This paper examines the tradeoff between three modes of embodying expertise: in professions, in organizations, and in commodities. It surveys the differing abilities of these modes to institutionalize and reproduce expertise as well as to make expert services efficient and profitable. It also considers secondary functions served by these modes of expertise, such as the provision of avenues for individual social mobility. I conclude that professions will survive the onslaught of organizations, although probably in modified form. The paper ends with a discussion of the variables influencing the form.
Reprinted as "Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians." In Academic Status: Statements and Resources, 3nd ed., edited by Susan Kroll, 7-8. Chicago: Academic Status Committee, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 1994.
In this paper, we maintain that the early research on professions and organizations must be integrated into contemporary organization theory. Specifically, we argue that the traditional research on professionals in bureaucracies should be reexamined within the context of organizations as negotiated orders vulnerable to environmental influences. We present the metaphor of a see-saw as a way of analyzing the tension between managerial strategies preferred by professionals, and those preferred by administrators. In a broad theoretical sense, the paper attempts to bring the subject of professionals back into mainstream organizational theory and analysis.
Organizations vary in a number of important ways: they have different types of clients, they work with different technologies, they employ workers with different skills, they develop different structures and coordinating styles, and they have different relationships to their external environments. Of course, there are elements common to the operation of colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, business firms, government bureaus, and so on, but no two organizations are the same. Any adequate model of decision making and governance in an organization must take its distinctive characteristics into account.The chapter deals with the organizational characteristics and decision processes of colleges and universities. Colleges and universities are unique organizations, differing in major respects from industrial organizations, government bureaus, and business firms.
Organizationally-generated professions include such diverse groups as psychiatrists, financial managers, librarians, computer programmers, operations researchers forensic pathologists, and a seemingly endless array of health care occupations.
Over the last 5 years alarm bells for higher education have been sounding from a number of corners. An avalanche of articles in the press, the withdrawal of public funds at state and federal levels, and special meetings convened within higher education circles to consider the situation demonstrate the extent to which colleges and universities are coming under the lens of public scrutiny. Questions being generated challenge the relevance of higher education in its present form, pointing to a more profound lack of agreement about the role of higher education at this historic moment. The critique has fastened on economic and organizational inefficiencies within the enterprise of higher education; and faculty workloads, the tenure system, class size, and student-faculty ratios have become special targets. The backdrop to these challenges is escalating costs in higher education in the face of diminishing allocation of economic resources to public needs nationally. Also at issue is the entry into the arena of higher education of new consumers whose goals are attuned to an economy that is being reshaped.
Like brains and computers, organizations are controllers, that is, they exist primarily to process information -- and thereby at lest partially to control external factors -- toward some predetermined set of goals (which of course might be modified as this process unfolds). To the extent that all controllers are homologous with respect to information processing, decision, and control, understanding of either formal organization, the human brain, or computers and related information technologies might be informed by theory involving information usually associated with any of the others.To the extent that all controllers are homologous, they can be expected to have much the same functions in many practical applications. Just as formal organization has often provided the most competitive alternative to the unaided human brain, especially following industrialization during the middle and late nineteenth century, computers and related technologies usually afford the most competitive alternative to organization in the so-called information societies of the late twentieth century. In general, technologies that fill homologous functions -- by constituting alternative means to similar ends -- must be considered as economic tradeoffs in relevant applications.
Thus we can see that the two major topics in this edited volume, namely organizations and information technology, are related at the highest levels of generality. As such, they merit joint study for theoretical as well as practical reasons. Guided by any good theory involving information processing, communication, decision, and control, we can expect that any insights gained from the study of either organizations or information technology will immediately inform our understanding of the other. Similarly, we can expect that such knowledge of both organization and information technology -- as information processors, deciders, and controllers -- will inform economic and other practical decisions in even the most mundane applications.
Here, then, are the rewards, practical no less than theoretical, that we might expect from the continued development of a general theory of information, communication, decision, and control, and from the corresponding conceptualization of information technology as organization -- and vice versa ["Summary" pp. 43-44].
The argument is made and defended that librarianship is neither a discipline nor a profession, as that term is defined traditionally. Given this, what types of research are likely to be useful to librarians, and how can it be generated, communicated, and applied in practice? These questions are discussed, and new "research styles" for librarianship are proposed.
The investigative perspective of micropolitics is used in this qualitative, multi-site study to explore the budgeting process within large universities. Implications for library administrators include the identification of specific budget strategies and a better understanding of the role of power and influence in academic life. . . .Is there a common understanding among campus administrators about the role of politics in the budgeting process within universities? . . .
When organizations are viewed as coalitions of people and groups that have diverse interests and goals, decision making takes place in an environment characterized by bargaining, negotiation, and jockeying for position. . . .
Combining [several] perspectives for the purposes of this study, micropolitical budget strategies are patterns in fiscal actions that involve the use of power by individuals and groups within organizations. . . .
A qualitative approach was used for the collection and analysis of data. . . . Four large, public universities where chosen as sites in four Western states. . . .
The constant comparative method of data analysis was used to identify situations involving budget strategies. . . .
