The word “Profession” in Acrostic format.

P - Perfectionist

R - Responsible

O - Organized

F - Fastidious

E - Enthusiastic

S - Sedulous

S - Scrupulous

I - Industrious

O - Obsessed

N - Noteworthy

Anyone who is truly considered a professional possess all or most of the qualities needed to be in his or
her profession.

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In our previous chapters, we discussed the different aspects of solving a conflict. Let us now
understand what do we mean by profession and professionalism. The words “Profession” and
“Professionalism” are often referred in the moral issues.
Profession
Profession means a job or an occupation, that helps a person earn his living. The main criteria of
a profession involves the following.

 Advanced expertise − The criteria of a profession is to have sound knowledge in both

technical aspects and liberal arts as well. In general, continuing education and updating
knowledge are also important.
 Self-regulation − An organization that provides a profession, plays a major role in
setting standards for the admission to the profession, drafting codes of ethics, enforcing
the standards of conduct and representing the profession before the public and the
government.
 Public good − Any occupation serves some public good by maintaining high ethical
standards throughout a profession. This is a part of professional ethics where each
occupation is intended to serve for the welfare of the public, directly or indirectly to a
certain extent.

Professionals
A person who is paid for getting onvolved in a particular profession in order to earn a living as
well as to satisfy the laws of that profession can be understood as a Professional. The definition
of a professional is given differently by different experts in the field. Let us see the following
definitions −

 “Only consulting engineers who are basically independent and have freedom from
coercion can be called as professionals.” − Robert L. Whitelaw
 “Professionals have to meet the expectations of clients and employers. Professional
restrains are to be imposed by only laws and government regulations and not by personal
conscience.” − Samuel Florman
 “Engineers are professionals when they attain standards of achievement in education,
job performance or creativity in engineering and accept the most basic moral
responsibilities to the public as well as employers, clients, colleagues and subordinates.”
- Mike martin and Ronald Schinzinger

Models of Professional Engineers

An engineer who is a professional, has some tasks to perform by which he acts as any of the
following, which can be termed as Models of Professional Engineers.

 Savior − A person who saves someone or something from any danger is called a Savior.
An engineer who saves a group of people or a company from a technical danger can also
be called a Savior. The Y2K problem that created problems for computers and computer
networks around the world was solved by engineers who were the saviors.
  Guardian − A person who knows the direction towards a better future is known to be the
Guardian for the same. An engineer who knows the direction in which there is scope for
the technology to develop can also be called a Guardian. This engineer provides the
organization with innovative ideas for technological development.
 Bureaucratic Servant − A person who is loyal and can solve problems when they occur
using his own skills, is a Bureaucratic servant. An engineer who can be a loyal person to
the organization and also the one who solves the technical problems the company
encounters, using his special skills can be termed as a Bureaucratic servant. The
company relies on his decision-making capability for the future growth.
 Social Servant − A person who works for the benefit of the society without any selfish
interest and does not work on any business grounds, is called a Social servant. An
engineer who receives a task as part of the government’s concern for the society
considering the directives laid by the society and accomplishes the assigned tasks can be
termed as a Social Servant. He knows what the society needs.
 Social Enabler or Catalyst − A person who makes the society understand its welfare
and works towards the benefits of the people in it, is a Social Enabler. An engineer who
plays a vital role in a company and helps company along with society to understand their
needs and supports their decisions in work can be termed as a Social Enabler or
Catalyst. This person quickens the procedure and helps maintain good environment in
the company.
 Game Player − A person who plays a game according to the rules given is a Game
player in general. An engineer who acts as neither a servant nor a master, but provides his
services and plans his works according to the economic game rules in a given time, can
be termed as a Game player. He is smart enough to handle the economic conditions of
the company.

Professionalism
Professionalism covers comprehensively all areas of practice of a particular profession. It
requires skills and responsibilities involved in engineering profession. Professionalism implies a
certain set of attitudes.

The art of Professionalism can be understood as the practice of doing the right thing, not
because how one feels but regardless of how one feels. Professionals make a profession of the
specific kind of activity and conduct to which they commit themselves and to which they can be
expected to conform. Moral ideals specify virtue, i.e., desirable feature of character. Virtues are
desirable ways of relating to other individuals, groups and organizations. Virtues involve
motives, attitudes and emotions.

According to Aristotle, virtues are the “acquired habits that enable us to engage effectively in
rational activities that defines us as human beings.”

Professional Ideals and Virtues

The virtues represent excellence in core moral behavior. The essentials for any professional to
excel in the profession are behavior, skills and knowledge. The behavior shows the moral
ideology of the professional.

