Professional Control as Process: Beyond Structural Theories

Abstract

Until recently, studies of the impact of bureaucratic employment on professionals drew heavily on structural models, such as the theories of proletarianization and of professional stratification. In contrast, this paper develops a processual approach to professional control. This approach views control as resulting from struggles by occupational groups for institutional recognition and from struggles and negotiations within and between occupations. The structural and processual approaches are applied to the explanation of union activity-an increasingly prominent form of collective action among employed professionals. Unionization and union militancy are examined among Israeli physicians, who have a long history of bureaucratic employment. Although they are helpful, neither the proletarianization nor the stratification theories adequately account for the overall pattern of medical unionization or for individual and subgroup involvement in a lengthy physicians' strike. The processual approach points to several forces that help explain unionization and variations in strike involvement. These forces include institutional and contextual conditions, power differences between professional-subgroups, interactions among multiple actors in and around the professions, and the professionals' subjective interpretations and feelings. Although the processual approach is a loose perspective, rather than a tight-knit theory, it offers a better guide than the structural theories to investigating both professional-bureaucratic relations and collective actions aimed at enhancing professional control.