Blase's working definition of micropolitics has four components: . . . it encompasses formal power [as well as] informal activity; . . .[it asserts] that actions may have political significance regardless of whether they are "consciously or unconsciously motivated;" . . .both "cooperative and conflictive actions and processes are part of the realm of micropolitics;" . . . the last component . . . concerns the interaction of macropolitical and micropolitical factors. . . .
The micropolitical strategies used by deans and unit heads in their budget requests to central administrators fall predominantly into six categories. The first [P1] relates to access to central administration and the maintenance of on-going communication with the key players. The second [P2] relates to the importance of building a reputation for fiscal credibility. The third [P3] and fourth [P4] strategy areas concern the explicit and analytical presentation of arguments in both the oral budget presentation and the written budget proposal. The fifth [P5] and sixth [P6] propositions, end-runs and coalition building, are also utilized as micropolitical strategies but to a lesser degree than the first four categories. . . .
[Between 1945 and 1970] the notion of "politics" was linked with the techniques of individuals who could ignite the imaginations and further the goals of entrepreneurial presidents and other administrators. . . . [Since then] political action is still a matter of influencing those in authority, but the . . . emphasis is now on analytical argumentation, the best use of data, sound links to he redefined mission of the institution, and track records of performance. . . .
Change has been a way of organizational life for libraries for several decades. The growing dimensions and rapidly increasing pace of change that libraries now face, however, are readily apparent in current library professional publications. It is also obvious from the literature that quality improvement looms large as one of the many topics of concern for today's libraries. . . .At this point, library quality improvement efforts focus largely on the total quality management (TQM) approach or on processes using TQM principles under different names. It is, however, a topic that is not without controversy.
Because TQM is the process that now receives the most attention in the library field as well as in other sectors, the approach, in its varied forms, is the focus of this overview of current quality improvement activities in libraries.
In this article, a "misguided administrator" from the "lunatic fringe" finds the ostensibly straightforward notion of reference service to be virtually in conceptual disarray. Through a search of the literature, he is unable to discover just what reference librarians actually do, and how much of it they should do. Further, he finds little in the way of contemporary discussion regarding the mission of reference librarians. He concludes that a new economic model for reference is needed, one which must begin by redefining reference [librarians as "Access Engineers"].
This article discusses scientific method and LIS's difficulty in being a modern science. The epistemological crisis in modern science during the last thirty years, however, gives LIS a central role to play in postmodern science. Implications for this turn are suggested.
This ethnographic study investigates the instantiation of cultural understandings in a firm relative to the introduction, implementation and subsequent development of a comprehensive and computerized information system. It focuses on the conceptual constellation of people, culture and information, and proceeds from the assumptions that information is contextual, that thought and language are produced in and productive of culture, and that meaning is context dependent. A postmodern orientation drives the research methodology and yields and interpretive text.Among others, I conclude that the champions of information technologies typically adopt a systems-rational perspective that allows little understanding of the sociocultural dynamics in play -- as did those in this firm. Information systems embody a world view replete with assumptions that, like all other organizational actions and artifacts, are marked by the interests and ideologies that conceive them and are, in this regard, simply carriers of human intention. The global effect relative to this firm's installation of its large-scale information system was to transport the management back to a Fordist operating style which, among other enigmas, subsequently led to a bureaucratization of its formerly organic structure.
During his eighty years Peter Drucker has walked with many of this century's visionaries. . . . His insights fill more than twenty volumes. His latest, entitled The New Realities, came out last June. Drucker believes that what he calls America's "third sector" is growing. The leaders, he says, are becoming more aware of what it takes to manage nonprofit institutions effectively. In a series of taped discussions entitled "The Nonprofit Drucker" . . . he examines the principles of managing the nonprofit sector with twenty-three leaders of broad experience in the field. A portion of this interview is excerpted from an interview with Drucker by Howard Muson appearing in Across the Board, March 1989. Drucker also responded to questions for the readership of LA&M posed by Editor Charles B. Lowry.
Most college teachers share an image of the job: professors are independent intellectuals who have substantial control over important aspects of their jobs, including the content of the curriculum, the internal governance of educational institutions, and the work evaluation process. The social character of the workplace is collegial, with minimal status differentiations and common commitment to professional standards, academic freedom and peer review of research and writing. Professors also conceive of themselves as squarely in the upper middle class, semi-autonomous professionals who are guaranteed a financially comfortable life.Although this description remains an ideal, the status of faculty as semi-autonomous professionals has been under challenges since the early part of the twenties century. The transformation began in the first decades of this century, when universities and other American institutions were reorganized along the lines of corporations. College faculty were expected to maintain a commitment to the ideals of autonomous scientific neutrality and specialized expertise, but they were also expected to perform a public service under the supervision of campus administrations. The job of newly-professional campus administrators was to structure the form of faculty's public service through the application of scientific management techniques (Barrow, 1990).
