Professional Elites and BNFL
| Author | Andrew Massey |
| Published date | 01 February 1986 |
| Date | 01 February 1986 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.1986.tb00156.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PROFESSIONAL ELITES
AND
WFL
ANDREW
MASSEY
Introduction
The evolution of British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) provides an
illustration of the effects upon the United Kingdom's nuclear decision-making
framework of the organisational loyalty and the quest for occupational autonomy
inherent to professional occupations. Within the groups that control the nuclear
fuel cycle, as with others, the ideology of 'professionalism' is a vehicle used
to legitimise and advance the pursuit of decision-making autonomy and the
continuing control of the organisation's goals by the technical experts. The
process is led by professional elites and this paper seeks to explain how an
elite positioned in the Production Group of the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA)
acted as a dynamic (under the influence of the professional ideology) to 'drive'
the policy-making processes of the Production Group and also
to
influence
Political decisions.
It
is argued in this article that the evolution of BNFL was largely due
to
a
situation common to the technical professions, whereby the technocrats of
the Production Group displayed a dual loyalty
to
the employing organisation and
to the profession, a factor inherent to professional loyalty first noted by
Dunleavy in his study of urban politics (1980b, p
111).
This dual loyalty often
clouds the distinction between organisational politics and professional politics,
but
it
is
the main contention of this analysis that a professional ideology acts
as a dynamic driving the policy-making process of a policy-community dependent
upon technical expertise. Indeed,
it
is a community in which the higher manage-
ment of the quasi-governmental sector is not only drawn from the technical
occupations, but comprises their professional elite, or a substantial part of
it.
Thus, a dialectic between professional and organisational goals is
inevitable, with the professionalism of the higher managers, formulated via
their training and socialisation as qualified experts, shaping and targeting
the organ
i
sat
i
on
I
s
object
i
ves
.
The creation of the separate fuel company was a distinctive attempt to
achieve occupational independence for the Production Group's technocrats. These
people deliberately altered the functional parameters and the goals of the
Group in order to increase a need for their skills and'thereby facilitate a
situation whereby they could successfully command work autonomy
-
the establish-
ment of BNFL.
paper, that the success (or otherwise)
of
professional initiatives must be
analysed within the framework of the prevailing political system/ideology. That
is, only those goals that are structured
to
accord
with
the broad political aims
of the political elite and are perceived by the elite (or the ascendant sections
of it) in those terms,
will
stand a chance of success. Just as attempts at
administrative reform (and analysis of them) must take full cognizance of the
reality of political parameters (Gray and Jenkins, 1985),
so
must professional
attempts at reform and studies of those attempts take a similarly holistic
approach. In order to aid the success of its aspirations the professional elite
set its goals firmly within the broader ideological framework of the two major
political parties and the wider concerns of Whitehall. The political desires
and ideological predispositions of the politicians and civil servants, combined
with their technical ignorance, were exploited by the professional elite in
their desire for increased autonomy.
This event, however, illustrates the second major theme of this
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