depository by opening up the space where
we can consider the why of writing professional labour and management; and in so
doing, exposing that place between individuals, between structure and agency,
where the ontologies of professional managers slip and slide.
Abysmal questions and Y-writing

Scholarship in critical management studies is often justified on the basis that
writing contributes theoretical and research ‘findings’ in order to provide for
the advancement of knowledge and the improvement of understanding and
practice. Equally, a professional service is one that is traditionally measured in
terms of its exactitude and rigour where one expects the application of rules
218 Damian O’Doherty
and procedures, tried and tested methods, and the support of a foundation of
knowledge and expertise. This chapter should then, by all accounts, begin by
offering an introduction, a summary of the field and a review of the corpus of
literature that litters the academic and professional journals. One proceeds by
mapping the field and tracing out a genealogical-paternity of ideas, the seminal
papers, the lines of division, the revisions, and the modifications and footnotes
which follow the opening up the field. In brief, the published output of academic
subjects provide a collective body of knowledge and established lines of dispute
and division, a history and criteria against which the claims for professional
authority can be adjudged. Such a tradition also offers epistemological procedures
that structure reading and reference, which provides a ‘space of possibility’ within
which to locate and identify this paper here signed by O’Doherty (2000a).
Normally, when reporting new research findings, an author needs to detail their
research methodology and research strategy before developing any substantive
analysis of the data and before the presentation of the results and conclusions.
The validity of the conclusions can then be assessed against both the
methodology and the rigour of its application; as an exercise in scholarship, the
successful refereed paper contributes to the professional standing of the scholar,
provides career opportunities, and advances the claims for expertise. We all know
where we stand.
Whereas the foundations of sociology, psychology, and economics are
wellknown and were once well-established, in contemporary organization and
management studies there appears to be no agreed upon history, tradition or
lineage. People write from a diversity of perspectives in a plurality of styles with
no established centre against which to judge competence and expertise. How,
then, to proceed when a paper submitted to the journal Organization or the Critical
Management Studies conference might introduce yet another contemporary
French intellectual, an additional metaphor and discursive resource for the study
of organization? Is there any ‘field’ left in which one can claim mastery and
competence, or are we faced with a series of incongruous and partially
overlapping petit narratives (Lyotard 1984), a bricolage shanty-town that has lost
all sense of direction and purpose? Within this generalized clamour and incessant
quest for the new and undiscovered, how can one claim authorship and authority,
or judge competence and professional expertise amidst such a disorientating sea
of troubles? Moreover, why should one proceed on the eve of this new
millennium, this noontide turn of the millennium psychosis blues (LaBier 1986;
Sievers 1999)?
This ‘why’ proves extremely important in the writing of this chapter where an
attempt is made to adumbrate a novel space for the understanding of the
management of identities in the emerging professional financial services industry.
You can hear its whisper in the word ‘writing’—in the faint echo we might hear of
wry-ting or as I come to call it for now y-writing, or perhaps a little more suggestive,
if not unfortunately convoluted, why? writing. Some will see the influence of Derrida
(1976), or what Gregory Ulmer (1985) has called ‘applied grammatology’, where
writing is no longer subordinated to the representational and logocentric prejudices
Writing professional identities 219
that maintain the descending hierarchy of world-thought-speech-writing. This

text is part of a series of experimental essays and writings (O’Doherty 1997;
2000b; 2000c) that has its author struggling between what might have been called
at one time ‘epistemological’ and ‘ontological’ organization, a space of suspense
or limbo that seeks to recover the sense of possibility in-organization where, as
Deleuze writes (1989), ‘anything might happen next’. Moreover, y-writing
embodies the political agon of an existential ethic that works on the question or
that reason-for-which-we-write. More established epistemology in management
research and organization studies provides for writing that offers the seductive
possibility of authority and control, of self-completion and identity in the naming
and classification, or the taming, of ‘the empirical’. Y-writing recognizes that the
management of identity is as much a textual problematic, one that opens up for
enquiry the location of the ‘author function’ (Foucault 1969), as it is an empirical
research question: indeed the two are inevitably and inextricably intertwined.
Lastly, as a reading of this chapter might suggest, its practice disrupts and displaces
the principle of ‘performativity’ that according to Lyotard (1984) increasingly
regulates and measures the contribution of science and research. It provides no
easy answers, but stimulates further question. Why? Yes, yes…
New professional labour: fracture and incompletion

Once seen as the ‘great rationalizers’ of bureaucracy and modernity (Scott 1987),
a privileged elite made up of the educated and propertied middle classes, the
category of ‘professional worker’ is today becoming fractured and dispersed across
a contested terrain of organizational forces and contradictions. The application
of novel theoretical and analytical resources is beginning to open up for
management studies the multiple fractures and liminal zones in organization; its
fragile and contingent networks of allegiance and affiliation; together with the
inherent incompletion and indeterminacy of knowledge and expertise. Recent
developments in Foucauldian labour process and management study (Knights
and Vurdubakis 1994; Miller and O’Leary 1987; Townley 1994) and actor-
network theory more generally (Law 1994) have been particularly helpful in
exposing the tactical and processual features of organizational formation, revealing
the swarm of connections and points of liminality that introduce instability and
uncertainty into organization. These contributions remind us that those lines of
tension and division identified by Weberian and Marxian sociological studies of
work organization are today becoming more complex and dispersive.
In recent years there has been a lot of excitement and a considerable amount
of paper expended on the phenomena of complex organizations, organizations
that are said to be marked by unprecedented degrees of instability and change,
disorganization and uncertainty. Despite this flux, new principles of organization
cohesion and integration are discovered—more complex principles of order to
counteract the disaggregating tendencies of de-bureaucratization, downsizing,
dispersed network forms of working and temporary assemblages of organized
activity. On the mundane surface of events, all seems disorderly, a pandemonium
of confusion, paradox and incompletion. But opening up the more ‘expanded’

contextual field of organization, as Cooper and his colleagues have pioneered
over the years (Chia 1994; Cooper 1976; Gadella and Cooper 1978), has brought
into focus the ontologically deeper layers of processual interaction of man,
technology and nature. In this domain of organization, order and disorder are
more co-constitutive and inter-dependent than oppositional or antagonistic. In
the recent turn to complexity science, Eastern thinking and chaos theory, for
ways of thinking contemporary organization theory (Chia 1998; Tsoukas 1998),
some now see how a deeper sense of order-in-disorder, within a wider social and
historical ‘chaosmos’, provides for organization.
This theoretical and analytical disaggregation of organization has been
accompanied by the proliferation of post-rational forms of management (Peters
1992), the exercise of which encourages the deconstruction of old patterns of
organization and the re-patterning of organization via the integrative capacities
offered by forms of emotional management, the management of meaning (Gowler
and Legge 1983), and the manipulation of corporate identity through culture,
myth, signs and the deployment of symbolic artefacts (see Willmott 1993).
Organization seems then to be subject to a range of contradictory and countervailing
pressures, simultaneously pulling it apart through processes of debureaucratization,
flexibility, downsizing and delayering, whilst being re-integrated through
phenomena that work more in the domains of the emotional, the unconscious
and irrational. These emerging points of liminality and tension further stimulates
the expansion of management expertise and knowledge, manifest in the growth
of consultancy (Baxter 1996; Huczynski 1993), and the popularity of the celebrity
management guru lecture tour. This serves to complement and complicate the
growth of new intra- and interorganizational power centres based around
information technology and e-commerce, marketing and media management,
corporate strategy (see Jackall 1988), and arguably human resource management
(Keenoy and Anthony 1992; Storey 1992). Here, management is in a state of flux
crosscut by competing tensions and fractured by new modes of knowledge and
expertise. One interesting line of enquiry would be to consider the extent to
which these proliferating management specializations signal the nascent emergence
of new ‘professional’ groups and associations that comes to challenge and erode
the old power centres of professional expertise. Or, to question whether the
emerging discourse of management knowledge announces the end of
professionalization and the beginning of less organizable and less institutionalizable
‘packs’ of nomadic and footloose purveyors of expertise and knowledge.
Most recent theoretical and empirical studies of new professional labour (Bloor
and Dawson 1994; Reed 1996; Scarborough 1996), emergent in what is being
seen as an information rich and knowledge based economy (Castells 1989),
recognize the unstable, contingent and fluid nature of its expertise. The practice
of expertise in the information and communication technology sectors, the media
industry, in the banking and financial services, and in the new cultural industries
of ‘Cool Britannia’, tends to be, as Reed (1996:585) writes, creative and
entrepreneurial, such that it is difficult to ‘standardize, replicate and incorporate
within formalized organizational routines’. However, most of the published and

high profile research in the management of expertise, new professional labour,
and knowledge management, retains the legacy of positivism, often, as in the
case of Reed (1996), through the mobilization of versions of critical realism (see
also Lash and Urry 1994). Critical realism fails to appreciate the contingency of
its own reflexive co-constitution within those social and historical conditions that
in part provide the theoretical and discursive resources for its study. Those who
employ forms of critical realism in their study of professional labour escape the
anxiety that attends the opening up of this aphoria in preference for an explanatory
neatness that always threatens to becomes reductive and doctrinaire. In seeking
to establish a deep ontological anchor by which to explain ‘surface’ epiphenomena
in management and organization (see Tsoukas 1994; Willmott 1996), such research
remains restricted and inhibited, and proves inadequate for the exploration of
emergent instability and fragility in contemporary organization.
The exercise of a traditional descriptive-theoretical mode of exposition and
enquiry means that the analysis of organization works typically to dim down the
eruption of the unpredictable, the accidental, and the play of chance. Many of the
‘phenomena’ that are quickly boxed and labelled as ‘instability’ and ‘flux’ tend to
get lost by analytical exercises that linguistically tame the very features of
organization/disorganization that the analysis is trying simultaneously to
adumbrate. To label something as ‘disorderly’ or ‘meaningless’, for example, is a
contradiction in terms. In order to know that something is ‘meaningless’, or to be
certain that phenomena are disorderly, requires an analytical confidence that
might seem to be threatened by the very same phenomena it is attempting to
define. This problem emerges once we recognize that our theoretical resources
and conceptual abstractions are drawn out of the very same social and historical
conditions we are attempting to define and understand.
Re-drawing the boundaries of work organization and re-contextualizing its surface
of events within the more encompassing universal process of human-nature struggle—
let us summarize it here as the gaia of organization—in many ways provides for the
continuity of traditional research epistemology and academic confidence. In effect,
the ‘surface’ of organization gets ‘managed’ and subsumed then within deeper
geological layers of explanation and understanding. Y-writing, by contrast, is the
product of methodological failure, a failure of ‘management’ in the sense that
explanation becomes exhausted through the experiential opening to the work of
new professional labour. Like the putative object of study, the management of
identities in new professional labour, the professional status and routines of the
academic researcher are equally threatened by the confrontation with dimensions
of organization that remain stubborn to the definition of analytical categories and
explanation. It is only when we turn experientially to the visceral day-to-day struggle
of organization that we find the turbulent domain of the new professional worker,
but we only ‘find’ it by ‘losing it’ along byways that scramble and derail the very
methodological techniques of study we traditionally employ in academic research.
The terrain within which new professional labour works, and the very conduct
of its ‘expertise’, falls ‘outside’ and ‘before’ the capture of dualistic categories and
analytical mechanics and calls for new modes of enquiry and study. On occasion,
the discourse of those engaged in new professional labour—if indeed it may be
granted such a coherent title—is almost psychotic and schizophrenic (Sievers 1999),
and in yielding to the experiential encounter with professional labour our analysis
becomes more like a ‘schizoanalysis’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1984). Stepping outside
our routine procedures of sense-making we begin to hear signifiers that migrate
and cascade across chains of associations disconnected from any referential point
of rest provided by the realm of the signified, breaking up into deterritorialized
assignifying signs and part objects that like ‘rushes of breath and cries’ (Deleuze
and Guattari 1984:243) leaves entropy and delirium in its wake. Capitalism is
continually surpassing its limits, Deleuze and Guattari write, such that schizophrenia
is in many ways the natural corollary of late modern capitalism. The challenge is
to seek an understanding of these ‘schizo-flows’ that does not impose or return to
a form of psychological or political-economic reductionism, but yields to the flow
in the struggle to find new and more relevant forms of conceptual understanding.
In order to extend our sensitivity and appreciation of that which has been
too quickly labelled ‘flux’ and ‘disorder’ and to access the world and labour of
the new professional, requires a capacity to tolerate the dissolution—or at least
the partial dissolution—of our cognitive and sense-making apparatus. Even the
most sophisticated of theoretical developments that seek to move beyond the
structural antinomies of mainstream social theory (e.g. Hull 1999, 2000) are
unable to approach these ‘intermediate’ dimensions of organization where the
impact of this schizophrenic discursive ‘constitution’ is producing its effects. In
order to do so we need to struggle out of the restrictive ‘lines of sight’ (Munro
1995:138) and the disembodied and representational principles of ‘limited and
selective objectification’ (Kallinikos 1995) exercised within orthodox academic
research.
In what follows, we risk this epistemological collapse in the mix up of
experimental forms of ethnographic research and writing that at times we will
find difficult to follow but that in its strange movement attempts to maintain the
space of the experiential encounter with the disturbing primordial matter of
organization, that space(ing) where things remain half-formed, grotesque,
ephemeral, transient and volatile. Ostensibly based upon six years of ethnographic
research in the high street retail banks, this form of research/writing uncovers
that elusive middle ground in organization, that difficult space between structure
and agent that has occupied the attention of so much organization theory since
the publication of Burrell and Morgan’s Sociological Paradigms and Organizational
Analysis (1979). This ‘space’ proves instructive for our understanding of nascent
professional labour because it comes before the foundation and stabilization of
procedures and criteria, the ‘body’ of knowledge, and the rules and regulations
which have, up until now at least (Reed 1996), defined the modern practice of
professional labour. Yet, writing that is mindful of the sublimated ‘y’, invites an
embodied yielding to the experiential complexity and depth of contemporary
organization. It may provide one way of reaching outside and beyond the marks
and gridlines of discourse and linguistic production that restricts community
(Bataille 1954) to an incessant babble, even if the distinctions between prostitution,