As applied to college faculty after 1910, scientific management had as a goal the same simple goal of all corporate management: increase productivity and lower labor costs. Blue-ribbon national commissions conducted surveys of teaching responsibilities and developed the quantitative measures of faculty workload that predominate to this day: teaching contact hours, course credits, and student FTE. Standardized measures created "objective" productivity goals that local administrators could enforce on college faculty. After two decades of scientific management, college faculty by the 1930s had experienced a 17 percent decline in real wages and a 30 to 40 percent increase in their workloads. [How would you know that, if not for the institution of those scientific management measures?!] As the work of teaching became rationalized, education itself became more fragmented; a student completed a course of study when he or she amassed a certain number of courses and credits, distributed among several specialized fields of study (Barrow, 1990).
The history of the professoriate in the twentieth century can be read as along struggle for faculty to retain elements of their status as semi-autonomous professionals. Academic freedom was not a right, but a point of struggle for those who dissented from the predominant ideology; faculty continually attempted to control the curriculum, but educational decisions were increasingly made beyond the campus; efforts were made by progressive intellectuals throughout the 1930s to organize faculty into a union in order to create a basis for collective action in behalf of the professoriate (Barrow, 1990). Meanwhile, class sizes continued to increase and wages continued to decline through World War iI and into the late 1950s.
The tremendous growth in public higher education following World War II eventually interrupted the decline in the work conditions of faculty. With the explosion in student enrollments in the 1940s, 1950s and especially the 1960s, higher education was infused with a sense of growth and change. . . .
Yet, as I will describe below, the gains in jobs and wages that characterized the 1960s quickly reversed in the early 1970s; the past two decades have represented a period of serious erosion in both the wage and job status of college faculty. In the context of the economic downturn of the 1970s and the related fiscal crisis of the state, the fortunes of the professoriate have taken a decided and profound turn for the worse.
The function of library management is seen as different from the functions of librarians performing as professionals. A definition of these two distinguishable roles shows large areas of difference as well as some areas of overlap at the higher levels of management. Failure to clarify the differences between these functions has hindered the development of a genuine profession of librarianship and continues to handicap effective library service. A limiting conception of management, rooted only in bureaucratic models of library organization has dominated most libraries and has all too often been strengthened by recent emphases on more efficient library operations. What is called for is a broader vision for both the library profession and library management. The characteristics and the requirements of the profession must be defined and demonstrated by the profession itself. Those professionals specializing in library management can then be called upon to perform their role of providing leadership and direction to the organizations set up to support the professional services.
Amitai Etzioni, professor at George Washington University, is the author of numerous volumes that have broken new ground by examining the social sciences in a synthesis that blends elements of psychology, philosophy, and sociology with economics to demonstrate that moral concerns have a powerful influence in economic behavior. His most recent book is The Moral Dimension (Free Press, 1988). Dr. Etzioni has most recently served as visiting professor at the Harvard Business School and was interviewed by the editor, Charles B. Lowry.Lowry: In The Semiprofessions it was argued that the lack of autonomy, absence of a codification of knowledge, identification as a female occupation, inability to attract the best and brightest students, and the absence of public conviction that there is a science of librarianship altogether meant that librarianship would not emerge as a full profession. In the last twenty-five years have any changes occurred which would alter this conclusion?
Etzioni: . . . in effect, we talk here about a continuum. . . . There can be little doubt that . . . librarianship has become more professionalized, as knowledge required to engage in librarianship . . . has vastly increased. . . . At the same time it is fair to say that it has not acquired the level of the legal and medical professions, and it is unlikely to do so in the near future, because these professions draw on an even more extensive body of knowledge and have a high prestige rank in the community. In a sense, the librarian's discipline is moving closer to that of knowledge engineering, and that is where it will be in the foreseeable future. . . .
Lowry: Librarianship perforce functions through the bureaucracy we call the library. You have observed that bureaucracies are "rule bound" and to an extent respond irrationally. How can librarianship achieve a degree of freedom from this characteristic of bureaucracies and maximize the benefits we provide to society?
Etzioni: I'm not sure that it is a question about bureaucracy, that a bureaucracy in the library is stronger or more pervasive than in other settings. . . . First, one has to recognize that . . . basically it is difficult and not desirable to remove all rules and all attempts to preserve rules. . . . to the extent that computers will be integrated ever more into the use by library clientele and into the library structure itself, reduction of the number of layers of management and more direct access could reduce some kinds of bureaucratization.
Second, what I would call "Japanese" management training, which aims to encourage the sharing of responsibility and participation of various level of employees in management, make the hierarchy less pronounced and is certainly desirable. . . .
The postmodern argument that the world economy has improved because of globalization and better class relations is untrue. The world economy is similar in many ways to the capitalism of the late 19th century. Wages continue to fall as jobs move from manufacturing to the low-paying service sectors.
A definition of organizational form is proposed in terms of labor power, the object, means, and division of labor, and the control of labor at the organizational and institutional level. A number of typological approaches are then reviewed, focusing on the delineation of new organizational forms. The central hypothesis is that new organizational forms are emerging as a result of the transition from industrial to postindustrial capitalism. This hypothesis is elaborated by means of a number of historical and structural subhypotheses specifying the links between corporate dynamics and postbureaucratic organizational forms, the role of computer-integrated production in the internalization and replacement of external, bureaucratic rules by software, and the role of an ideology of responsiveness in service organizations and government agencies. Finally, six characteristics emphasizing the flexibility of postbureaucratic, technocratic organizational forms are examined: informalism, universalism, weak classification and framing of options, loose coupling, interdependence and networking, and the propagation of a corporate culture to counteract the centrifugal and deconstructive tendencies of structural flexibility. In contrast to the technical rationalization of work by computers, these elements of structural flexibility are seen as a form of social rationalization.