The moral ideals specify the virtue, i.e., the desirable character traits that talk a lot about the
motives, attitude and emotions of an individual.

 Public spirited virtues

 Proficiency virtues
 Team work virtues
 Self-governance virtues

The virtues mentioned above show the professional responsibility of an individual. Hence, the
professionalism that comes in with these virtues is called Responsible Professionalism. Let us
now understand each virtue in detail.

Public-spirited Virtues

An engineer should focus on the good of the clients and the public at large, which means no
harm should be done intentionally. The code of professional conduct in the field of engineering
includes avoiding harm and protecting, as well promoting the public safety, health and welfare.

Maintaining a sense of community with faith and hope within the society and being generous by
extending time, talent and money to professional societies and communities, an engineer can
maintain the public-spirited virtue. Finally, justice within corporations, government and
economic practices becomes an essential virtue that an engineer should always possess.

Proficiency Virtues

These refer to the virtues followed in the profession according to the talent and intellect of an
engineer. The moral values that include this virtue are competence and diligence. The
competence is being successful in the job being done and the diligence is taking care and having
alertness to dangers in the job. Creativity should also be present in accomplishing the assigned
task.

Teamwork Virtues

These virtues represent the coordination among team members which means working
successfully with other professionals. These include cooperative nature along with loyalty and
respect towards their organization, which makes the engineers motivate the team professionals to
work towards their valuable goals.

Self-governance Virtues
These virtues are concerned with moral responsibilities which represent integrity and self-respect
of the person. The integrity actually means the moral integrity which refers to the actions,
attitude and emotions of the person concerned during his professional period.

The self-governance virtues center on commitment, courage, self-discipline, perseverance, self-

respect and integrity. The truthfulness and trustworthiness which represent his honesty are the
crucial moral values to be kept up by a professional.

PROFESSION AND PROFESSIONALISM

Engineering is generally considered a profession, but science, or at least some of the sciences,
are sometimes counted as professions and sometimes distinguished from them. Often, a dispute
about the professional status of a science begins when someone proposes it have a code of ethics.
What is a profession? What has professional status to do with ethics? What distinction, if any,
exists between the professional status of engineering and science? Why should the professional
status of either matter?

Four Senses of "Profession"

In ordinary usage, profession has at least four senses. First, profession can be a mere synonym
for vocation (or calling), that is, any useful activity to which one devotes (and perhaps feels
called to devote) much of one's life. (If the activity were not useful, it would be a hobby rather
than a vocation.) Profession in this sense has no necessary relation to income. Even a gentleman
—in the now outdated sense describing someone rich enough to live comfortably without
working—might have such a profession. Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation" (1901) explains
how a now-bureaucratized professoriate can still be a vocation in this sense. Weber never uses
the term profession.

Second, profession can be a synonym for occupation, that is, any typically full-time activity
(defined by function or discipline) by which practitioners generally earn a living. In this sense,
one may, without irony, speak of a professional thief or professional athlete. The opposite of
professional (in this sense) is amateur (one who engages in the activity for love rather than
money) or dilettante (one who lacks the seriousness of those who must live by such work). This
is the sense of profession from which professionalism derives. To exhibit professionalism is to
exhibit the knowledge, skill, or judgment characteristic of someone who makes a good living in
the occupation. Both engineers and scientists are now generally professionals in this sense,
though science still seems to have more room than engineering for amateurs and dilettantes.
Third, profession can refer to any occupation one may openly admit to or profess, that is, an
honest occupation: While athletics can be a profession in this sense, neither thieving nor being a
gentleman can. Thieving cannot because it is not honest; being a gentleman (in its outdated
sense) cannot because, though an honest way of life, it is not an occupation. Occupation seems to
be the (primary) sense of profession in Émile Durkheim's seminal work on professions (written
about the same time as Weber's work on vocation).

These three senses of profession are alike in having obvious synonyms. If profession had only
these senses, it would, being redundant, seem destined to disappear from use. Its increasing
popularity suggests that these three senses derive from a fourth, the primary sense and the source
of the term's popularity. Profession in this fourth sense is a special kind of honest occupation.
There are at least two competing approaches to defining it: the sociological and the
philosophical.

Sociological Definitions
The sociological approach to defining profession has its origin in the social sciences. Its
language tends to be statistical; the definition does not purport to state necessary or sufficient
conditions for an occupation to be a profession, but merely what is true of "most professions,"
"the most important professions," or the like. Generally, sociological definitions understand a
profession to be any honest occupation whose practitioners have high social status, high income,
advanced education, important social function, or some combination of these or other features
easy for the social sciences to measure.