academic study, and new professional labour begin to blur.
‘Odds-on to feature an impressive specification’
Pin stripe, braces, slick back. It is 1.05 p.m. and Charlie Sheen look-a-like
eases the ice blue metallic Mazda 626 Atlantis—‘odds-on to feature an
impressive specification’, air conditioning, electric windows, alloy wheels
etc.—into the fast lane of the M1. 75, 80, 85 miles per hour. We’re breaking
the speed limit! This car could be yours today. Nice work. Travelling the
fourteen miles between Leicester and Loughborough in the heart of the
British East Midlands, ‘Charlie Sheen’ and I are travelling to a regional
managers’ meeting that is due to begin at 2.00 p.m. at the SwallowFields
Country Club and Leisure Park. Images of golf caddies, navy blue Scotney
blazers, yellow and pink tessellated diamond Pringle jumpers, Ericsson
‘module 3’ mobile phones; gravel car park scrunch and a cool swish as the
fuel injected 1.8 litre 16-valve engine expires with a comfortable sigh and
whinny. Odds-on to feature an impressive specification.
***
I see something and I see numbers. Show me a set of figures and I can
see how they’ve been arrived at—the percentages, the cuts, the glosses and
weaknesses. You see that’s where the market trader in me comes out. I’m
telling him this and I’m telling him that. You know! You want something…?
Well you’ve got to give me something. I always get what I want, now
let’s see what we can do for you. I know you want to pay your workforce
at the end of this month. And I’m holding that cheque. Let me see some
repayments and commitment… The Bank of England announced today a quarter
per cent rise in interest rate. The Governor of the Bank of England Mr. Eddie
George…On the markets the interest rate rise was greeted…It’s all about knowing
the rules and knowing how to bend them.
(Emphasis in the original)
What we have been reading here are two extracts from my field diary written whilst
conducting empirical research carried out between 1992 and 1998 in the UK high
street retail banks. Research that started out methodologically as one thing, but in
the process of its exercise, metamorphosed to become another. No doubt you will
suspect that I have embellished and edited the text here. This suspicion derives from
the assumption that there is something out there, some objective empirical entity or
event, something factual or some foundation before the process of editorial selection,
revision and elaboration. Yet research in the contemporary banking and financial
services industry teaches us that there is no gold standard left anymore, no lender of
last resort, that the ‘truth’ is as Nietzsche understood, fluid and perspectival, elusive
and ephemeral. In other words, we are witnesses to what Vattimo (1992) calls a
‘weakening of reality’. As ‘methodology’, this research—and this text—partakes of
this weakening of reality and begins to perform a collage of sorts, enfolding multiple
ontologies which seep and bleed into one another, at times generating odd
juxapositions of text and on occasion ‘smearing’ reality close to those extremes of
desertion and ‘white-out’ found in neo-realist Italian cinema. For some, this might
recall the surrealist motif which speaks of that ‘chance encounter of a sewing machine
and an umbrella on an operating table’. For others, y-writing reads like a script
within the ‘cinema of the time-image’ (Deleuze 1989), or perhaps it is the ticket that
exploded (Burroughs 1962), where time ‘is out of joint and presents itself in the pure
state’ (Deleuze 1989:271), always about to happen/always just happened, the cut—
its ‘unknown’ or interstice—an event that endlessly always brings together and
dissipates what is seen or experienced and what is there to be known in the said. We
might think of this as the ‘static discharge’ of organization, manifest in phenomena
where oppositions between things like the real and the imaginary, the feature film
and reality, the serious and humorous, or fact and fiction, seem to implode.
Organization comes to take on hallucinatory qualities that at times resemble the
suspended world of the dream or the nightmare (Burrell, 1997). While in the banking
and financial services industry, the ‘odds might be on’ to feature an impressive
specification of credit-debt calibration and measurement, one finds the gamble is
often lost as control gives way to disorder, confusion and panic.
To enter the y-writing space of organization, where text such as this is produced,
encourages us to think in new ways and extends our capacity for sensitivity and
responsiveness to those dimensions of organization where volatility and fluidity
is available for study, momentarily caught ‘in action’. We find this instability
perturbing and anxiety raising but only by way of its disorientation are we granted
‘access’ to those features of organization where we find the organizing impulse of
new professional labour dispersed and derailed by the threat that ‘anything might
happen next’ (Deleuze 1989). This is a space of action outside the familiar
landmarks of cause-effect, a field of ‘possibility:impossibility’ where there are no
rules or procedures informing agents or authors how to act, or what to say, what
advice to give, or how to judge a state of affairs. In situations where our sensory-
motor schemata breaks down, or is overwhelmed by optical and sound imagery,
a space is opened up in which normalized and routinized rules of action—reaction,
stimulus—response, and cause-effect, are rendered inoperable, stimulating the
irruption and discharge of chance, the unpredictable, and also what Kroker and
Cook (1991) call acts of ‘panic’. In these liminal movements we are offered
moments of insight into the ‘expanded field’ (Bryson 1988) of organization, where
action falls between the interstices of the fractured and multiple domains of nascent
professional labour. This ‘excess’ of organization festers in what Bowles (1991)
calls the ‘organization shadow’ which proves un-manageable, and moreover, retains
the capacity to disable management and ‘professional identity’. Yet, this space is
precisely the shadow that is opening up in the practice of new professional labour,
‘a rendezvous of questions and question marks’ as Nietzsche (1886) writes in
anticipation of the encroaching nihilism of modernity. This causes us to stop and

reflect: who are we to profess to know the labour of the ‘new professional’?
which of us is Oedipus here and which of us is sphinx?
Charlie Sheen decides he’s having an afternoon drink to celebrate the monthly
sales figures: ‘Have you seen that film Damian? Wall Street?…Fuckin’ marvelous’.
No one tells Charlie what to do. ‘Business turns me on…you know…numbers,
you’ve got to see them everywhere.’ But things are beginning to get less clear. ‘The
truth is that sex is everywhere’, write Deleuze and Guattari (1984:293), the way ‘a
bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes
money to circulate…Hitler got the fascists sexually aroused. Flags, nations, armies,
banks get a lot of people aroused’. Boundaries and definition are giving way to
morphoses, the roll of the dice, alea, simulation and ilinx (Caillois 1961:24–5 and
passim). Specification gives way to disorientation and ‘ontological slide’ (O’Doherty
2000b), numbers yield to letters, and location becomes dislocation. The round
comes to £12.80. Inflation! Someone makes a show of paying for it. Dave Jowell is
there: ‘This guy [Dave Jowell] right, he’s got imagination, he’s a bit cheeky, doesn’t
mind chancing his arm you know, he’s a bit of a character—the kind of guy we’re
looking to for the future…’ A reputation is being built. Robert Smithson, a young ambitious
sales executive is looking for his next big break. They compete and joust. Dave Jowell has many
stories told about him. It seems to annoy some of the younger ones. They’re looking for him to slip up.
Now what was it that manager said in Robert Jackall’s (1988:97) Moral Mazes?
The code is this: you milk the plants; rape the business; use other people
and discard them; fuck any woman that is available, in sight and under
your control; and exercise authoritative prerogatives at will with subordinates
and other lesser mortals who are completely out of your league in money
and status.
Some people cast glances over in our direction. Others are at the bar, chatting to other pin
stripes. Jeez, these people are really getting inside me ‘…so he’s been trying to get this
client on his books now for nearly a year. He’s got a small factory you see and he
employs over thirty-five people!…’. At this stage my notes look almost
indecipherable. I had also had far too many alcoholic beverages. Not professional.
Not professional at all. The gist of the story, however, is that Dave Jowell somehow
finds out that his prospective client is a tremendous Gary Glitter fan. Travelling
home from work one night he happened to be tuned into the local radio station
and heard an advertisement announcing a forthcoming Gary Glitter concert at
the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. The following morning he
telephones the ticket office and purchases four tickets. He then telephones his
client in a burst of enthusiasm:
Ron, I’ve got some great news. I know you like Gary Glitter. Well guess
what? I have two spare tickets for the upcoming concert in Birmingham!
How would you and your wife like to join my wife and I as our guests on
that evening?
Needless to say the client’s business was procured and a good motivational
story was secured for future training events. In the course of my research I
heard this story told a number of ways and the one you have just read is my
recollection of its first telling (Van Maanen, 1988). The story remains
unfinished, in the process of becoming, suggestive of a number of
interpretations and open to a number of implications. It may become that
cliqued corporate myth that provokes cynicism, irony and ‘distancing’ amongst
employees (Collinson 1994). Alternatively, it may become a more ritualized
element of official or unofficial corporate culture, a manifold and cathartic
moment of nostalgia around which complex and ambivalent feelings are played
out (see Willmott 1993). Employees might reaffirm collective identity and
belonging around this nodal point whilst simultaneously providing a means
for the focus of ennui and disappointment.
Snap! ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Not this tired old story about Dave Jowell and Gary Glitter’.
Remember, anything might happen next. It did not on this occasion, I think, but what is
going through the mind of Robert Smithson over there by the bar? What dreams, that
night, might come?
Let us read this passage once more. What is taking place in this hotel bar? The
series of interviews I had conducted at head office provided a wealth of
information about the birth of professional financial services. Note the talk was
about ‘financial services’, not sales. One of the traditional strengths of high
street retail banks is deemed to be the confidence and credit that has been built
up over many years with its account holders. Banks talk about ‘relationship
banking’ and about ‘quality service’. While the reputation and status, indeed
the numerical presence, of traditional professional occupations within the banks
is in decline—those skills in bookkeeping, accountancy, and branch office
management, that formed the syllabus of the Institute of Bankers exams—the
retail banks are still seeking to trade and compete in high street retail finance on
the basis of gravitas, respectability and professional service. On the shopfloor,
however, the talk is suspended between categories. Walls are coming down and
others are in the process of being erected. This marks, perhaps, the emergence
of nascent professionalization in action. A new hybrid discourse seems to be in
the process of being formed. It is neither the polished decorum of professional
discourse, nor is it simply the British pub culture of Saturday night masculine
bravado. Neither does it appear to be the typical language one might expect
from pin stripe suited bankers. Let’s listen in to one of the other conversations
going on at one of the other tables.
Roger?…He’s always looking for the next sale. I bet you right now he’s
fixing up some mortgage deal with the boys from the Lombard…[Hasn’t
he just come back from Cuba?]…3 weeks?! [Did he take his wife?]
[Laughter]…He’s going to have to pay for that [What? At his age!]
[Laughter]’.
I had met Roger several weeks before on a number of subsequent occasions. He