The debate over faculty status for librarians continues, but for librarians already on the tenure track, philosophy matters less than the practical matter of achieving tenure. Librarians need to understand the functions and circumstances of non-librarian faculty so that librarianship and individual accomplishments can be described in terms that teaching faculty understand.Many Factors Affect Librarians' Ability to Achieve Tenure
Tenure in Library Faculty. These matters are of current and commanding interest at the University of Colorado Libraries at Boulder, where after a six-year hiatus, the tenure and promotion process for Libraries faculty was reactivated in 1988, but with substantive differences from earlier practice. . . .
Review Process. As an officer of the Tenure Committee . . . I spent considerable time trying to identify and articulate those characteristics of librarianship that seem most important to clarify in connection with the tenure process. . . . The result of these considerations is reflected in the "information document" presented in the next section. . . .
Characteristics of Librarianship as They Relate to the Faculty Model: An Information Document
1. Librarianship is an academic discipline in its own right . . . .
2. The basis of librarianship is organization, evaluation, and provision of access to information. . . .
3. Librarianship is a service profession. . . .
4. Librarianship is an applied field. Its laboratory is the library itself. . . .
5. Librarianship is characterized by cooperative practice and joint scholarship, often carried out in the context of organizations. . . .
6. Librarianship depends on cooperative development of and adherence to standards. . . .
7. Librarianship is carried on primarily in and through libraries. Libraries may or may not participate in classroom teaching. . . .
8. Libraries, especially academic libraries, are hierarchical. Most library faculty hold positions that include managerial or administrative assignments, whose performance may constitute all or part of their "practice of profession". . . .
9. Library faculty work a twelve month year. Most have relatively inflexible daily schedule that may be considered analogous to a "heavy class load". . . .
10. Library faculty generally practice their profession in institutions where there is no corresponding course in graduate or undergraduate study. . . .
11. Library faculty are not interchangeable. Subdisciplines are substantially different in knowledge and skills base. . . .
12. The terminal degree for librarianship is a Master's degree in librarianship. . . .
13. Librarianship must be evaluated by means and against a standard appropriate to the discipline. . . .
The Tenure Decision . . .
Conclusion A common complaint about a system of faculty status for librarians is that because the jobs of librarians and other faculty are so different, and because librarians are by far the "minority model" for faculty, librarians believe they must dress themselves in the clothing of another profession. . . . Librarians . . . need to understand that instead, . . . they should don their own professional raiment, but they do need to understand and be prepared to explain the purpose of the garments.
Participative management provides a profound challenge to traditional organizations of work. Some researchers view participative management as providing an opportunity for workers to exercise increased power based on heightened responsibilities. Other researchers view participative management as management's newest ploy to extract not only labor but also the knowledge of production from workers. I use a model of workplace organizations that combines elements from Blauner's (1964) technology-based model and Edward's (1979) labor-control model to evaluate workers' experiences of alienation and freedom across different systems of production. Data for the analysis are provided by the population of published English-language workplace ethnographies. The results provide partial support for Blauner's U-shaped curve of declining then increasing freedom under modern forms of production. Under participative organizations of work, however, positive and meaningful experiences in the workplace do not return to the same levels that they achieved under the craft organization of work. Relations among coworkers evidence less improvement under participative organizations of work than task and management-related aspects of work. This incomplete recovery of the positive experiences of craft production leaves at least some room for less optimistic visions of emergent workplace relations.
Rapid changes in manufacturing technology and procedures have created a need for additional training for manufacturing workers. Traditional post-secondary school vocational training is generally perceived as not adequately meeting this need because vocational training programs quickly become obsolete in the face of rapid workplace change. Customized labor training, typically implemented at the workplace, has been identified as a possible alternative to vocational training. Such training programs are frequently oriented toward specific organizational needs rather than toward general skill development. Based on in-depth interviews with personnel directors, trainers, and students in twenty organizations utilizing customized labor training programs, we specify three different settings that entail different background conditions and outcomes for customized training: large, unionized monopoly sector firms that have developed intensive training programs; smaller, periphery sector firms that use state support for training largely as a subsidy to underwrite initial orientation costs for workers; and new starts, many of them Japanese owned, that substitute training in communications skills and group processes for training in specific job skills. The implications of these different setting for the future of customized labor training are discussed.
This chapter examines empirical studies on the relationship between advanced technology and work. Specifically, we are interested in identifying the consequences of new technologies for organizations and workers. This is an important yet understudied topic for social scientists in spite of the fact that a great deal of attention has been paid to the potential of high technology for generating jobs and resurrecting the competitiveness of U.S. industries. We present two competing views of technology and work: a positive view that stresses the "liberating" character of new technologies, and a negative view that emphasizes the potential for worker deskilling and displacement. We also examine the impact of new technologies on the occupational structure. Our focus here is on the possible creation of a two-tiered occupational structure. Finally, we look at how advanced technology is affecting organizational structure, job satisfaction, and safety and health. We offer tentative conclusions of each of these topics.
