162 ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
as noted above. Few are explicitly unionized, but their collective power
is very similar. Like union members, their autonomy is being eroded as
they become employees of larger, multinational organizations. Code:
StatusMy claim is that professionalizing a practice would require that most of the
above features be established, at least the first eleven and arguably the first
sixteen. What more has been added to the broad 3-point account with which
I began? Mainly an emphasis on continuity in knowledge and skill updating,
self-governance through peer review, social ethics and monopoly, and partic-
ular judgement. The more specific notion in the paradigm cases now is:
1.Professionals employ high-level, peer-attested cognitive, and practical exper-
tise.
2.Theyexercise self-governing virtue, giving impartial service to individuals in
need and to society, applied in wise particular judgement.
3.This activity of the practitioner presupposes some social grant of positional
authority and autonomy, as well as a role in an organized system. There
is social monopolizing of function, and social funding, particularly for fair
systemic service provision to the indigent.
It must be conceded that professions are historically social constructs, which
change over time. The graduates of early universities in Byzantium, and later
Bologna, Paris, and Oxford were mainly clergy, state officials, scientists, doc-
tors, and lawyers (Patterson 1989). But if the criteria above and a supportive
neo-Aristotelian account are accepted, there are logically consistent and coher-
ent connections between members of the set.
In summary, a mark of the professional is cognitive and moral virtue,
applied to need; a pledge of adherence to the social good via a self-enforced
code, embodying impartiality and altruism. Failure leads to sanctions imposed
by a socially accepted professional authority. Professional prerogatives and
restrictions outlined in codes of conduct devised by institutions are granted
to make the system within which the professional operates, for the common
good, viable and distributively just. Services are ideally made accessible to all
including the financially needy through a socially funded safety net. Profes-
sionals will have to whistle-blow on their employing organization when this
sort of systemic social justice condition is not met.
The HR profession?
Do HR practitioners meet the twenty criteria discussed above any better than
say the business entrepreneur? Are there parts of the role that would be made