was currently the number one sales manager in the region and I asked him,
whilst he was surrounded by a number of his younger colleagues and remember
this is performance, stage management, a series of presentations of self (Goffman
1959)—what made him so successful.
What makes me successful?…Well I’m always available, I never put the phone
on divert. I am HorizonBank to my customers. That’s why I’m so
successful…We have a contractor in the branch at the moment, putting up
some walls for us and taking some down. Now I always have the coffee on,
you know invite customers in for a chat and a coffee, and I asked this young
chap in for a chat. Found out he was using a personal account for his business
at RivalBank. Yes, OK—he was a low net worth customer. But I asked him
‘what would happen if you were ill and can’t work?’ Found out he’d just been
through a divorce and had taken on quite a heavy mortgage commitment…
(original emphasis)
At one of the regional sales managers monthly meetings I had attended there had
been an extended discussion about how particular pubs in Stitchtown city centre
were known to be places where ‘interesting’ clients could be found. Staff were
encouraged to spend perhaps a couple of hours after work getting their ‘faces
known’ in the pub. Places where solicitors, estate agents, and insurance brokers
patronized were ‘hot tips’, where information might be gathered, where news could
be exchanged, and ‘leads’ developed. ‘A bit of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch
yours’, as one personal account executive put it to me. What seems to be taking
place here is a managerial attempt to colonize and consolidate a restricted version
of ‘paramount reality’ in the deconstruction of the distinctions between ‘work’ and
‘leisure’ or ‘client’ and ‘friend’. The world of sales managers became one of sales
possibilities. Talk could always be interpreted in a number of ways. One couldn’t
always decide whether this person’s interest in you was ‘genuine’, or whether they
were looking for information, trying to assess your current ‘financial needs’.
Listening into the discussions with ‘Charlie Sheen’ and his colleagues one
might well be listening to the masculinist ‘sparring’ and ‘jousting’, the bluffs and
feigns that take place over craps tables. Indeed, one might well have been sat in
some ancient Athenian market place. Bets were being placed; form was being
studied; gambles were being won and lost. All sorts of gambles. Casino capitalism
with its mad money, as Susan Strange (1997) writes. It was also an arena in
which issues of birth, death and life itself (Sievers 1994) were being negotiated
and discussed. A whole economy of death suddenly intrudes upon the restricted
economy of financial economics and numerical definition. Think about the
language that is being circulated. Mortgage; pensions; life insurance; medical insurance;
accidental damage cover. At times this ‘general economy’ (Bataille 1949) rudely
intrudes upon the quotidian. Conversations would on occasion break down as
employees might reflect on their past and future. I would often hear things said
such as; ‘I cannot see where to go any longer’, or ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed
to be doing here anymore?’, or in one case, ‘What are we really here for anyway?’.
Was I hearing these comments in the right way? In the way they were intended?
To what discursive regime, if any, did they belong? (Watson 1994).
One could perhaps catch a glimpse that questions were being asked below
the mundane surface of social interaction and routine conversational trade.
Who is worth ‘spending time’ with? Who has been talking to Charlie?
Conversations might appear to be heading in one direction, only to take flight
and assume the guise of something altogether different. This was conversation
in suspense—literally suspense. Like Psycho. One never knows what might happen
next once we let go of our interview procedures, methodological recipes, and
its philosophical supports. To be reminded that philosophy is, perhaps, only
the ‘reassurance given against the anguish of being mad at the point of closest
proximity to madness’ (Derrida 1978:59), counsels for a degree of caution in
the confidence we attach to our explanations and interpretations. In the suspense
of social interaction, one could bring to bear a whole series of contextual
backgrounds to stabilize and secure what was being intended or what was
really being said. You also needed to know the person speaking, the person to
whom the comments were being directed, together with a whole complex history
and trajectory to work out the weight and consequence of what was being said.
However, one could never be sure. It rapidly begins to disintegrate into absurdity,
or worse, it simply opens up a hole with interminable borders. This is where
ontology begins to slip and slide, where fiction and reality begin to splice and
merge, where image and reality—as McDowell’s (1998) writes in her study of
the world of high finance—begins to deconstruct and take on features of what
Baudrillard would call the hyper-real. Gordon Gekko becomes Nick Leeson,
who then becomes Charlie Sheen in the newspaper accounts of financial trade,
who (?) then becomes Hugh Grant in the film of the Barings affair, a film
watched by bankers who then go back to work in the morning and trade money
that seems even more fictional, not ‘really real money’ as Leeson once said in a
television interview (cited in McDowell 1998:167).
In the world of banking and finance the ‘element of fiction seems to have
heightened in recent years’ (McDowell 1998:176), where junk bonds, futures
trading, derivatives and ‘traded options’ make and lose billions in little less than
a nano-second. The world of banking becomes a daily soap opera, which, in
some kind of way, might resonate with those who remember Huw Beynon’s
study of the ‘magic roundabout lads’ in Working for Ford (1975). Fiction and ‘faction’,
the imagined and the dream, co-penetrate in this unstable medium. Something
that Walter Benjamin anticipated in his 1936 essay Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction, where, as he writes, the movie screen ‘hit the spectator like a bullet,
it happened to him, this acquiring a tactile quality’, where people complain ‘I can
no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving
images’ (cited in Taussig 1993:19–32).
One never knew at what level of ontology social relations were being engaged,
nor the implications of what was being said, or how it might impact on morale or
commitment. Orthodox accounts of conflict at work might dismiss the significance
of these micro-encounters as little more than surface jetsam and flotsam. However,
large-scale data sets and quantitative forms of analysis fail to open up these fine
textures and processual features of social relations. If one considers that a large
part of the working day is taken up precisely with conversation and trade of this
sort, then, as a source of disruption and disorder, its dynamics might be more
significant than traditional forms of conflict at work in terms of its contribution
to low productivity (Edwards 1986). Whether the nascent professional employees
I was studying represented capital or labour was not at all clear, which perhaps
suggests one reason why organization is becoming fractured across multiple,
contingent and unstable lines.
It’s so difficult to organize these days, so difficult to manage. We simply cannot
bank on it. Our insecurities are fuelled and amplified by managerial consultants
and nascent professional labour as they feed off the same chaos that consumes
them. As a phenomenon, organization becomes more remarkable by the day (see
Burrell 1997). So much so that the very notion of ‘organization’ may well be in
danger of theoretical and empirical redundancy. As a medium and outcome of
these broad social and historical forces—what Giddens sometimes calls the ‘double
hermeneutic’ of social science—research methodology, the intellectual theory and
the scholarly text, and indeed the very professional identity of the academic can
be expected to embody the same flux and disorientation (see Deleuze and Guattari
1984). In a world of casino capitalism, of ‘mad money’, the world of the ‘bull
spread’ and the ‘bear spread’, where we come across, as one introductory textbook
on banking and finance tells us, the ‘forked lightning, Mexican hat, Mae West,
condor, butterfly’ (Valdez 1997:242), is it any wonder that research in the
organization of banks and financial services begins to resemble the traditional
denomination of UK currency, namely its LSD?
Nietzsche anticipated a long time ago that our world was becoming unchained
from its sun, that a sponge will wipe away the entire horizon. Are we perpetually
falling?’, he asks, ‘Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up
or down left? Are we not straying through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the
breath of empty space’ (Nietzsche 1882:125). As my recollection of the research
ethnography develops and evolves, as I read my notes on ‘Charlie Sheen’ and
‘Michael Douglas’, it sometimes feels as if the world is falling, forward, backwards
and sidewards. In the process of compilation and editing, selection and
arrangement, new stories emerge, new possibilities and unforeseen realities begin
to form. As Van Maanen (1988:123) writes, ‘I have never told the tale printed
here in precisely the same way before nor can I tell it in exactly the same way
again. More reading, writing, research, conversation or simply living will surely
lead to amendment and further understanding.’ Moreover, as an account of the
world of management and the emergence of new professional identities, of banking
and performativity, it tells far more than I can hope to explicate in this chapter. It
tells far more, yet strangely, it speaks of far less. It is ‘in vain that we say what we
see; what we see never resides in what we say’, Foucault reminds us, and it ‘is in
vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors or similes, what
we are saying’ (Foucault 1966:9).
Con/clusion
I have been interested in introducing the idea of y-writing as a means of offering

insight and experience into the half-formed and elusive, primordial dimensions
of organization—domains of organization that are found distributed across vast
material and subjective spaces. We begin to enter here the mental space of the
collective unconscious, that space(ing) that lies between individuals, where
dreams and fantasies collide with ‘reality’ to motivate unpredictable forms of
interaction and subjectivity that differ and defer the seamless surface of
organizational integrity and accomplishment. We open up a vast array of forces
and pressures—economic, existential, psychological and political—forces that
combine and collide to set up strange complex movements and events in
organization. Letting go of our familiar habits and assumptions, to tarry against
the infinite unseen, to swim with the tide of the labyrinthine currents in
organization, leads into unexpected places and sites. We become aware of the
multi-plied layers of ontological reality, the ambiguous and unsettled, and begin
to cultivate an intense sensitivity to those moments of interruption and
disruption, the slips of tongue, the ellipses and incongruous that intrude upon
the apparent calm surface of the organizational mundane. Y-writing is not so
much a collective exercise in free association as it is a research ‘strategy’—if we
may still use a language imbued with agency and purpose—that allows the
researcher to yield and momentarily become the multiplex currents that stream
through people and organization. Writing is no longer an emaciated, separate
mode of representation and correspondence but a mode of entrance to the
experiential becoming of organization/disorganization, its space of
performativity, that is, where the labour of the contemporary professional is
per-formed and de-formed. Organization is dematerialized by such moves of dis-
identification and de-subjectification (Willmott, 1994), disturbing the unity and
solidity of our taken-for-granted reality, a reality that is no longer there today
as a foundation to support and underwrite the exercise of professional labour.
New ‘proto-’ or yet-to-be professionalized regimes of expertise and power-
knowledge, found in academia, information technology, computer hardware and
software management, financial services, organizational consultancy, advertising,
media and public relations, are supplanting and supplementing the more traditional
centres of professional power established in such domains as medicine, personnel
management, accountancy and law. These movements engender complex and
contradictory lines of development in organization—from the emergence of
‘transdisciplinary’ expertise to hybrid management discourse and the flux of
transient, high-turnover, contingent forms of knowledge. Where labour process
theory once saw and prioritized a contested terrain across the division between
capital and labour (Edwards 1986; Thompson 1989), we are now finding that
struggle and contestation is becoming more dispersed within organization and
more fractious. Our text inevitably is a participant in this struggle.
To seek an adequate understanding of the management of professional identities
in contemporary organization compels the submission to forces such as these, forces
which equally threaten the identity and routines of the proto-professionalized

academic, both as author and researcher. This is why we typically find these features
of organization uncanny, and generally attempt to bar access to those domains or
dismiss and ignore its disturbance. Willmott has recently recalled that:
we are each constituted within, and rely upon the support of, institutions
and discourse that make possible the acquisition of the modes of rationality
through which we articulate, and are articulated by, a precarious and
dynamic sense of reality and identity.
(Willmott 1997:259)
In conditions of postmodernity, however, further rounds of Habermasian style

seminar discussion will not provide particularly effective ways of researching
these hegemonic institutions and discourse. Rather, we must experience the
contingency of ‘reality’ by means of a more Nietzschean test of the limits of self
and rationality. By such means we can momentarily enter that space that Giddens
(1979) only begins to approach with his concept of ‘critical incident’. This is the
hinge of structure-agency, that forgotten aphoria which lies at the heart of social
theory, an aphoria covered over in the exercise of dualistic analysis and synthetic
resolutions of the structure-agency dilemma.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Hugh Willmott of the Manchester School of
Management, UMIST, and Sue Wallace of Newcastle Business School, University
of Northumbria, for helpful comments and suggestions during the development
of this chapter.
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13 Life on the verandah
Colonial cartographies of professional
identities
Dorothy Lander and Craig Prichard
Abstract
In 1998 the authors of this chapter received professional qualifications from the
University of Nottingham. Shortly afterwards they took jobs in their respective
‘home’ countries, Canada and New Zealand. This chapter is an attempt to use
critical autobiographical method to explore the layers of practices and knowledge
that inform and make up their professional identities. Such layers include personal
experience, organizational practices, their discipline’s knowledge base and broad
political and economic contexts. The term ‘verandah’ is used as a metaphor to
discuss the positioning of these identities in colonial histories and to support the
form of the chapter itself. The term verandah—from the Hindi word varanda—
moved into the English language during the colonial administration of the British
raj. It points to historically constructed colonial relations between metropolitan/
imperial ‘centre’ and colony/colonized ‘margin’. These relations provide a kind
of ‘map’ upon which professional identities are ordered and constructed. The
authors use the term cartography to highlight this process of mapping, to discuss
the challenges to existing ‘maps’, and the process of ‘re-mapping’ posed by
marginalized, aborginal or indigenous knowledges and practices.
The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives the following meaning for verandah: ‘An
open portico or roofed gallery extending along the front (and occasionally other
sides) of a dwelling erected chiefly as a protection or shelter from the sun or rain.’
A verandah then is a place where one can go to escape the heat of the sun, or
alternatively the heat of the kitchen (MeWilliam 1998:3). This chapter discusses
marginalized knowledges and practices. It uses autobiographical material and is
written as a dialogue. On both counts the chapter fails to conform to normal
academic writing practices. It is, then, a kind of ‘verandah’, as the chapter does
not conform with the normal practices of the academic ‘household’. The authors
argue that writing from the ‘verandah’—both in terms of colonial histories and
academic practices—provides opportunities for the discussion of professional
identities. The authors hope this will prove provocative to readers and allow
them to reflect on their own work identities in new and dynamic ways: away
from the heat of the hearth/kitchen (of disciplining institutional knowledge) or
236 Dorothy Lander and Craig Prichard
out of the ‘rain or sun’ (of everyday professional practice). One further aspect
positions the chapter on the verandah of the academic ‘homestead’. Situated in
the poststructural or anti-foundational literature, the chapter assumes ‘human
being’ to be a shifting ground of discursively-constituted subject positions. Some
of these are complementary. Many are contradictory. A key conflict for the
professional academic identities discussed here is the contradiction between post-
compulsory education as morally-orientated public service, and post-compulsory
education as the provision of commodified knowledge for a knowledge economy
(OECD 1996; Robertson 1998). The verandah provides a vantage point for
mapping out these contradictory ways of knowing.
Down Under Man (DU): Kia Ora Koutou (Greetings to all, in Maori).
Great White North Woman (GWN): Hello, how y’ doin’? and Bonjour, ça
va? from officially bilingual Canada.
DU: Phew, glad that’s out of the way. It seems a bit stiff I know, but I felt
that we needed to try to set out our ‘stall’ so to speak. Why should I ‘feel’ that?
Why should we need to do this? I think these questions really go to the core
of what we’re doing in this chapter. In line with recent feminist and critical
social theory, we are attempting to bring a critical self-consciousness to our
work. In the service of a broad critical project, we explore the globalized
knowledge practices that produce academic identities as a professional identity,
and use our own ‘selves’ as ‘data’. ‘Identity’, as much recent social theory and
analysis suggests (Butler 1990; Giddens 1991; Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Hall
1996; Rose 1996) can be understood broadly as made up of layers of
discursive practices, which become, through repetition, largely tacit and ‘un-
sayable’. In Bourdieu’s terms they make up the professional’s habitus. This
includes dispositions, tastes and practices which, through the subtle and not so
subtle practices of the particular field or ‘market’, take up residence in our
bodies, so to speak, and can be exchanged for various currencies. Academic
identities like other professional identities are the outcome of a range of field
specific practices: conference attendance, paper giving, student enrolment,
graduation, academic employment, and performance appraisal. In detail these
practices preside over and support the formation and distribution of academic
identities. These form grid patterns with lines of ‘longitude’ and ‘latitude’
(which we will attempt to explicate). In the case of academic identities they
spread out to form global networks—the ‘invisible colleges’—which produce and
reproduce global ‘bodies’ of knowledge through the formation of
knowledgeable bodies. Of course these practices cannot be assumed to be
stable. Their histories mean that academic ‘identities’ contain tensions between
the modern and pre-modern, the localized and global, the situated and
dispersed. Fairclough (1993) highlights this in his discussion of the
marketization of universities. There is a tension—for Fairclough himself in this
case—between an individualized self-promoting academic identity elaborated by
the discourses of performativity, and those which ‘demonstrate’ their
competence via student and peer-orientated practices. Given this, we should
move to discuss our commitment to providing cartographies or maps.
Life on the verandah 237
GWN (interrupts): Seems to me our commitment (or at least mine) to