For many years, higher education in the United States has sought to improve its effectiveness in educating students. . . . Recently, the focus of improvement and increased efficiency has shifted tot he organizational structure of the institution, under the rubric of "restructuring." While such attention should not replace the focus on the educational experience itself, the organization of the institution is an appropriate area of examination.The effects of restructuring have been manifested in all sorts of administrative changes on campuses throughout the United States. . . . In some circles "restructuring" is viewed as a virtual panacea for all problems -- real and imaginary -- confronting colleges and universities. What has escaped much of the restructuring debates on campuses is an awareness of the origins of organizational restructuring and the impact certain types of restructuring have had on corporate America -- and how this impact will affect higher education. . . .
If the much-praised strategies of corporate downsizing and restructuring haven't achieved their projected results in the business world, why are they seen as a panacea to higher education's financial problems?
Few who work in libraries today will debate the statement that staff roles are changing significantly. Change is not often easy or comfortable for those experiencing it -- change seldom is. The changes in staff roles can be particularly troubling when they seem unplanned, unexplained, and ambiguous. This paper will examine the changing responsibilities and relationships of professional and paraprofessional library staff, explore causes and consequences, and suggest ways to manage these changes.
The Center for Social Informatics is dedicated to supporting research into technology and social change. Social Informatics (SI) refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization -- including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices.
[Kling] develops a conception of how computerization alters work organization, based on observations of 40 clerical & professional work groups, structuration theory, & an understanding of ideologies [called "workplace visions" which function] as shapers of technological choices. Six case studies are discussed [using a structural classification "based on Mintzberg's (1979) typology of organizational forms" to identify "four types of possible 'changes' in the way work is organized . . . Metamorphoses . . . Migration . . . Elaboration/Reinforcement . . . Stability], concluding that computerization does not yield uniform results. Work organization transformations are a function of which technologies are used, when, how, & by whom. ["Dimensions of work organization" studied include: "job specialization; decision making systems; behavior formalization; planning and control systems; and training."] Computerization can result in professionalization of clerks, clericalization of professionals, clerical or professional stability, or clerical or professional elaboration. No new forms of work organization are evident in the examined groups, & transformations appear to occur slowly.
A compilation of ACRL standards and guidelines that apply to faculty status for academic librarians, as well as a selective bibliography.
Libraries always have been inseparable from higher education; and, in the United States at least, the first academic librarians were drawn from the ranks of the faculty. This tradition of college and university libraries managed by faculty lasted at least to the end of the 19th century when the establishment of the College Library Section of the American Library Association in 1889 marked the recognition of academic librarianship as a profession. It is not surprising, therefore, that even before 20th century technology and high publication rates made plain the need for professionally-trained librarians, the question of academic librarian status, vis-à-vis faculty in particular, appeared in writings on library management. . .The purpose of this chapter is to track patterns in status literature from the 1971 promulgation of the Standards to the present. The first section contains a discussion of the source materials and the most persistent or recurring themes of faculty status literature. A brief examination of some views readers might expect to find have not been addressed follows. The concluding section describes current writing about strengthening the position of libraries and librarians in academe.
The literature of librarian status, faculty status in particular, has a long history of continuous publication that shows no sign of abating. In 1984, one writer recorded that "the literature of librarianship now contains hundreds of articles and several books on [this] subject. . . One conservative estimate based on searches of Library Literature, ERIC, DAI, and Huling's (2973) [comprehensive] bibliography, places the figure well in excess of three hundred items." Karl E. Johnson's 1992 comprehensive bibliography, which supplements Huling, contains more than 300 entries. He records a high of 219 faculty status titles published in the 1970's and more than 100 in the 1980's. . .No matter how analyzed, this literature includes at least four kinds of information:
1) a record of the Association of College and Research Libraries' long-term effort to establish a strong role for academic libraries;
2) the experiences of librarians who seek appropriate status in their institutions;
3) survey reports which quantify academic librarians' working conditions and views and record traditional faculty members' and others' assessments of librarians' contributions to academe; and
4) the views of those who support or oppose faculty status, advice to librarians, and other expressions of opinion. . .
This bibliography covers faculty status and, more selectively, its related subjects. It lists bibliographies and review articles, current and retrospective, and titles recommended as worth examining on the basis of these criteria:
1) has historical value; aids understanding of the background of status issues,
2) is frequently cited,
3) presents unique topics or innovative views or approaches, and
4) contains substantive references to publications of significance as described in 1-3. . .
Geographic coverage, generally, is limited to North America. . .
The bibliography has three sections:
A bibliography of bibliographies and reviews. . .
Selective recent publications, 1985-1992. . .
Early, frequently-cited titles, published through 1985. . .