Sociological definitions differ a good deal. Some emphasize public service, (individual)
autonomy, (group) self-regulation, dangerous knowledge, having a code of ethics, or the like,
while others do not. What explains the great variety of sociological definitions? Part of the
explanation is that, being statistical, such definitions are not threatened by a few counter-
examples. But that is only part of the explanation. Another factor is that when the counter-
examples grow more numerous than the professions fitting the definition, defenders can
distinguish between true professions, fully developed professions, or paradigms and those not
fitting the definition (pseudo-professions, less well developed professions, or quasi-professions).
The only professions that appear on every sociological list of true, fully developed, paradigmatic
professions are law and medicine. When evidence suggests that even these do not fit the
definition, sociologists can retreat again, claiming that their definition states an ideal type that
actual professions only approximate. When asked why this ideal type is chosen over another,
sociologists generally explain the choice in terms of a theory of society they accept (Marxist,
Weberian, Durkheimian, or the like). Sociological definitions seem to derive from theory, not
evidence. The way professions understand themselves plays a surprisingly small part in the
sociological approach.

For most sociological definitions, little distinguishes contemporary professions from what used
to be called the liberal professions (those few honest vocations requiring a university degree in
most of early modern Europe). Carpentry cannot be a profession (in the sociological sense)
because both the social status and education of carpenters are too low. Science is a profession in
this sense because scientists have relatively high status, high income, advanced education, and
important social functions. Technical managers also form a profession in this sense because they
too tend to have high income, high status, advanced education, and an important social function.
According to most sociological definitions, Europe and the Americas have had professions for
many centuries.

Philosophical Definitions
The philosophical approach to defining profession attempts to state necessary and sufficient
conditions. A philosophical definition is therefore much more sensitive to counter-example than
sociological definitions are. Philosophical definitions may be developed in one of (at least) two
ways: the Cartesian or the Socratic.

The Cartesian way tries to make sense of the contents of one person's mind. One develops a
definition by asking oneself what one means by a certain term, setting out that meaning in a
definition, testing the definition by counter-examples and other considerations, revising
whenever a counter-example or other consideration seems to reveal a flaw, and continuing that
process until one has put one's beliefs in good order.

In contrast, the Socratic way seeks common ground between one or more philosophers and
practitioners (those who normally use the term in question and are therefore expert in its use). A
Socratic definition begins with the definition a practitioner offers. A philosopher responds with
counter-examples or other criticism, inviting practitioners to revise. Often the philosopher will
help by suggesting possible revisions. Once the practitioners seem satisfied with the revised
definition, the philosopher again responds with counter-examples or other criticism. And so the
process continues until everyone is satisfied with the result. Instead of the private monologue of
the Cartesian, there is a public conversation. But neither the Cartesian nor the Socratic approach
is empirical (in the way the sociological approach at least claims to be). They are equally
analyses of concepts. They differ primarily in how they understand concepts. For the Cartesian,
concepts are more or less private; for the Socratic, they are a public practice.

What follows is a Socratic definition: "A profession is a number of individuals in the same
occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a certain moral ideal in a
morally permissible way beyond what law, market, and morality would otherwise require."

According to this definition, the members of a would-be profession must have an occupation.
Mere gentlemen cannot form a profession. Hence, members of the traditional liberal professions
(clergy, physicians, and lawyers) could not form a profession until quite recently—until, that is,
they ceased to be gentlemen, began to work for a living, and recognized that change in
circumstance. That seems to be well after 1800. Most professions are much younger than the
function they perform or the discipline they exploit.

The members of the would-be profession must not only have an occupation, they must share it.
So, for example, chemists and chemical engineers cannot form one profession because they are
trained in different academic departments, learn different skills, and generally do different work.
They belong to different occupations.

Ethics and Professions

According to the Socratic definition above, each profession is designed to serve a certain moral
ideal, that is, to contribute to a state of affairs everyone (all rational persons at their rational best)
can recognize as good. So, physicians have organized to cure the sick, comfort the dying, and
protect the healthy from disease; engineers, to help produce and maintain safe and useful objects;
and so on. But a profession does not just organize to serve a certain moral ideal; it organizes to
serve it in a certain way, that is, according to standards beyond what law, market, and morality
would otherwise require. A would-be profession, then, must set special (morally permissible)
standards. Otherwise it would remain nothing more than an honest occupation. Among its special
standards may be a certain minimum of education, character, or skill, but inevitably some of the
standards will concern conduct. These standards of conduct will be ethical (as distinct from
moral): they will govern the conduct of all members of the group simply because they are
members of that group (and not, as ordinary moral standards do, just because they are moral
agents).