mapping and narrativizing knowledge practices rests squarely on a belief in the
locatedness of knowledge. Witness your ‘setting our stall’, which explicates the
very abstract of this chapter as locating knowledge, not to mention other locators
such as boundaries, networks, sites, medium, layers, and the ‘higher’ of higher
education. Connelly and Clandinin (1999:104) show how temporal borders and
spatial borders are linked to professional identity in educational practice. ‘Borders
say that something different is about to begin…. Borders themselves have histories.
There are ways that permit things to pass the border and ways that things are
treated on either side of the border’. Our abstract creates a border between
monologic academic writing and the conversational writing that we are playing
with. Our greetings allude to historical borders of our dialogue. Our greetings
locate each of us in former British (and French in my case) colonies but with a
different history on each side of our dialogical border. Postcolonial discourse
relies on mappings of the centre and the periphery and the higher and lower. In
a return to the academic ‘stiff’, I can pull my positioning right out of my doctoral
thesis (Lander 1997:90), buttressed by feminist epistemologist Lorraine Code
(1991) as intellectual authority, a Canadian feminist philosopher no less. Code
(1991:70) supports my plan to use ‘home’ as a theoretical construct and storying
as the knowledge practice and process for positioning first year students in the
university ‘home’ as a service organization:
Once epistemologists recognize the locatedness of all cognitive activity in

the projects and constructions of specifically positioned subjects, then the
relevance of narrative will be apparent as an epistemological resource.
Likewise Janette Turner Hospital’s (1990:1) Isobars reminds us how we know the
‘real’, including the spatial reality of home: ‘all lines on a map, we must
acknowledge, are imaginary; they are ideas of order imposed on the sloshing
flood of time and space’.
A long-time academic in the business department at my ‘home’ university
read my doctoral thesis and told me that at times he ‘thought [he] was on another
planet’. How’s that for imagining lines on a map? I have come to think of ‘home’
as a very fluid and dynamic concept. At the same time and for my purposes, the
sentimental trappings that come with the concept of home serve to discursively
rupture and dis-locate the market orientation to university services, and make a
place for hospitality and an ethic of care and response-ability as service to others in
the university. This is a feminist strategy of resistance: I know rather well how
women’s home skills and service skills of nurturing and caring, cooking and
cleaning ‘get treated as simply an extension of their identity as women’ (Poynton
1993:85) and are not named as skills. This resonates with Erica McWilliam’s
(1998) practices of ‘negotiating enabling violations’ (Spivak 1989) in orthodox
academic spaces. It requires some pretty vigorous underground excavation to
preserve ‘homecoming’ weekends and the university as alma mater from
appropriation by the marketplace and the knowledge economy. It seems to me
that the oft-heard cynicism for such home- and service-oriented references,
especially the rhetoric of belonging to the university ‘family’—the mantra of ‘you
are not a number at St. F.X. University’—is bound up in the disjuncture it sets up
against the managerialism of the university and marketing of services. I take the
position (and construct a gendered cartography) that services (masculine) connect
to the managed knowledge economy of the university and service (feminine)
connects to the ethic of care and hospitality (Lander 2000a). Oh, and before I
forget, the dialogical format of this chapter is in itself a mapping of the imaginary
of you and me as positioned subjects. Dialogue foregrounds self-other positioning
and surely positioning is the methodological work of the cartographer. In dialogue,
I/you are always responding to an-Other and so our selves and our experiences
can be told completely differently dependent on which identity I/you are engaging
with at any given moment. I am drawn to the use Davies and Harré (1990:43)
find for positioning: it ‘helps focus attention on dynamic aspects of encounters in
contrast to the way in which the use of “role” serves to highlight static, formal
and ritualistic aspects’. I like to think I am engaging with my service worker
identity when I talk about home and hospitality and encounters. This is the
dialectic to my role-based managerial identity of negotiating contracts, recording
transactions, satisfying customers, and delivering services. As you know, before I
was appointed as an assistant professor in adult education in 1998, I worked for
the better part of two decades as a service operations manager with responsibility
for student housing, food service, and cleaning services at this same university
where I am now a faculty member.
DU: And the way you have explored this shift—from ‘manager’ to ‘academic’—
in your work has been an inspiration to me and I’m sure to others. As you know
my own research has been about people who went the ‘other’ way. People who
took up—and were taken up by—the knowledge practices of the manager from
academic and administrator (Prichard 2000).
GWN: I wonder how different the shift the other way really is. Senior
management identities figure prominently in my resistance stories as both a service
worker and now as knowledge worker. Connelly and Clandinin (1999:172) found
‘each administrator expressing stories of opposition to the institutional narratives,
opposition to the very same kind of directives from above that figure so prominently
in each of the teacher stories’.
DU (continuing): One initial and simple way to begin working through this
issue of re-positioning is to explore one’s own texts looking for clues as to how
these assemblages of knowledge practices are geographically, culturally and
historically locatable. For example I began above with the Maori greeting (‘Kia
ora koutou’). While a very informal greeting, it nevertheless locates ‘me’
geographically and culturally in and of Aotearoa/New Zealand (see Henry and
Pene 1999). But more than this it highlights my positioning within the bi-cultural
knowledge practices of this educational institution (Massey University), and
nationally within the context of the recent moves by the Pakeha (European settler)
Government to both recognize its obligations and responsibilities under the Te
Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) as the founding document of Aotearoa/
New Zealand (signed in 1840), and to compensate Maori for the colonial abuses
of Maori resources since then.
Following the abstract we have included informal greetings. The abstract, I’d
have to say, is an effect of the dominant discursive practices of academic paper
writing. These are a set of codes which ‘demand’ in most cases agentless mapping
of the themes, topics and key points of the ‘chapter’ and which locate and ascribe
to me a particular academic identity. These codes are global, positivistic in
genealogy, and are demanded to varying degrees (as you and I know only too
well, Dorothy) by the disciplinary knowledge solidified into editorial boards of
journals and the referee panels of conferences (conferences are less than good
examples nowadays; apart from those exclusive invite-only affairs, they have
become more income-generation than knowledge disciplining devices, it seems
to me). The third paragraph meanwhile ‘jumps’ to an informal register (‘Phew,
I’m glad that’s over’). This can be read as a cue, on the one hand, to the paper as
a conversation between colleagues, and, as part of the attempt to write using an
informal register. Again though a self-critical analysis would suggest that such
moves serve as counterpoint to the formality of the seemingly location-free voice
of the abstract, the informal register has a contrived character that comes from
over use in Internet and marketing discourse (Fairclough 1992).
What I’ve attempted to do here is to quickly highlight the seemingly mundane
‘level’ of features that ‘report’ to the global and local knowledge practices that are
part of formation of professional identities. We often take these for granted, yet the
methodological move in this chapter is to be continuously exploring how the political,
geographical and cultural histories are played out through and by these. This is
particularly evident when we consider higher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
GWN: Yes, and my mundane greeting locates me in the political, geographical,
cultural, and linguistic practices of eastern Canada. And of the university where
I am unilingual English. The French greeting comes naturally to me because I
hear it spoken by the many Acadian French who live and work in this area of
Nova Scotia. Craig, don’t you think though that we supply new codes to dis-
locate the academic paper as the dominant discourse and to make a place for
conversational discourses? Shotter (1993) raises the monological and dialogical
as two epistemological paradigms that distinguish disciplinary discourses and
conversational realities. Like Blumethal (1999:378), I hope we are representing
our divided selves and attempting to ‘not only represent my [and your] reflective
process about the text, but also to highlight the often contradictory research-
analysis-writing process…highlighting its conversationally, inviting the reader to
respond as well’. I believe that the contradictions of service and knowledge that I
have lived in the university add another dimension to the complexity of academic
life that Yvonna Lincoln (1998:274) evokes:
I stand as a living testament to this stunning contradiction in academic life.