In 1990, data on the employment status of librarians was collected from two groups of academic libraries in higher education -- a random sample of all institutions in the United States and all academic members of the Association of Research Libraries. This data provides a twenty-year retrospective of librarians' status and indicates that 67 percent of higher education institutions grant them faculty status. In general, faculty status for librarians has been vigorously expanded during the same period, though the process has slowed in recent years. Understandably, librarians with faculty status evince perquisites similar, if not identical to, teaching faculty. In addition, 7.3 percent of the institutions sampled grant librarians academic status, which carries many characteristics of faculty status. Thus in over 74 percent of the sample institutions, librarians have a status that conforms closely to the ACRL standard. Among the ARL members, the general condition has changed little since the last major survey in 1982.
Micklethwait and Wooldridge have organized The Witch Doctors around the management problems that plague today's corporations. They examine the promise and the problems of reengineering, and analyze what -- and who -- is driving the current boom in the management industry. The authors profile Peter Drucker and Tom Peters, helping you decide what the über-gurus can teach you and what they can't. They proceed to look deeply into the social and corporate implications of every major conundrum managers and workers face today. Through unbiased, often contrarian investigations of knowledge, learning, and innovation, strategy and vision, the future of the workplace, shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism, globalization, and Japanese management, Micklethwait and Wooldridge tell you what works, what fails, and what the future may hold for those who act and those who wait. Two groundbreaking chapters examine the inroads management theory is making in the public sector, and the unexpected paths Asian managers are blazing through the world economy [book cover].
Library and information studies (LIS) education may be misreading the academic community's expectations. A program's viability may hinge on a counterintuitive premise, where the academic culture allows each discipline to create its own criteria for its own evaluation. LIS programs may have unwittingly assumed that adopting the scientific mode might gain them currency in the academic realm; yet there is little evidence that LIS programs had the prerequisite infrastructure to compete with a science discipline in terms of sustained funded research, teaching assistant and postdoctoral assistant services, laboratory equipment, and other resources. There is an irony that many LIS students and faculty do not come from the scientific disciplines, and this further inhibits their ability to compete in this arena. LIS program and faculty evaluators have used criteria from the sciences to measure LIS progress and to determine an individual's suitability for promotion. We contend that this application of inappropriate criteria has done unnecessary harm to LIS and the individuals in it. An examination of selected COA self-study responses and other sources indicates that LIS may misread the academic culture because LIS does not appear to be central to university governance. Finally, the waning of LIS's affiliation with libraries may do LIS irreparable harm. LIS's focus may need to be recentered on educating librarians.
Discusses the effects of overlap and role blurring in the workplace and the profession.
The emergence of paraprofessionals as a growing force in academic libraries is a much discussed but little investigated phenomenon. The rapid change that characterizes academic libraries today has affected profoundly staff development and workplace task assignment. The profession's response to these new conditions, however, has been weak, and librarians have not exercised leadership. Librarians speculate, but do not know with certainty, the education, skills, and other competencies required of paraprofessionals, the tasks and levels of authority assigned them, the salaries and staff development incentives offered, or the potential of their contribution. The authors present the results of their 1990 national survey of the role, status, and working conditions of paraprofessionals in two populations, a census of the Association of Research Libraries, and a random sample of the Carnegie Classification libraries. They review the literature, analyze the data results, make recommendations for further research, and propose actions to be taken by the profession.
This paper explores the introduction of a groupware technology--Lotus Corporation's Notesreg.--into one office of a large organization to understand the changes in work practices and social interaction facilitated by the technology. The results reveal that a number of organizational elements such as mental models (which affect how people understand and appropriate groupware) and structural properties (reward systems and workplace norms), significantly influence how groupware technology is implemented and used. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the absence of mental models that appreciate the collaborative nature of groupware, such technologies will be interpreted in terms of more familiar personal and stand-alone technologies such as spreadsheets. Further, in competitive and individualistic organizational cultures--where there are few incentives or norms for cooperating or sharing expertise--groupware on its own is unlikely to engender collaboration. Such products will be interpreted as counter-cultural, and to the extent that they are used they will promote individual not group aims. Recognizing the significant influence of these organizational elements appears critical to both researchers and practitioners of groupware technologies.
Introduction: There is a paradoxical relationship between the standards of librarianship and library service established by library associations, on the one hand, and conditions of work as they exist in most libraries, on the other. Like many other technical and semiprofessionals, librarians possess normative standards that define how work is to be done but lack the legal authority and economic power of the established professions to enforce those standards on the job. Library associations establish goals for library service knowing that existing guidelines are ignored in many libraries. Librarians, imbued with the principles of librarianship while training, may abandon these precepts in practice. That there is any connection between theory and practice is a wonder. Is there any use in formulating policies that cannot be enforced? The findings of this study suggest that there is. The resolutions passed by library associations appear to have an impact on work arrangements in some libraries, but only under certain circumstances and conditions. In exploring the relationship between theory and practice, we shall find it necessary to revise some of our ideas about the nature of professionalism, organizational administration, and occupational authority in organizational settings.This study combined a survey of the policies published by library associations with a survey of library work settings. The objective was to identify circumstances and conditions that fostered occupational control over work in organizational settings. The key discovery was that the occupational authority of the librarian depended on the orientations of others in the library work setting--on the collective orientations of non-librarians as well as librarians on the staff. The personal orientations of the librarian were relevant only insofar as they were reinforced by the collective sentiments of others. In work settings collectively oriented toward library associations, work arrangements tended to conform to standards articulated by those associations. The greater the collective occupational orientations, the closer the relationship between practice and policy. In the system of library administration prescribed by library associations, librarians are legitimated as the dominant occupation in work settings. The collective occupational orientations of others in the work setting appeared to determine whether librarians assumed the rights and responsibilities of leadership as defined by their occupation, and whether they were in a position to institute the appropriate occupational system of library operations. The enforcement of occupational standards depended on normative orientations within the work setting and not on the legal and economic power of the occupation in the larger society.