These special standards will, if effective, be ethical in another sense as well. They will be
morally binding on members of the profession (and only them). The members of a profession
must pursue their profession openly; that is, engineers must declare themselves to be engineers,
chemists must declare themselves to be chemists, and so on. The members of a (would-be)
profession must declare themselves to be members of that profession in order to earn their living
by that profession. They cannot be hired as such-and-such (say, an engineer) unless they let
people know that is what they are. If their profession has a good reputation for what it does, the
declaration of membership will aid them in earning a living. People will seek their help. If,
however, the profession has a bad reputation, their declaration of membership ("I am a tinker")
will be a disadvantage. People will shun their help. The profession's special way of pursuing its
moral ideal is what distinguishes its members from others in the same occupation, and from what
the members would be but for their profession.

Of course, the declaration of membership must be true. Those who declare membership in a
profession to which they do not belong are mere charlatans, quacks, impostors, or the like. How
membership is determined may vary a good deal from one profession to another. Some
professions have only a set curriculum to assure minimum knowledge. (Graduate with the
appropriate degree and one is a chemist.) Other professions have only a test. (Pass the
examination and, however one learned the discipline, one is an actuary.) And other professions
have a more complex standard. (So, for example, to be a physician, one must graduate with a
certain degree, work under supervision for a time, and pass certain examinations.) What all
professions share are special standards distinguishing members from others. Whatever their
origin, these standards, once accepted in practice, constitute the professional organization. The
professional organization (that is, the profession) is distinct from any technical, scientific, or
mutual-aid society members of a profession may form.
The members of a profession, being free to declare membership or not, will generally declare
membership if, but only if, the declaration benefits them overall—that is, serves some purpose of
their own at what seems reasonable cost. The purpose may be high-minded, self-interested, or
even selfish. Whatever the purpose of individuals, their membership in a profession identifies
them as engaged in pursuing the profession's moral ideal according to the morally permissible
special standards the profession has adopted. Occupations can be "value free" (that is, have no
special commitments); professions cannot.

Where members of a profession declare their membership voluntarily ("I am an architect"), they
are part of a voluntary, morally permissible, cooperative practice. They are in position to have
the benefits of the practice, employment as members of that profession, because the employer
sought such-and-such and they (truthfully) declared their membership. They will also be in
position to take advantage of the practice by doing less than the standards of practice require,
even though the expectation that they would do what the standards require as declared members
of the profession is part of what won them employment. If cheating consists in violating the rules
of a voluntary, morally permissible, cooperative practice (that is, taking unfair advantage of the
practice), then every member of a profession is in a position to cheat. Because cheating is
morally wrong, every member of a profession has a moral obligation, all else equal, to do as the
profession's special standards require.

A profession's ethics imposes moral obligations on members of that profession. These

obligations may, and generally do, vary from profession to profession (and, within a single
profession, may also vary over time). These obligations appear in a range of documents,
including standards of education, admission, practice, and discipline. A code of ethics is the most
general of these documents, the one concerned with the practice of the profession as such.

Status and Profession

According to the Socratic definition above, an occupation's status as a profession is (more or
less) independent of license, state-imposed monopoly, and other special legal intervention. Such
special legal interventions are characteristic of bureaucracy rather than profession. In principle,
professions are not the creatures of law; and, even in practice, some professions (such as
Certified Computer Professionals) do without license, monopoly, and other legal protection
against market pressures, except for protection of their designation (such as "CCP") analogous to
that the law gives to trademarks to protect the consumer from counterfeits.

An occupation's status as a profession is, according to this definition, also more or less
independent of its social status, income, and other social indexes of profession. There is, for
example, no profession of technical managers, even though technical managers have relatively
high social status, income, and education and important social functions. What technical
managers lack is a common moral ideal beyond law, market, and ordinary morality—and
common standards, including a code of ethics, settling how that ideal should be pursued. There
is, in contrast, certainly a profession of nursing, though nurses typically earn much less than
technical managers and have much lower social status. The only high status a profession entitles
one to is being regarded as more reliable or trustworthy in what one does for a living than one
would (probably) be if that way of earning a living were not organized as a profession. This high
status is deserved only insofar as the profession continues to meet the special standards it has set
for itself. An occupation should become a profession in this fourth sense if, but only if, it is
willing to assume the burdens that generate that high status. The current popularity of the terms
professional and professionalism is evidence that, on the whole, the professions have been
handling that burden pretty well.

MICHAEL DAVIS

SEE ALSO Codes of Ethics; Durkheim, Émile; Professional Engineering Organizations.