174 ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
a situation in which the professions have been forced to trade, even more
skilfully and manipulatively than in the past, on their position and status
asmerchants of morality. Such a prognosis places the cultural, ethical, and
symbolic power of experts at the very centre of the increasingly dispersed
and complex, social, and organizational networks emerging in a postmod-
ern society where uncertainty and ambiguity abound and trust, particularly
institutionalized trust, is at a premium.
By putting their expert knowledge and skill at the disposal of an anxious
and distrustful public on the one hand and an increasingly powerful but
uncertain corporate elite on the other, contemporary professional groups
and associations will be better placed to sustain their pivotal role as pur-
veyors of ethical meaning and personal identity in a world continually on
the edge of disorder and chaos. As it develops, the chapter will also con-
sider the intra-organizationalsurveillance and disciplinary regimesto which
professional workers are now routinely subjected (Fournier 1999) and their
longer-term impact on the formation of professional identities. Overall, it
seeks to demonstrate how a deeper appreciation is needed of the underlying
material conditions and structural mechanisms that shape occupational and
organizational change.
Professions in crisis?
The last two decades or so have not been the easiest of times for profession-
alism and professions. It is worth reminding ourselves though that there are
very considerable national, sectoral, and jurisdictional variations in the scale
and intensity of this putative crisis in professionalization (as an occupational
control strategy), professionalism (as a principle of work organization and
control), and professions (as occupational associations and groups). In broad
terms, the Anglo-American and northern European political economies and
welfare states seem to be experiencing a far deeper and fundamental ques-
tioning of institutionalized professional power, status, and control than their
central and southern continental European counterparts (Clarke, Gerwitz,
and McLaughlin 2000; Cohen et al. 2003; Dent and Whitehead 2002; Ferlie,
Hartley, and Martin 2003; Freidson 2001; McLaughlin, Osborne, and Ferlie
2002; Pollitt and Bouchaert 2000).
Nevertheless, there are sufficient empirical and theoretical grounds for sug-
gesting that very significant changes have already occurred, and will occur
even more so in the future, in the dominant occupational strategies and
organizational modes through which professionalization is pursued as a power
game and mobility project (Larson 1977, 1990; Murphy 1990; Parkin 1979).
It can also be argued that these changes are most appropriately explained