Personnel Management, Power and the Certification Process
| Date | 01 April 1980 |
| Published date | 01 April 1980 |
| Pages | 27-32 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055422 |
| Author | D.A. Preece,B.N. Nicol |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel Management, Power and the
Certification Process
D.A. Preece and B.N. Nicol*
Department of Management Studies, Coventry (Lanchester) Polytechnic
Introduction
This paper examines some approaches to the
professionalisation process and relates these to
considerations which seem to have led the Institute of
Personnel Management, particularly in recent years, to
be concerned to establish and develop the knowledge-
base of the occupation of personnel management,
importantly through certification procedures. On the
basis of a comparative national questionnaire survey of
student attrition rates on IPM and Diploma in
Management Studies courses over the years 1973-76, it
is hypothesised that this emphasis has been a major
contributory factor in the high attrition rates on IPM
examination courses throughout the United Kingdom.
The paper concludes with some observations on the new
examination scheme (introduced in 1980) in the context
of a discussion of personnel managers' (and their
spokesmen's) search for more acceptance and power in
organisations.
Professionalism
The study of professionalism has come to be seen as
characterised as being divided into two main
approaches—the "trait" or "attribute" approach on
the one hand, and an alternative approach, which can
perhaps best be typified through a central concern with
locating the question of professionalism within the
much broader interest in power relationships within the
wider society. This second approach, for shorthand
purposes, will be referred to hereafter as the "power"
model. The trait model is essentially based upon the
specification of certain attributes which a "full"
profession is regarded as having obtained. These
attributes are derived from certain selected features of a
few occupations which are uncontroversially seen as
being professions—the medical and legal professions
being the most common and usual examples cited.
Thus,
for instance, if one is interested to know the
extent to which a particular occupation has gone along
the path to full professionalism, then one must examine
the number and nature of these traits that have been
acquired by that occupation. For a further outline and
discussion of this approach, including the actual traits
specified, the reader is referred to the relevant literature
[1].
In recent years the attribute approach has been
criticised by certain commentators. A major strand of
this criticism has been that the "trait theorists" have
taken what they see as being the distinguishing features
of one, or sometimes two occupations (medical and
legal),
as being the features which any other occupation
must acquire in order to become a profession; whereas,
if the emergence and development of the medical
and/or legal professions are located historically,
culturally and in their specific institutional contexts then
the analysis becomes rather conjectural, leading to the
question: "Why should the features of 'professions in
general' be based upon the characteristics of just one or
two occupations which necessarily have their own
particular histories?"
Another major critique has amounted to arguing that
the features displayed by a profession are, to an
important extent, the publicly presented "images",
reflecting those aspects which practitioners and their
spokesmen want non-practitioners to see and accept as
being possessed by the occupation, such as high service
ideals and altruism; whereas, it is argued, actual
practice involves different priorities, such as attempting
to maximise monetary returns to members of the
occupation.
A most influential critique has been provided by
Johnson, who has argued that professionalism is merely
one form of the institutionalised control of particular
occupations, and hence is closely related to certain
factors both within and impinging upon that occupation
which lead to this form of occupational control being
the most appropriate and/or successful [2]. Johnson's
work in this area is linked with a major interest to locate
and understand the power relationships within which
particular types of institutionalised occupational
control (including professionalism) emerge and assert
themselves, both within the occupation
itself,
and
between the occupation and other segments of the wider
society. Closely associated with this "power"
perspective on professionalism is what may be termed a
more "cynical" stance towards some of the explicit
statements of both members of professions, and of
spokesmen of aspiring professions. This stance is tied in
with what has sometimes been termed the "debunking"
motive in sociology, or the imperative need to
distinguish as far as possible between what people say
and what they actually do, and to relate both these
activities to their interests (in this case, their
occupational
interests). Indeed, part of the critique that
the "power" theorists have of the "trait" theorists is
that the latter accept uncritically and unreflectingly the
statements that are made about what professional work
involves by members of, and spokesmen for, those
occupations themselves. Even if those statements are
*The
authors would like to thank the following people for their help in
relation to the preparation of this paper: Mr. C. Flood Page and Mrs
K. Howard
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