I would guess few of my colleagues know or understand what I publish;
they only look, at merit pay consideration time, at the volume of publications
relative to the volume of other faculty members.
I top up Lincoln’s contradiction and make a guess that few of my colleagues from
either my past service-worker life or my present knowledge-worker life would guess
or understand that much of what I publish is the unsaid and unsayable of what I
know through my lived experience as a service worker. I am particularly sensitive
that the knowledge I now produce ‘is disseminated largely to other knowledge
producers, rather than to those from whom [I] gathered it, or to those whose voices
could be felt in policy circles’ (Lincoln: 1998:274–5). The textual practice of the
abstract of this chapter and setting it off from the rest of the chapter addresses a
knowledge worker audience. It is an act of ‘negotiating an enabling violation’ to
move academic stiffness to the periphery, while our conversations and informal
register take up the centre; but are we addressing any wider audience? I kind of
doubt it. The locatedness of knowledge spans not only the mapmakers’ stable
coordinates of latitude and longitude but also the fluid imaginary positionality of
the different territories that we inhabit, alternately global and local, alternately
transnational and resolutely national, alternately embodied and disembodied. I
can tell you then that at this moment, my local embodied position as Assistant
Professor in the Department of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University
(St. F.X.) in the great white north of Antigonish, Nova Scotia zones in at 45.35N
and 61.55W. These coordinates overlay ‘rival cartographies’ (Sparke 1998),
exemplified by the last woman of the Beothuk or ‘Red Indians’ who died out in
Newfoundland (not far to the East) from disease, starvation and murder. Her
cartographies of embodied between-ness and living spaces are in contrast to the
abstract, disembodied mappings of Newfoundland by its British colonizers. What
the co-ordinates do not tell you in and of themselves is that Antigonish (a First
Nations Mi’kmaq name) on the east coast of Canada, is snow- and ice-bound for
up to three months of the year. Our earlier experiment with dialogical cyber-
cartography at a higher education conference (Lander and Prichard 1998) presented
a particular challenge in that neither our mapped coordinates nor our embodied
positionality were immediately accessible to a reader and navigator. Beckett (1998)
critiques the virtual, wired university for writing off the body at the same time as
the postmodern conceptual shift is towards embodied, holistic experiences of learning
in social inter-relationships. Can we begin by addressing Beckett’s lament that the
whole Seven Dwarfs’ roll call of fat, thin, shy, squeaky-voiced, slow, boisterous,
late, sleepy, hairy will be irrelevant in the new virtual learning environment?
You can confirm that I am blue-eyed with salt-and-pepper (more salt than pepper)
curly hair, a six-foot tall, white, anglophone, Canadian woman with a decidedly
North American accent. Could we dream of co-authoring a virtual paper without
the ‘knowing second persons’ and ‘making eye contact’ (Code 1991) that marked
our working, learning encounters at Nottingham? McWilliam (1997) asks these
questions not to generate a romance around the physical body and its contribution
to intellectual life but to understand what it is about the inscribed material body
and toned utterances that makes a difference, if any, to teaching and learning.
Embodied learning and knowing second persons contrast the collective anonymous
gaze and ‘third-person talk about people’ (Code 1991:86) and the bodies that
cyberspace renders perfect and civilized (Barthes 1978). You know that I blush
easily, and can be moved to tears of anger. I know that you respond with both
action and care, in the distinct tones of down under New Zealand.
DU: Thanks for that. I confirm your descriptions as you will no doubt confirm
that I am a man, greeny-brown-eyed, dark haired, 6’2'’ tall, Pakeha, fourth-
generation New Zealander, whose accent has, according to friends and family
here, been modified by eight years in Britain. The emphasis I put on words and
the rhythms of my sentences have been re-worked (by whom, in whose interest I
ask?). Returning to your point though such topographies of place (40.22 South
and 175.37 E, by the way), flesh, and voice do not in and of themselves make up
Beckett’s ‘holistic experiences of learning in social inter-relationships’. I hear desire
for coherent humanist selves in this phrase, through the construction of borders
and divisions. Yet, sadly perhaps, our dispersal, multiplicity, and implicatedness
in the reproduction of global assemblages like ‘higher education’ is evident to
me, both now, here, and also when we as Ph.D. students assembled in the flesh at
the University of Nottingham. Our bodies may have been holed up in an academic
bunker, but we brought with us our positionings in colonial histories, and hence
were able to (re)experience our dis-location and difference as well as learning
through relations with fellow students. And now, some years later working in the
South Pacific—on the verandah of global higher education—I have brought with
me the knowledge practices of the metropolitan ‘north’. This, it seems, is a core
feature of the ‘power’ of global knowledge economy—dislocations ‘within’ oneself.
Those who have worked and walked in the ‘Olive Groves’ of Northern
Hemisphere universities bring with them the debates and concerns of these sites.
Methodologically they are walking, talking, breathing epistemologies of whose
identities are forever ‘home’ and ‘away’. Of course this is overdrawn, and I have
conversations with people ‘here’ who celebrate the space that the verandah affords.
But I have my doubts. These are comforting voices that avoid global inequalities
and power relations. Was it the space for ‘real’ work that drew sociologists like
Barry Smart and Gregor McLennan to Aotearoa during the 1990s? Was it cool
isolation of the (academic) verandah which sent them back to the ‘kitchen’? There
is of course the Internet, people say. A technology designed and built around
academic knowledge practices no less. A technology that allows global sub-
contracting of knowledge production/consumption. Like ‘pixies’, ‘we’ can work
while ‘you’ sleep. Consultants ‘here’ argue that it is ‘modern equivalent of the
freezer ship…our key vessel for reaching global markets’ (ITAG 1999:3). But
whether this challenges the deeply embedded colonial relations that construct
‘here’ as ‘over there’? Of course I’m prepared to live with the lack of fleshy
presence if it begins to unravel colonial cartographies which have tended to
privilege embodied presence in Northern Hemispheric Anglo-European space.
And yes I do use the Internet intensively in part to counteract ‘dis-location’
(Prichard et al. 2000). But for more than a hundred years the boats that took
wool, butter and frozen sheep meat to Britain have returned with ‘knowledge’
cargo—in the form of textbooks, marked scripts or itinerant academics—for the
colonial outposts. And these practices of ‘northern’ knowledge production and
‘southern’ consumption deeply score the kinds of academic identities articulated
‘here’. Higher education in New Zealand, in the early part of this century, ran
under the auspices of the University of London-modelled ‘University of New
Zealand’. During this period courses were textbook and examination driven, and
final examinations were set and marked by academics in the United Kingdom
(Mackenzie 1996). Nowadays the textbooks tend to be North American, and in
large class areas there are locally written texts that ‘flavour’ the main course of
metropolitan disciplinary knowledge with a little local ‘seasoning’. The marking
is done in-house nowadays but this involved the re-location of the markers to
Aotearoa/New Zealand (nearly 65 per cent of academics recruited come from
‘overseas’ with US, UK, Canada and Australia as the main site). Of course
challenging this is personally somewhat contradictory as ‘I’ as a new recruit have
found a post ‘here‘ largely because I spent embodied time ‘up top’ rather than
down under. Speaking cartographically I have ‘flown’ the appropriate line of
flight from the metropolis to the colonial margins of Aotearoa/New Zealand (just
as the conventional world map which places Europe at the Centre and the
Antipodes at the edges or the bottom). This is a multilayered map that traces not
simply the traffic in academic ‘bodies’ but inevitably academic disciplines,
textbooks, library contents, research programmes as well as State programmes of
reform in relation to higher education (Ministry of Education 1997, 1998). These
maps are of course unstable and capable of being fractured and inscribed with
‘local’ knowledge practices. In Aotearoa/New Zealand relations between Pakeha
and Maori provide such inscriptions. The Internet potentially provides another
way of shifting the ‘centre/margin’ relations.
GWN: Craig, when we first met, I was conducting research into the
interconnections between student learning and the organizational practices of the
university as a service organization at the University of Nottingham, I did not
explicitly connect my research methodology to cartographies or mappings. At
the time, I would describe my qualitative research methodologies as a hybrid of
dialogical storytelling and systems thinking. Do you remember in our graduate
students’ reading group I ontologized my research to ‘narrative’ and great guffaws
erupted when Freddie quipped ‘Stories ’R Us’? My current research into the
market discourses of the university and how they have colonized the historical
meanings of ‘service’ make me cringe now at this marketing slogan borrowed
from ‘Toys R Us’. Now that I have moved beyond the Ph.D. and am conducting
higher education research from my position as an assistant professor, I am drawn
intuitively to cartographies and mappings as the embodied activity that connects
writing (-graphics), storying, dialogue, and systems thinking. This is not agent-
less mapping, a cartography without a cartographer. Though as I embark on a
research project into the meaning and lived experience of ‘quality’ and of ‘service’
in my ‘home’ university, the powers-that-be who are funding my research have a
disciplining effect on what ‘quality’ and ‘service’ are allowed to mean and which
stories of quality can be told.
DU: Your reflections suggest further ‘lines’ of inquiry which both produce
‘us’, our Ph.D.s and narrate the globalization of higher education in Britain and
in our ‘home’ sites. Before I note these I should first note that I put ‘home’ in
inverted commas just now because, given what has been said already in this
chapter, the whole notion of ‘home’ is under pressure from the dislocations of
globalized knowledge practices. This means, for instance, that we probably feel
most at home in airports, as my friend Mark Skelding wrote in a celebrated song
of his; and ‘home’ as an object is altogether nostalgia. The first point is that we
perhaps need to explore the ‘lines’ that brought us both to be doing Ph.D. research
‘on’ UK higher education (and further education in my case) in the first place.
I’m curious about this seeming coincidence. Might it suggest that colonial relations
are at work within the UK’s higher education research community? That research
is not simply contracted to immigrant workers, but to immigrant workers who
pay fees to do the work? Has higher education, like other sectors in the UK and
Europe subcontracted its more mundane research work to cheaper and easily
recruited foreign workers—who will pay for their labours?
GWN: There are so many layers to colonial relations. I feel as if I am facing
what Connelly and Clandinin (1999:116)—following Geertz (1995)—call a
‘confusion of histories, a swarm of biographies’. Living on the verandah of the
US, I can identify with the UK in terms of parliamentary system and educational
governance—and at the mundane level of spelling—and with the US in terms of
popular culture that floods across the 49th parallel in multi-media. It is way more
complicated than that but a confusion of colonial histories entered into my decision
to pay for my research labours (every time US-dominated spell check rejects lab-
ours) in the UK instead of Canada or the US. On a micro-level of institutional
colonizing history in the university as a workplace, I can trace the shift from
service to services. My research labours adapt a postcolonial strategy of seeking
to revive the moral dimensions of ‘service’ and Johnson’s (1980:94) ‘really useful
knowledge’ that is contingent on a ‘wider, more “historical”, more coherent view
of everyday life than customary or individual understandings’. ‘Spearhead
knowledge’ for early nineteenth-century working-class radicals in England centred
on ‘the experiences of poverty, political oppression and social and cultural
apartheid’. Jordan and Yeomans (1995:400) also note that ‘really useful knowledge’
like ‘service’ has its roots in the academic Other, indeed was ‘counter-hegemonic
to the social regulation sought through state schooling’. What draws me now to
cartographies as a research methodology is that cartographies can embrace
contradictory historical processes of order and disorder, modernism and
postmodernism, neatly hemmed-in landscapes with precise coordinates alongside
continuously shifting boundaries. Perhaps you planted the seed, Craig, when
you initiated our graduate students’ reading group. Do you remember that the
first reading that you circulated was Gilles Deleuze’s (1992) ‘What is a dispositif?’.
Foucault’s analysis of social apparatuses [dispositifs] spanned lines of sedimentation
and lines of ‘breakage’ and ‘fracture’. At the time, I was awed by this dense and
unfamiliar text and bewildered as to what the expectations were for doing doctoral
research. Like the business prof who read my thesis, I thought I was on another
planet; I was not at home. As I speak, I am startled by my own learning; I can
now readily reframe my research methodology as the cartographies of Deleuze’s
(1992:159) re-presentation:
Untangling these lines within a social apparatus is, in each case, like drawing
up a map, doing cartography, surveying unknown landscapes, and this is
what he [Foucault] calls ‘working the ground’. One has to position oneself
on these lines themselves, these lines which do not just make up the social
apparatus but run through it and pull at it, from North to South, from East
to West, or diagonally.
DU: Deleuze’s paper can be read as a condensed account of a wider and perhaps
wilder reading of Foucault (1988), which introduces the French philosopher as
the ‘new cartographer’. Deleuze uses the platform of this book to synthesize and
celebrate Foucault’s work, and to link it to his own. His concept of ‘line’ and
‘fold’ particularly are used to explore knowledge practices as if they formed a
geological terrain. Two key aspects ‘fall’ out of this for me. Firstly the assumption
that we are the bent and folded lines of the social apparatus, and that ‘plotting’
these lines from the ‘ground-up’ provides a way of doing research without assuming
that such ‘things’ as universities, colleges and higher education actually exist as
thing-like. ‘The university’, which vice-chancellors (college presidents) describe
in such object-like ways, is, cartographically speaking, an unstable grid or text-
ure of ‘lines’ (of light/visibility, representation, subjectivity, force) which ‘strain’
to construct the ‘student’, the ‘teacher’, the ‘service worker’, the academic
‘manager’. The lines that make up this grid are globally distributed through
disciplinary knowledges, embodied dispositions, mirrored institutional frameworks
and particularly exchange relations. Higher education is understood and
increasingly reconfigured as global trade (Kelsey 1997) and Aotearoa/New Zealand
like Australia, America and the UK is anxious to increase income flows from this
‘export industry’. Deleuze wrote that ‘In each apparatus it is necessary to
distinguish what we are (what we are already no longer) and what we are in the
process of becoming…the current is the sketch that we are becoming’ (1992:164).
Higher education is fast becoming, through the power-knowledge practices of
Governments, international agencies and powerful ‘knowledge’ economy
corporations, more explicitly a globalized private commodity.
Yet there are major contradictions. Aotearoa/New Zealand is, as I mentioned,
based on a document which signals partnership between Maori and Pakeha/
European. Officially at least, two broad epistemological formations, two radically
differing social apparatuses, are joined together through these documents, Te
Tiriti o Waitangi and The Treaty of Waitangi. This presents enormous potential,
but also huge problematics for educators, institutions and also ‘me’ whose current
professional identity owes much to global colonial cartographies confirmed by a
global ‘knowledge economy’.
Recently I was officially welcomed to the College of Education Marae (meeting
place) here, and spoke (briefly) in Maori. It was an emotional ‘home’ coming
experience made particularly sharp for being away for eight years. The question
becomes: Should ahuatanga Maori (Maori tradition) be the basis of the knowledge
practices (Henry and Pene 1999) which make up the ‘university’? This is an
ongoing problematic. Two events highlight this. On my desk as I write is a copy
of this week’s Massey University News—the corporate-sourced university magazine.

The lead story deals with the University’s new senior staff development course
entitled: ‘Giving Effect to the Treaty of Waitangi’. Meanwhile the weekly newsfeed
from the university staff union carried a story that described Otago University as
‘lagging behind on its treaty obligations’. A number of reports and audits have
criticized the university for failing to consult and involve local Maori. At the New
Zealand Association for Research in Education conference that I attended at
Otago, the conference brochure informed delegates that no official Maori welcome
would be conducted because of an ongoing dispute between the university and
the local rununga (tribe). Aotearoa/New Zealand is, as the two words themselves
highlight, a formation produced by two competing and unstable grids of knowing
and becoming. At the same time the ‘university’ in ‘here’ has undergone fifteen
years of ‘attack’ from the ‘new right’ (Peters and Roberts 1999) in similar but not
identical ways to that experience by UK universities (Prichard 2000). A
commitment to the treaty and to the Maori epistemology not only presents as a
challenge to globalized disciplinary knowledge (Waitere-Ang 1998), but also as a
challenge to the management discourse ‘in’ the university (Yeatman 1995;
Hammond 1999). For example, the University of Waikato, currently headed by
former British Labour Party left-winger Bryan Gould, was recently challenged in
the High Court over its restructuring plans. The academic staff union argued
that the university’s ability to deliver on its Treaty of Waitangi commitments
would be seriously compromised by its restructuring (it planned to collapse Maori
Studies and Law into the Education and Management faculties respectively).
The Judge’s main ruling in finding in favour of the union and against the university
(which subsequently dropped its plan to appeal the decision) was that the university
had breached its own consultation procedures.
These tensions provide a challenging backdrop for all research work undertaken
in Aotearoa/New Zealand. While it would be a mistake to overstate the importance
of such instances, and clearly the high recruitment of academics from offshore
works broadly against the extension of this work, it influences and places in a
state of varying degrees of tension the metropolitan epistemologies which articulate
‘us’ knowledge workers licenced to ‘profess’ by the sites of that form the metropole.
GWN: I am still going on about ‘home’ as a rival cartography that depends
on engaging ‘competing and unstable grids of knowing and becoming’ in moral
dialogue. The competing grids of Maori epistemology and globalized disciplinary
knowledge combined with managerial discourse resemble the competing grids of
a service epistemology and the services discourse that appropriates the rhetoric
of service. Lincoln (1998:276) holds open a crack of hope for the service
epistemology noting that ‘academics rarely are totally paralyzed by the urge to
commodification…Action can be taken in several domains…so that we can
“demonstrate day by day that we can live, or learn to live, or manage to live in
such a world…[where we]…cannot do without [being] good and kind to each
other”’ (Bauman 1993:32). I adapted my first collaborative research activity from
my doctoral programme at Nottingham to my research project into the meaning
of ‘goodness’ at the university in Nova Scotia that I now call home. In the UK
and Canada, I drew the organizational chart (map) on a huge wall chart and then
organizational actors, spanning knowledge workers, service workers, and students
proceeded to draw their competing story ‘lines’ of service encounters remembered
or imagined, a trajectory from their organizational position to any other members
of the organization. Their only tools were multi-coloured felt pens and the only
instruction I gave was to exploit colour, texture, and contours to capture their
story. I witnessed bodies jostling for semiotic space amidst much merriment and
the occasional whispered conspiracy. Many of the story lines traced a trajectory
to the higher and easily identifiable positions on the hierarchy of the organizational
chart. I witnessed transgressive laughter as they drew their unspoken and
unassailable story lines. When I adapted this activity in a Canadian university,
we stood back and assessed our web of lines on the map. A second year Arts
student, Shelagh, observed: ‘We bump into each other and we don’t even know
we do’. Another third year biology student, Bridget noted that ‘there’s possibility
for a lot of conflict to those different meanings.’ Shelagh built on Bridget’s point:
‘It sort of looks like there is a division between administration and students’. A
past president of the University, Father MacMurray, queried, ‘Do you mean
division or distinction’, and there was a chorus of students saying ‘Division,
division’. Do you hear the re-storying and rival cartographies going on here? Do
you hear the moral dialogue that constitutes home and ‘goodness’?
Braidotti’s (1995) notion of cartography allows for holding contradictions and
truths simultaneously. And I take this further to holding multiple identities
simultaneously and contradictorily. These storylines of the university are redolent
of Braidotti’s nomadic feminist who is undutiful and does not identify with master
narratives. Location is not only time in space, but where we take our departure
from. ‘Taking our departure from’ displaces us from dominant ways of thinking.
It activates our political consciousness. Rosi Braidotti (1994:16), like your song-
writer friend Mark (Skelding 1993), is drawn to airports, as befitting her nomadic
cartographies of ‘recreating your home everywhere. The nomad carries her/his
essential belongings with her/him wherever s/he goes and can recreate a home
base anywhere.’ This is the fluid, dynamic sense of ‘home’ I seek to attach to
‘service’ in the university. As a student services educator, it is this sense of ‘home’
and ‘service’ that will serve students in transition for indeed the global student as
nomad ‘enacts transitions without a teleological purpose’ (Braidotti 1994:23) or
a ‘permanent’ anything.
‘Home’ and alma mater are associated with the feminine but they also evoke
the sense of intellectual belonging. Liz Stanley (1997:201) asks why anyone and
particularly the academic feminist should want this particular version of home
when ‘feminist women and black women perhaps especially, are Other to this
last most zealously guarded boys’ club that is the university’. As a feminist and
poststructural scholar and a longtime service operations manager in the university,
I am practised in problematizing patriarchal notions of ‘home’. Colonial otherness
for the academic feminist and for all women working in the university is both
local and global. Rupturing orthodox academic spaces from the margins takes on
common cause of global proportions for women working the groves:
bell hooks (1984) in the US academy extols the margins for voicing dissent.
The verandahs of academe can ‘provide much-needed relief from the heat of the
kitchen…although it does risk being exposed to unruly elements’, writes
Erica McWilliams (1998:3), paraphrasing Judith Allen (1992). Both are
Australian.
Liz Stanley (1997), UK, invokes the academic in-between, the borderlands or
frontier suggested by Gloria Anzaldua’s (1987) La Frontera between the
USA and Mexico;
Rosi Braidotti (1994) lives her nomadic cartographies; she is a polyglot who calls
Australia, Italy, and France home; she is currently Professor of Women’s
Studies at the University of Utrecht.
The institutional requirement of assembling an evaluation dossier after my first