The librarian occupation lacks the structural powers of an established profession. While librarians are corporately organized by library associations and schools, they do not have the right to license practitioners, enforce standards of practice, or enter into contractual negotiations on behalf of librarians. In contrast, the occupation possesses well-defined normative foundations. These policies define the librarian's domain of competence in terms of the tasks involved in providing library service and the occupations that typically work under the direction of the librarian. The standards of these library associations stipulate the appropriate duties for each occupation and the structure of administration that should govern library operations.
The relevance of these policies in a library work setting is hypothesized to depend on the collective occupational orientations of the staff. An inspection of the results of the library survey reveals that there is considerable variation from one library to another n the level of collective occupational orientations. Thus we expect the occupation to influence the structure of work arrangements in only some of the libraries surveyed, in those collectively oriented toward the occupation. Occupational standards have an impact on the use or job descriptions and written records and on the pattern of role expectations and communication in occupationally oriented settings. Multivariate regression analysis is employed to distinguish the effects associated with occupational orientations from those attributable to non-occupational factors. . . .
Bureaucratic modes of control in library work settings can be traced to the policies articulated by library associations. Librarians in occupationally oriented settings institute a system of library administration that conforms to library association standards. This system of library administration is denoted by formalized work arrangements and a centralized pattern of communication. These occupationally derived, organizational structures reinforce the librarian's occupational authority and control over work in the library.
In stressing the importance of standards of librarianship and library service to occupational authority, I am proposing that the occupation must furnish an organized body of knowledge, policies, doctrines, or principles that defines how library work does and should proceed. This relationship between occupational ideology outside the work setting and the accepted social definition of the situation within the work setting is central to the analysis of the occupational control over work. What I am not proposing is that we engage in another evaluation of the librarian occupation from the perspective of "the professionalism ideology." Sociologists have run the risk of becoming apologists for the professionalism ideology in attempting to identify the unique attributes that separate professionals from nonprofessionals, sand the professions from other occupations and jobs. Roth (1974, p. 7) states that "when we examine each of these . . . attributes, we see that they are largely mixtures of unproven--indeed unexamined--claims for professional control and autonomy." Most authors who have written on the professional status of librarians have accepted the professional ideology and have found, not surprisingly, that librarians have neither the legal and economic rights nor the service orientations of doctors, lawyers, and the clergy. Rather than being concerned with the styles of service and patterns of work that are uniquely professional and then comparing this profile to the policies of library associations, this study researches the styles of service and patterns of work advocated by library associations and compares that profile to actual work arrangements found in a survey of libraries. Thus I am suggesting not only a reevaluation of the roles of normative institutions and structural power via-à-vis occupational control over work but also a change in the way in which we evaluate the significance of normative institutions to occupational authority.
Some years ago at an international conference on academe, discussion centered on the appropriateness of the term "professional" in continental Europe (Clark 1987b). In talking about academics as professionals, American and British participants employed a usage of "liberal profession' that defined such occupations partly in terms of -self-employment and independence from the state. However, continental European academics are not independent of the state. They are part of it and are in many cases civil servants "whose power, privileges, and conditions of employment are protected by constitutional or administrative law" (Neave and Rhoades 1987 p. 213).An Anglo-American bias also marks the charge and title of this article, which imply that colleges and universities are independent enterprises. The extent to which they are part of larger systems, such as formal national or state governance structures, is downplayed. The language of Anglo-American academe is infused with an imagery of colleges and universities as autonomous corporations that is inappropriate to most higher education systems, in many ways even to American and British ones.
In reviewing theoretical models of academic governance, this article considers system and national level forces and connections. It examines the extent to which different governance models are reflected in the structural arrangements of higher education organizations and systems. It provides a critique of the literature, the models, and their use in influencing the beliefs and behaviors of people in the higher education governance structure.
In discussing governance models three variations on the abstract constructs are addressed. First, there are cross-national differences in the forms particular models take. For example, the nature of bureaucracy and political systems varies across countries. Second, there are changes over time. Governance arrangements are in flux. Third, governance arrangements are generally manifested in mixed forms, as opposed to ideal types that fall neatly into one category or another.
This article makes critical analysis of the literature on governance. It points to the limitations of currently used constructs. For example, bureaucracy has become a catchall category for anything related to formal rules and managerial authority. "Political" has become a residual category for patterns that are neither rational nor shaped by expertise and experts. Such categories are defined more in terms of what they are not than in systematic treatments of what they are.