year as a faculty member ordered and fixed my identity in terms of the categories
of research, teaching, and service (and necessarily in that order!) (see Lander 2000b).
My identity as a knower and the ‘goodness’ of my work began on my knowledge-
worker watch and not a moment before. As Lincoln (1998:274) acknowledges,
‘the name of the game is numbers: the number of publications, and the publication
site (journal, refereed national conference, books)’. I was attracted to the metaphors
for portfolios. ‘Dossier’ is favoured in the academy and entails the amassing of
evidence for the gaze of external evaluators. Portfolio as verandah is not one of
Jordan and Purves’ (1994) metaphors for portfolio. However, I went ahead and I
provided a self-assessment portfolio as a verandah to the institutional dossier, inviting
my readers/evaluators to ‘set a spell’ and visit with my multiple identities as a
researcher, teacher, and service worker. Portfolio as verandah might also be
considered a rival cartography to the dossier. My evaluators could move at will
between my dossier artefacts of numerical and thing-like accomplishment of a unitary
self and my portfolio artefacts of my multiple identities-in-process. Or they could
bypass the verandah. The dossier pathway took my evaluators to itemized lists of
research articles published, research funding received, graduate students supervised
and graduated, and to my committee membership and executive positions. The
portfolio pathway engaged my evaluators and me in critically making sense of my
products in terms of the responsive processes and practices that led up to them. For
example, I juxtaposed my narrative evaluation of a graduate student’s thesis to her
response, which included, ‘Your comments and questions in the margins helped
me feel that we had connected as learners together’. Compare the dossier pathway
to my teacher identity, which enumerated students’ theses for which I was the
second reader. The verandahed portfolio of my dialogical artefacts multiplies my
teacher and learner identities.
The institutional requirements for my evaluation dossier did not recognize (indeed
could not see) my identity or my artefacts before my faculty appointment. My self-
critical portfolio mapped the linkages between my previous service-worker identities
and my present knowledge-worker identities. Like Blumenthal (1999:381), even
within one subidentity [say my researcher self or my teacher self] ‘the personas
multiply’. My nomadic, multiple identities resist the manipulated unitary self of the
assistant professor seeking rank and tenure (see also Clark 1999; Honig 1992).
Multiple identities constitute contradictory knowing in practice. Echoing Dimen
(1995), I am often of two or more minds about who I am and what I want. I have
begun to find value in this internal contradiction of my knowledge worker and
service worker identities, of my public and private selves.
Back to being verandahed. It strikes me as a useful take on the contradictions
and nostalgic connotations of being at home. Rarely did I spy a verandah in the
UK beyond the fenced-in and hedged residential properties. Privilege and a hefty
increase in property taxes attend the verandah in Nova Scotia and hence many a
verandahless house spots the landscape. My home has an unenclosed stoop, a
property-tax level down from a verandah. Does you new home have a verandah
and how does the experience of the verandah in New Zealand map onto academic
spaces?
DU: zzzzzz…
GWN: I have to tell that you really did answer my question, but it was on
asynchronous time. Your new home does have a verandah and you connect the
verandah with the sleepout. And that in New Zealand, people sleep on the
verandah, under the verandah…As we are bundling up in winter coats and hats
and boots, the summer sleepout on the verandah sounds wonderful. I’m thinking
that this conversation could be likened to a verandah mapped onto the orthodox
knowledge practices of higher education. It is a reminder that the writing of this
chapter was dialogic: I was writing while you were sleeping and you were writing
during my sleep time. It sparks the imagination, transporting those of us who
dare to venture into a time-space compression, to alternate between summer and
winter, between yesterday-today-tomorrow. Our verandah of time was the e-mail
between waking and sleeping. This electronic verandah on knowledge is a way
of accommodating a more populous household of global learners (including you
and me) who might otherwise not be able to collaborate in our higher education
research. Electronic space as verandah negotiates enabling violation of academic
spaces by making visible and audible those of us who struggle with ‘making
ourselves at home’ in the academy. In electronic space and in my example of
portfolio assessment, I/we get to tell our stories as outsiders who have a window
onto the inside, bell hooks (1984:ix) makes a similar point in the context of black
female academics:
Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing

reality. We looked from both the outside in and the inside out. We focused
our attention on the center as well as on the margin. We understood both.
Down Under Man: While re-reading the chapter, I realize how forced an ‘In
Conclusion’ would be, and how as a discursive practice such a summing up
might undermine the way the chapter moves as it traverses different registers or
grids and layers of knowing. The chapter has a nomadic, ongoing,
‘and…and…and’, character which resists strong singular conclusiveness, grounded
statements. Like our own personal histories, the chapter has attempted to celebrate
the processural, moving, dialogic, perhaps even virus-like character of the practices
of higher educating as they spread, like water. Globally and locally they form
micro-identities, passing relations and inhabit small niches. They also create great
tectonic edifices of knowing, drawing variably on capitalist and other funding
sources. Higher educating as a set of knowledge practices can seem highly mobile,
imperializing, but also able to strengthen the ‘weak structures’, the locales of
learning and knowing. We hope through this methodology and this method we
have been able to begin to draw some of the lines that make up these formations
which both enmesh and produce us, and engage and enlighten us.
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Index
Abbott, A. 11–12, 82, 117 anomie 139

accessibility 21 Anthony, P. 220
accountability 11–12, 21, 32, 34, 42, 46–7, Anzaldua, G. 247
118; audit society 38–9, 50; intellectual Apple 210
140, 143–7, 147–151, 151–4 appraisal 90
Acker, J. 88 Arches, J. 61
actor network theory 14, 58, 175, 176, 177, Armstrong, G. 103, 104–6, 107, 111–12,
219 114
administration 34 Arnold, M. 147–8
administrative control 40 aromatherapy see also amateurism,
Adorno, T. 138, 148 quackery and conduct
Agar 181 Aromatherapy Organizations Council 122
age 10 Aronowitz, S. 207
agency 7, 23, 92, 175;see also structure and artefacts 176, 178, 194, 195, 248
agency assimilation 191
Agger, B. 142, 147, 148, 150
AT&T 210
aggression 83
audit 13, 38–58, 66, 74;academic 39–40,
Ahmad, W. 49
53–7; academic: practicality/
aims 142
alienation 206, 214 utopianism 47–52; clinical 66;
Allen, J. 247 continuation 56; control/accountability
aloofness 169, 170, 172 46–7; definition 38–9; external 48–9,
Althusser, L. 149 51; institutional 54, 55, 56; internal
altruism 124, 125, 127, 128 51; Power, M. on 40–2; Strathern, M.
Alvesson, M. 203 on 42–6
amateurism, quackery and conduct in Australia 210, 244
aromatherapy practice 14, 116–35; authenticity 139
amateurism 122–7; ancient sage authority structures 62
122–3; commercialism and re- autonomy 2, 11–13, 20, 26, 28, 30, 31;
enchantment 127–30; folk practitioner amateurism, quackery and conduct
122–3; gentrification 123–4;market 117; audit society 46, 53; cultural 61;
and organization 120–2; economic 61; intellectuals 139, 152;
popularization 124–7; professionalism ‘new age’ religion 203, 211; political
and legitimation 117–20; relation to 61; social 61; technical 61
orthodox medicine 130–2 Aznar, G. 207
ambiguity 34
ambivalence 27 Balbo, L. 178
American Diagnostic Related Groups 68 Ballard, J.S. 4
Index 253
banking sector see also structure and bullet points 43, 46

agency bureaucracy 5, 19, 22, 31, 53
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 102 Burne, J. 121
Barker, J.R. 207 Burns, T.R. 28
Barley, S. 22 Burrell, G. 4, 222, 224, 229
Barrett, F.J. 14, 157–72 Burroughs, W. 224
Barrett, M. 157–72 Burton, C. 159
Barry, J. 140 business process re-engineering 86
Barthes, R. 240 Butler, J. 5, 7, 10, 14, 84, 117, 118, 236;
Bataille, G. 223, 227 gender strategies 174, 175, 177
Baudrillard, J. 42, 148, 228
Bauman, Z. 27, 149, 150, 202, 245 Caillois, R. 225
Baumli, F. 83 Callois, M. 175, 177
Baxter, B. 220 Calltorp, J. 63
Beck, U. 50, 54 Campaign Against Health Fraud 119
Becker, H.S. 101, 180 Canfield, J. 209
Beckett, D. 240, 241 Cant, S. 121, 122, 130–1, 133
behaviours 178 capitalism 34, 148
Beier, L. 119 capitation 63
beliefs 6 Carrigan, T. 83, 84
Bell, V. 175, 176 Casey, C. 2, 4, 15, 201–14
belonging 20, 175, 208 Castells, M. 202, 220
benchmarking 56 category 151
Benjamin, W. 228 certainty 86
Bennett, T. 139, 143, 150 Chandler, A. 85
Berger, P.L. 99, 190, 191 change 6, 21
Berliner, H. 121
charter 103–10, 112
Beynon, H. 228
Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Bledstein, B. 126
Development 102–3
Bloom, A. 148, 149, 150
cheerfulness 28
Bloor, G. 220
Chia, R. 220
Blumenthal, D. 239, 247
choice 20
Boggs, C. 148, 150, 151
Clandinin, D.J. 237, 238, 243
Bosk, C. 78
Clark, M.C. 248
boundaries 154, 159
Clarke, J. 12
Bourdieu, P. 50, 236
Bowie, N.E. 25 class 5, 126–7, 190, 219; intellectuals 144,
Bowles, M. 224 145–7, 148, 151; ‘new age’ religion
Braidotti, R. 246, 247 202, 209, 213
Brenkert, G. 24 Clatterbaugh, K. 83
Brennan, J. 40, 56 Clawson, D. 85
Brewis, J. 91 Clegg, S. 11
Brint, S. 30, 31 Clinical Standards Committee 66
British Complementary Medical CNAA (Council for National Academic
Association 121 Awards) 141
British Medical Association 119, 131, 132 Cockburn, C. 87, 159, 161
Brittan, A. 83 Code, L. 237, 240
Brod, H. 83 codes of practice 202, 204
Broekstra, G. 204 Coffman, C. 33
Brownmiller, S. 164 collaboration 21
Bruner, J. 174 Colleges of Further Education 122
Bruni, A. 7, 14, 174–96 collegiality 54
Bryson, N. 224 Collins, R. 82, 88, 101
Buckingham, M. 33 Collinson, D.L. 82, 83, 164, 226
254 Index
colonial cartographies of identities 15, Deleuze, G. 219, 222, 224, 225, 229,
235–49 243–4
command presence 163 demarcation 106
commercialism 127–30, 134 democracy 34
commitment 21, 23, 25, 30, 31, 32 democratization 28
commonality of goals 32 Dent, M. 1–15
communication 23, 27, 28 Derrida, J. 218, 228
community of practice 176, 178–9, 187, desecularization 213, 214
189–90, 192, 194 deskilling 22
competence 81, 90, 120, 133, 170, 193 Deverell, K. 116, 121
competitiveness 40 devotion 139
conduct 27, 31; see also amateurism, dialogic reflexivity 50
quackery and conduct DiFazio, W. 207
conflict 193, 228 differentiation 191
conformity 28 Dimen, M. 248
Connell, R.W. 83, 87, 157, 159, 164, 166
discipline 128, 133, 134, 163
Connelly, F.M. 237, 238, 243
discursive ingenuity 114
consensus 28
discursive practices 236
consumerism 39
contingency 27, 34 disourse 9–11, 21–3
contribution 34 dissonance 6
control 21, 22, 27, 34, 83; audit society diversity 5
40, 41, 42, 46–7 Doherty, G. 142
Cook, D. 224 Donelly, D. 121
Cooper, R. 220 double bind 189
cooperation 19, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 32, Drucker, P.F. 26, 212
34 Dryburgh, G.D. M. 103–4, 106
corporate standards 34 du Gay, P. 2, 204
Council on Health Improvement 68 dual presence 178–9, 189, 195
Courtney, J. 40 dualisms 5
Crabb, S. 103, 104–6, 107, 112 Durkheim, E. 30, 139, 205, 213, 214
creativity 19, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32 duty 139
credentialism 31, 82
Credit Accumulation Tariff 140 Easlea, B. 85
critical realism 221 education 5, 8, 27, 30; colonial
Crompton, R. 2, 82 cartographies 236, 237, 240–4, 249; see
Csordas, T.J. 206 also university
cultural capital 39 Edwards, P. 229, 230
culture 5, 19, 22, 23, 34, 158; gender Edwards, R. 7, 86
strategies 174, 175, 176; intellectualism efficiency 8–9, 47, 120
148, 149; of practice 178 Egypt 123
customer dissatisfaction 66 Ehrenreich, B. 121
Czarniaswka-Joerges, B. 174 Electoral Reform Society 108
Eliot, T.S. 147–8
Darley, J. 26 elitism 140, 145, 147, 148
Davies, B. 177, 238 Elliott, P. 2, 101
Davies, C. 82 Elster, J. 28
Dawson, P. 220 embodiment 10
dealienation 212–13 emotions 28, 87–9, 90, 91, 93, 169
Dearing Report 57 empowerment 50
decision making 32, 33 Engels, F. 139
deference 2 English, D. 121
degendering strategy: ‘the professional’ Enlightenment 202
169–71 entrepreneurialism 5, 20
Index 255
Epaminondas, G. 28 Gane, M. 12
ethics 23, 30–1, 34, 178, 202, 204; Gattéfossé, R.M. 123–4
amateurism, quackery and conduct Geertz, C. 181, 243
121, 122, 128, 130 gender 5–6, 7, 10, 13, 15, 174–96
ethnicity 10, 83, 190 gender: United States navy 14, 157–72;
Europe 13, 150, 243 formal and informal barriers to
European Training Foundation 40 acceptance 160–3;hypermasculine
evaluation 25 culture, adaptation to 163–
Evans-Pritchard, E, E. 205 71;masculine hegemony 158–
exclusion 32, 162 9;military and masculinity 160;
experience 25 research method 157–8; women in
expertise 13, 30, 31, 87, 220; amateurism, masculine professions 159–60
quackery and conduct 133; gender gender: amateurism, quackery and
strategies 180; human resource conduct 127; competence 195;
management 105 ethnographic approach 179–81; gender
Ezzamel, M. 85 switching 187–94; gendered
signification, practices of 181–7;
Fairclough, N. 236, 249 identity as network effect 177–9;
family 21 masculinity 82, 84; ‘new age’ religion
favouritism 29 202; switching 176, 193, 195
Federation of Holistic Therapies 122, 127, General Electric 210
130 General Medical Council 66
fees 63, 127–8 Gergen, K.J. 11, 202
Fell, A. 102 Germany 34, 210
femininity 91, 158, 159, 160, 166–9, 172 Gherardi, S. 2, 7, 14, 84, 174–96
feminism 84, 175 Giddens, A. 20, 174, 202, 229, 231, 236;
Festinger, L. 190 audit society 39, 47, 50, 53
financial incentives 63 Gilmore, D. 83
Fine, G. 164, 165 Ginzberg, E. 63
Fineman, S. 29 globalization 23, 39, 78
Fletcher, J. 91 Goffman, E. 27, 160, 163, 191, 226
flexibility 19, 20, 27, 47 Gomart, E. 177
Forbes 210 Gorz, A. 207
Fordism 22, 23 Gould, B. 245
formalism 34 Gouldner, A.W. 117
formalization 29 governance 40, 41
Foucault, M. 99, 118, 129, 163, 177, 243–4; Gowleer, D. 220
audit society 38–9, 44, 58; Gramsci, A. 14, 140, 143–7, 148, 149,
intellectualism 139, 151, 153; 151, 153
masculinity 84, 85, 90; ‘new’ Grey, C. 3, 91, 217
professional 9, 10, 11, 12; structure Guattari, F. 222, 225, 229
and agency 219, 229 Gunes-Ayata, A. 29
Fournier, V. 3, 12, 14, 31, 32, 116–35
Fox, A. 22 Haber, S. 124
France 119, 120, 124 Habermas, J. 39, 43, 50, 231
Frankfurt School 148, 213 Hacker, S. 85
freedom 20 Hall, L. 102, 236
Freidson, E. 2, 12, 61, 78 Ham, C. 62
Friedman, J. 202 Hammond, J. 245
Fukuyama, F. 23, 24 Handy, C. 7, 203, 209, 210
Fulder, S. 121 Haraway, D. 174
Harré, R. 177, 238
Gadella, A. 220 Harris, J. 209
256 Index
Harris, P. 2, 100 masculinizing strategies: ’the guy’

Harrison, D. 29 163–6
Harrison, J. 49
Hartley, D. 141 IBM 210
Harvey D. 202 Illich, I. 175
Haug, M.R. 61 ILT (Institution of Learning and
Hawthorne effect 74 Teaching) 55, 57
health insurance 63 incentives 34
HealthWatch 119 inclusion 162
Hearn, J. 82, 83 independence 20
Hendricks, G. 209, 212, 214 individual self 44
Hennion, A. 177 individuality 28
Henriques, J. 9, 163 Industrial Revolution 123
Henry, E. 238, 244 Industry Code of Practice 128–9
Herndon ritual 162–3 informalization 13, 21
Hetherington, K. 2 information 40
hierarchy 19, 20, 21, 22, 31, 33, 53, 202 Information Initiative for Health 66
Higher Education Funding Council 46, information sharing 24
54, 56, 57 informationalization 26–9
Hippocrates 123 ingenuity 102–7, 108–13
historic construct 143 initiative 25
Hochschild, A. 29 innovation 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 32
Hoggart, R. 149 instability 5
Holub, R. 146, 152 Institute of Bankers 226
‘home’, notion of 246–7 Institute of Personnel Management 14,
Honig, B. 248 103
hooks, b. 247, 248–9 institutional self 44
Horkheimer, M. 148 institutional strategic documents 55
Hoskin, K. 43, 46 instrumentality 206
Hosmer, L.T. 21, 24 insurance services 122
Hospital, J.T. 237 intellectualism 14, 138–55; choice of
hostility 161–2 intellectuals 151–4; Mannheim and
Huczynski, A.A. 220 Gramsci on 143–7; mass and popular
Hughes, E.C. 102, 118, 202 intellectuals 147–51
interaction 29
Hughes, H.S. 150
Internet 241, 242, 248
Hull, R. 222
IPD (Institute of Personnel Development)
human relations 22
106, 108, 109, 110–11, 112, 113
human resource management 14, 22, 23,
Italy 124
86, 99–114;discourse and discursive
resources 99–100; discursive ingenuity
and occupational member 108–13; Jackall, R. 86, 220
discursive ingenuity and occupational Jacoby, R. 148
Janowitz, M. 160
spokesperson 102–7; ‘new age’
Japan 24
religion 204; tensions and
Jary, D. 13, 38–60, 141
occupational insecurities 100–2
Jermier, J.M. 86, 204, 207
Hunt, J. 165 job category 20
hustling construct 143 job insecurity 33, 100–2, 103, 105, 113,
Huyssen, A. 202 114
hypermasculine culture, adaptation to job retention 90
163–71; degendering strategy: ‘the job security 19, 21, 22, 28
professional’ 169–71; femininity, Johnson, R. 243
accommodation of: ’the lady’ 166–9; Johnson, T. 12, 138
Index 257
Jones, T.M. 25 Law, J. 58, 174–5, 177, 219

Jordan, S. 243, 247 Leadbeater, C. 21, 24
journals 127 Learning and Teaching Initiatives 57
Learning and Teaching Strategies 57
Kallinikos, J. 222 Learning and Teaching Support Network
Kandiyoti, D. 169 57
Kanter, R.M. 32, 159 Leavis, E.R. 147–8
Kassirer, J.P. 63 Legge, K. 82, 101, 220
Kaufman, M. 83 legitimacy 7, 54, 117–20; amateurism,
Kaye, L. 209 quackery and conduct 124, 126, 127,
Keat, R. 117 129, 132, 133, 134; gender strategies
Keenoy, T. 220 189, 193
Kelsey, J. 244 Leinberger, P. 19
Kerfoot, D. 13, 81–93, 167, 179 257 Lemert, C. 5
Keulartz, J. 121 Leninism 144
Kimmel, M.S. 88 Lennie, I. 217
Knights, D. 2, 84, 85, 86, 167, 219 Lewin, R. 209
knowledge 8, 9–11; amateurism, Lex Maria reports 69–70
quackery and conduct 118, 120, 125, Lincoln, Y.S. 239–40, 245, 247
126; audit society 39; capital 4; linkages 248
colonial cartographies 235, 236, 237, Linstead, S. 181
238, 239, 240–5, 249; expert 30, 114; Lorber, J. 158, 178
gender strategies 158, 174, 176, 180, Lovell, J. 160
194; human resource management loyalty 19, 20, 22, 31, 33–4, 65
105, 106, 107, 113; intellectualism Luckmann, T. 99, 190, 191
138, 140, 143, 144, 151, 153; Ludeman, K. 209, 212, 214
marginalized 4; masculinity 6, 81, 86, Luhmann, N. 44–5
92; narrative 7–8; ‘new age’ religion Luk cs, G. 144, 149
202, 203, 204; scientific 7–8, 9; Lyotard, J.-F. 39, 86, 142, 152, 202, 218,
shifting 6; specialism 3; specialized 219; amateurism, quackery and
31; specific 25; structure and identity conduct 117, 120, 128; ‘new’
218, 220; theoretical 13, 87 professional 2, 4, 7–8, 14
Koehn, D. 30
Kolakowski, L. 147 Macdonald, K. 82, 117, 151
Kramer, R. 26 McDonaldization 54
Kroker, A. 224 McDowell, L. 228
Kunda, G. 22, 207 MacInnes, J. 82, 84
Kvande, E. 84 MacIntyre, A. 86, 174
Mackenzie, D. 242
Laabs, J. 209 McKinlay, A. 5, 9
LaBier, D. 218 McKinlay, J. 61
Labour government 68 MacKinnon, V. 209
Laclau, E. 236 McLennan, G. 241
laicization 213 McMylor, P. 86
Lander, D. 235–49 McNay, L. 7, 9, 175
language 9, 192; McUniversity see also intellectualism
games 7–8 McWilliam, E. 235, 237, 240, 247
Larner, C. 119 Maile, S. 159
Larson, M.S. 2, 11, 12, 117 Malinowski, B. 46
Lasch, C. 49 malpractice 77–8
Lash, S. 202, 220 managed care 63, 72, 79
Latour, B. 177, 181 managerialism 3, 7
Lave, J. 175, 178 Mannheim, K. 14, 140, 143–7, 148, 154
258 Index
Marcuse, H. 148 National Board of Health and Welfare 70

Martin, P.Y. 179 National Council for Vocational
Martin, S. 160 Qualifications 140
Marx, K. 139, 219 National Health Service 62–3, 64, 78
Marxism 23, 144, 14 National Institute for Clinical Excellence
masculinist, knowledges, beliefs and 68
assumptions 6 National Institute of Health 72, 73, 77
masculinity 13, 81–93; gender strategies National Vocational Qualification 55, 57,
157–60, 169, 171, 179, 190–3, 195; 116, 120, 122, 125–8, 130–2, 134
‘new’ professional 89–91 Neave, G. 38
masculinizing strategies 163–6 needs 27
Maxwell affair 41 neo-liberalism 23, 39, 120
Mayer, R.C. 21, 25 neo-Marxism 140, 144, 147
Medicaid 63, 77 nepotism 29, 32
Medical Act (1858) 121 networks 32
medical autonomy and accountability and ‘new age’ religion 15, 201–14;
regulation 61–79; chiefs, role of 64–5; dealienation and new forms of identity
Sweden 62–4, 68–71; United Kingdom 212–13; organization and neo-
62–4, 65–8; United States 62–4, 71–5 religious identifications 206–9;
Medical Director 66 ‘spiritual’ capitalism 209–12
Medicare 63, 76, 77 new forms of public management 39, 47
membership in associations 30 New Labour 39
Meny, Y. 29 new social compacts 50
mercantilization 8 New Zealand 15, 210; Association for
Mercer, K. 83, 84 Research in Education 245; see also
Merton, R.K. 53, 202 colonial cartographies
mesmerism 119 Newman, J. 12
Meyer, J.W. 20 NHS Act (1948) 121
military 160 Nietzsche, F. 147, 205, 224, 225, 229, 231
Millar, J. 209 Nike 210
Miller, P. 219 Nisbett, R. 205
Miller, R. 143, 152 Niven, M.M. 103
Mills, C. 81, 142, 143, 148, 153, 202 norms 32, 159, 176
Mintzberg, H. 19, 27 North America 13
mishaps 74–5
Mishra, A.K. 24
objectification 194
mission statements 43, 46
objectives 142
Misztal, B.A. 12–13, 19–34
obligation 32
modernization 205
occupational advancement 113
monitoring 31
occupational member 108–13
monopoly 117, 118, 119
occupational principles 100–1
Montague, J. 143, 152
Oddone, I. 181
Moodley, R. 203
O’Doherty, D. 15, 217–31
morality 23, 129 Offe, C. 22, 29, 33, 34
morbidity 66 old boy networks 29
Morgan, G. 222 O’Leary, T. 219
Morris, W. 148 Oliver, A.L. 21, 31
mortality 66 openness 21, 34, 39
motivation 25, 34, 89 oppression 165
Mouffe, C. 5, 9, 177, 236 order 20
Munro, R. 2, 222 organization 174
organizational principles 100–1
narcissism 46 Orwell, G. 148
Index 259
Osborne, T. 129, 120 Price, S. 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129,
Other 6, 11; colonial cartographies 238, 130, 131, 132
243, 247; gender strategies 180, 190; Prichard, C. 140, 235–49
intellectualism 152, 154 pride 33
Pringle, R. 159
Parker, M. 2, 14, 40, 54, 138–55 privilege 2, 4
Parkhe, A. 24, 31 Privy Council 103
Parsons, T. 11, 202 professional membership 105, 190
Parssinen, T. 119 professionalization 30–3
passivity 160 profit motives 124, 125, 127, 128
paternalism 5 promotion 90
patterns 6 protection 4
Pellegrino, E.D. 32 Purves, A.C. 247
Pene, H. 238, 244 Putnam, R. 23
People Managements 103 Puxty, A. 53, 54, 57
Pepsico 210
performance 50; indicators 55, 56, 57, 142 quackery see also amateurism, quackery
performativity 6, 7–9, 14; amateurism, and conduct
quackery and conduct 117, 120, 128; quality 242
audit society 39; gender strategies quality assurance 41, 70
175; intellectualism 141, 152; Quality Assurance Agency 54, 56, 57
masculinity 86 Quality Audit Agency 141
perks 90 quality control 47
personal identity 102, 113 quality management 86
Peters, M. 245
Peters, T. 220 Radcliffe-Brown, A. 171
Phillips, A. 121 Rakusen, J. 121
Plato 139 Ramzanoglu, C. 10
Podmore, D. 82 Randle, K. 117
political effects 84 Ransom, J. 85
Pollard, S. 85 Rasmussen, B. 84
populism 148–9 rational choice theory 23
post-Fordism 23 rationality 205, 206, 207, 211, 231
post-structuralism 14 re-enchantment 127–30
Posterl, V. 20 recognition 133, 203
Postman, N. 148 Reed, M. 85, 220, 221, 223
poststructuralist feminism 84 reflexive modernization 39
Potter, J. 99 Regine, B. 209
power 9–11, 27, 29; amateurism, quackery registration systems 121
and conduct 117; audit society 39, 46, Reich, R. 4, 26, 203, 209
47; autonomy, accountability and relational practice 91
regulation; gender strategies 159, 160, religion 21; see also ‘new age’
163, 169, 193, 195; human resource representation 9
management 106; intellectualism 152; research assessment exercise 54, 55, 56,
masculinity 83, 84, 86, 88, 90 140
Power, M. 12, 13, 120; audit society 38–9, resistance 7, 10, 208
40–3, 46–7, 49–51, 54, 58 respect 2, 33, 203
Poynton, C. 237 respectability 119, 124
practicality 47–52 responsibility 118, 128, 133, 139
practice 9, 235 restrictive practices 106
pragmatism 5 reward 114, 138, 151, 152, 154
predictability 20 Ricoeur, R. 5
prestige 105 Rifkin, J. 4, 207, 209
260 Index
risk 20, 24, 74; audit society 38, 39, 41, self-referentiality 44–5, 46
47, 50, 51 self-regulation 47, 48–9, 128, 203
rituals 176 self-review 66
Ritzer, G. 61 self-scrutiny 43–4, 46
Robbins, B. 85, 117, 118, 126, 128, 129, self-understanding 102
132, 134 Seligman, A. 23
Roberts, J. 86 Selznick, P. 51
Roberts, P. 245 Sennett, R. 3, 31, 54, 86
Robertson, D. 236 service 139, 242
Roche, W.K. 22 sexual harassment 158, 165, 168
romanticism 145 sexual identity 177
Roof, W.C. 205, 206 sexuality 6
Roper, M. 85, 87 shame and blame culture 75
Rorty, R. 174 shareholder capitalism 33
Rose, M. 56 Sharma, U. 116, 119, 121–2, 125–8, 130–1,
Rose, N. 38, 50, 120, 236 133
Rosen, M. 181 Shepard, B.H. 24, 25
Rosenthal, M.M. 13, 61–79 Sherman, D.M. 24, 25
routinization 53 Shore, C. 46
rules 159 short-termism 20, 23
Runicman, W.G. 30 Shotter, J. 11, 239
Ruskin, J. 148 Sieber, S. 51
Rutherford, J. 89 Sievers, B. 218, 222, 227
Ryman, D. 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, Sikka, P. 82, 118
130, 132 Silicon Valley 23
Silverman, D. 181
situated learning theory 175
Sabel, C.F. 22, 25
Skelding, M. 243, 246
sacralization 205
skill 5, 202, 203
Saks, M. 119, 121, 130–1
Smart, B. 241
salary 33–4, 63
Smircich, L. 175, 177
Salmon, W. 119
Smith, A. 143
sanction 22
social: capital 32; comparison 190;
Sanderson, K. 82
identity 100, 112; order 147
Sarup, M. 5, 7, 8
socialization 30
Sawicki, J. 10
societalization 205
Scarbrough, H. 220 solidarity 22, 23, 24, 30
Schutz, A. 99, 176 Soule, E. 24, 34
Scott, W.R. 11, 219 Southeast Asia 23
Seal of Approval 103 Sparke, M. 246
secularization 205, 206, 213 specialism 2
Segal Quince Wickstead 56 Spencer, A. 82
Seidler, V. 164 ‘spiritual’ capitalism 209–12
Seidman, S. 205 spiritualizing 214
self 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 231; gender Spivak, G. 237
strategies 194; ‘new age’ religion 202 spokespersons 102–7
self-audit 40, 54 spontaneity 28
self-coordination 34 stability 5, 33
self-direction 22 Stanley, L. 247
self-discipline 128, 129 Starkey, K. 5, 9
self-governance 139, 141 Starr, P. 61
self-identity 100, 112, 140, 158, 174, 201, status 3, 4, 6, 8, 19, 30, 31; amateurism,
206–7, 208–9, 213, 214 quackery and conduct 117, 119, 133;
self-interest 23, 34, 134, 208, 211 gender strategies 163, 170, 176; human
Index 261
resource management 105, 106, 114; Torrington, D. 102

intellectualism 138, 144, 151, 152, Townley, B. 86, 219
154; masculinity 81; ‘new age’ religion trade unions 106, 204
202, 203, 209 tradition 19, 34
Steihm, J.H. 160 training 8, 22, 30, 121
Stoltenberg, J. 83 transparency 13, 21, 32, 34, 41, 46
Storey, J. 102, 220 Trow, M. 53
Stouffer, S. 160 trust 2, 12–13, 19–34; amateurism,
Strange, S. 227 quackery and conduct 119; audit
Strathern, M. 13, 40, 42–6, 50, 58 society 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 46, 47, 50,
stratification 202 51; discourse, commonalities in 24–6;
structure and agency: banking sector 15, discourse, emergence of 23–4;
217–31; abysmal questions and Y- discourse, shifts in 21–3;
writing 217–19; new professional informationalization 26–9; loyalty
labour: fracture and incompletion 33–4;medical autonomy 67, 69;
219–29 professionalization 30–3
structure of professions 30 truth 8, 10, 11
subject 175 Tsoukas, H. 220, 221
subjectivity 7 Tucker, B. 19
subjectivization 194 Turner, B. 145, 147
surveillance 31 turnover 33
Sweden 13, 61–4, 68–71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79 Tyler, T. 26
symbols 176, 178, 195 Tyson, S. 102
system theory 21
Udow, M. 63
Tailhook convention 158 Ulmer, G. 218
Tajfel, H. 190 uncertainty 27, 34
Taussig, M. 228 uniformity 5
Taylor, B. 118, 127, 128 United Kingdom 13, 103, 139, 140, 210,
Taylor, C. 213 223; colonial cartographies 243, 244,
Taylorism 21, 22 245, 246, 248; medical autonomy 61–4,
teacher accreditation 55 65–8, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79
teaching quality/subject assessment 54, United States 13, 143, 207, 210, 243, 244;
55, 56 medical autonomy 61–4, 71–5, 76, 77–8,
teamwork 25, 26, 28 79; navy see also gender; trust 28, 30, 33,
techniques 22 34
technology 78 university 237–8, 239, 244–5; see also
Tedlock, B. 181 intellectualism
temporal borders 237 University Grants Committee 140
tensions 100–2 unpredictability 27
Thatcher, M. 62, 77 Urry, J. 220
‘third party’ 12 Usher, R. 7, 86
‘Third Way’ 39, 48–9 utopianism 47–52
Thompson, B. 108–13, 114
Thompson, E. 85, 149 Valdez, S. 229
Thompson, K. 205 value 4, 19
Thompson, P. 2, 230 value for money 39, 47, 56
Tisserand, R. 120, 122, 123, 124, 129, values 27, 34, 40, 133, 134, 176, 195
130, 131, 132 Van Maanen, J. 181, 226, 229
Tolson, A. 89 Vattimo, G. 224
Toms, J.W. 209 Vincent J. 121
Toms, M. 209 vocabulary 192
262 Index
Vocational Training Charitable Trust 122 Willmott, H. 2, 28, 82, 118, 140, 141,
Vurdubakis, T. 219 203, 220, 221, 226, 230–1
Wittgenstein, L. 7
Waikato University 245 Witz, A. 2, 12, 82
Waitangi Treaty 245 Wolfe, A. 23
Waitere—Ang, H. 245 Woolcock, M. 32
Wajcman, J. 85, 87 worth 34
Walker, M. 119 Worwood, V. 120, 122, 123, 124, 131,
Watson, D.H. 102 132
Watson, T. 2, 3, 14, 82, 99–114, 227 Wright, P. 119
Watzlawick, P. 189 Wright, S. 46
wealth distribution 29 Wuthnow, R. 205, 206
Weber, M. 11, 139, 154, 204, 205, 206,
219 Xerox 210
Weber, S. 124, 127, 129
Weiser, J. 28 Y-writing 217–19, 221, 224, 230
Wenger, E. 175, 176, 178 Yeatman, A. 245
West, C. 176 Yeomans, D. 243 125, 130, Yoder, J. 160
Westwood, C. 120, 122, 124
Wetherell, M. 99 Zanuso, L. 178–9
Whitehead, S. 1–15, 84, 86, 87, 179, 203 Zeldin, T. 25, 33
Whitener, E.M. 33 zero tolerance 158
Whyte, W.H. Jr 19, 22–3, 212 Zimmer, L. 160
Williams, C. 160 Zimmerman, D. 176
Williams, G.J. 33 Zucker, L.G. 30, 31
Williams, R. 143, 144, 149 Zurcher, L. 160

Dent & Whitehead Managing Professional Identities Knowledge Performativity and The New Professional

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Managing Professional

• Section one: emphasises the regulatory character of professional/manager identities,

Stephen Whitehead is Lecturer in Education at Keele University. He is the author of

1 Democracy and Efficiency in the 11 Interfirm Networks

2 Towards a Competence Theory of 12 Privatization and Supply Chain

3 Uncertainty and Economic Evolution 13 The Governance of Large Technical

4 The End of the Professions? 14 Stability and Change in High-Tech

5 Shopfloor Matters 15 The New Mutualism in Public Policy

9 The Changing Boundaries of the 19 Managing Professional Identities

10 Authority and Control in Modern 20 A Comparison of Small & Medium

London and New York

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 0-203-46709-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-77533-3 (Adobe eReader Format)

List of contributors vii

1 Introduction: configuring the ‘new’ professional 1

2 Trusting the professional: a managerial discourse for uncertain

3 Aspects of the ‘Audit Society’: issues arising from the colonization

4 Medical professional autonomy in an era of accountability and

5 Managing the ‘professional’ man 81

6 Speaking professionally: occupational anxiety and discursive

7 Amateurism, quackery and professional conduct: the constitution

8 ‘The romance of lonely dissent’: intellectuals, professionals and

9 Gender strategies of women professionals: the case of the

10 Omega’s story: The heterogeneous engineering of a gendered

11 ‘New age’ religion and identity at work 201

12 Writing professional identities: (in)between structure and agency 217

13 Life on the verandah: colonial cartographies of professional

Frank J.Barrett is Associate Professor of Management at the Naval Postgraduate School

Valérie Fournier is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at Keele University. Her

Silvia Gherardi is full professor of sociology of organization at the Faculty of Sociology

David Jary is Research Professor at Staffordshire University and Visiting Professor at

Deborah Kerfoot is lecturer in Organizational Behaviour at Keele University. Her research

Dorothy Lander acts as faculty adviser to students in a self-directed, distance learning

Damian O’Doherty is a lecturer in Organization Analysis in the Manchester School of

Craig Prichard is employed by Massey University, New Zealand, to undertake teaching

Marilynn M.Rosenthal is a professor, medical sociologist and director, Program in Health

Tony Watson is Professor of Organizational and Managerial Behaviour in the Nottingham

Stephen Whitehead is Lecturer in Education at Keele University. His teaching and

Mike Dent and Stephen Whitehead

In such uncertain times, the ability to trust in professional judgement, despite

associated protection. A new contested organizational terrain opens up in this

If we look closely at this new professional/managerial configuration, it is possible

The main difference between scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge

Discourse, power, knowledge and identity

Whatever the agency/structure tensions, it is clear that the individual in this

We must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted

As this quote indicates, the power/resistance possibilities and properties contained

Accountability and autonomy

to discriminate between different types of autonomy and accountability. While

Re-imagining labour as offering ‘professional service’ serves to construct

Managerial and professional practices have seemingly become blurred. The

Outline of the book

the buzzword in managerial discourse in the 1990s. This was a consequence of

the notion of professionalism as a discursive resource for personnel or human

Fournier, V. (1999) ‘The Appeal to “Professionalism” as a Disciplinary Mechanism’, The

The professional under

The change to managers’ organizational attachment and their market situation