Higher education scholars do not take these constructs beyond the confines of the assumptions and theoretical frameworks in which they are embedded, of social science theories that have long been challenged and revised. For example, the political model draws on pluralistic notions of interest group politics, long since superseded by political scientists and sociologists focusing on structures, bases, and enduring differences of power. Similarly, indictments of increasing state size, bureaucratization, and intrusiveness in campus affairs, do not incorporate recent work in political science and sociology on the state in a detailed analysis of the state itself, of its structures, processes, and effects. The state has been treated as separate from colleges and universities, as part of the external political environment, rather than as part of a complex organizational entity or inter-organizational system that encompasses them.
Unfortunately, there is little research on the extent to which models of governance represent the beliefs and behaviors of people in the higher education governance structure. It is useful, though, to consider the way these models are drawn on in efforts to shape dialog and policy debates, concerning the governance of higher education. Finally, this article puts the governance literature into the context of the continuing struggle to define and control academic work, a struggle between the academy and the outside world, as well as among constituencies within the academy.
1. Governance Models and the Building Blocks of Authority
Governance models in higher education literature are grounded in conceptions of authority, of legitimate rule. The chief contributor in this area is Clark (1983), whose work encapsulates and creates the building blocks of governance models. . . . These categories subsume and supersede most concepts found in models of organizational governance: collegial, bureaucratic, and political. . . .
Some governance models do not fall within Clark's categories [including] Cohen and March's (1974) classic model of "organized anarchy," . . . Meyer and Rowan's (1977, 1978) institutional approach, . . . various types of analysis treating campuses as cultural systems [such as] the social constructionist approach, . . . [and those that focus on] the context of social class and status group interests outside the academy . . . [such as] conflict theorists. . . .
2. The Manifestation of Models in Higher Education
To what extent are the governance models described above reflected in the governance patterns found in higher education internationally? In addressing that question, this section explores cross-national and temporal differences in the manifestation of the models. Despite the variations that are evidenced in comparative study, the literature indicates a marked trend toward the increased exercise of political and bureaucratic forms of authority at both campus and system levels. At the same time, there appears to be a marked decrease in the efficacy of professional authority, e evident in challenges to the academy. . . .
3. Governance Models and Higher Education Actors
. . . Looking back over the literature on governance models, both the preferred modes and the attitude towards developments in recent decades are plain. Academic writing is marked thematically and rhetorically by disdain for governance by bureaucracy and politics, and affirmation of governance by a collegium and by professionals. . . .
The internal struggle, like the external struggle, is over who is in a position to define and control academic work, . . . over who is most effective in laying claim to speak for the interests of rationalization and substantive rationality.
This article opened by referring to professionals. It closes by returning to professionals, and to matters of professional ideology and power. Governance models are a central element of that ideology and power. Thus, the initial question of whether and how ideas of governance affect organizational practice becomes a question of how powerful ideologies in society are played out in the struggle for power within organizations. Those internal struggles are structured by external forces, groups, and struggles, by socio-political relations among professionals, and other social groups, and by the belief systems that mark and reflect these sociopolitical contexts. . . .
Why have U.S. colleges and universities constructed an academic "underclass" to perform their traditional function of teaching? Our research suggests that the reorientation of U.S. corporations towards global, rather than domestic, economic interests is a major factor. By analyzing the impact of this reorientation we can begin to understand the "casualization' of academic work as well as to suggest explanations for several other recent transformations in the structure of higher education.
The changes among the top 300 American industrial corporations between 1963 and 1987 are examined by identifying the dynamics at the industry and the firm level. Technological change was a powerful actor of change at both levels, as it created opportunities that only some firms seized, especially in technologically dynamic industries. Mergers were also an important cause of turbulence, especially in declining industries.
Trust has long been recognized as a fundamental feature of interpersonal and inter-group relations in a number of social science disciplines. Sociologists and psychologists have proposed that trust is an element that makes work in organizations possible (Barnard, 1938) through its effect on cooperation (Axelrod, 1984; Deutsch, 1962; Kramer, 1993), interpersonal and group solidarity (Barber, 1983; Blau, 1964; Fox, 1974), and facilitating social infrastructure (Williamson, 1981; Zucker, 1986). . .In this chapter, we wish to extend recent work on trust in organizations by exploring how a specific set of situational features can give rise to distrust. Specifically, our goal in this exploratory study is to focus attention on the varied mechanisms through which distrust can arise when employees perceive a mismatch between the tasks they perform and the management control systems they must accommodate.
A grounded theory approach was taken in an organization in which a total quality management (TQM) program stressed highly precise measurement and standardized task routines in a setting characterized by a high degree of task ambiguity. . .
Nearly all academic librarians agree that academic libraries have to change in order to respond successfully to the new realities of the higher education environment, rapidly developing information and telecommunications technologies, and the crisis in scholarly communications. But there is little agreement on what must change, how the changes will take place, how fast the changes must occur, and how much change is necessary.. . . This essay was commissioned to explore the position that academic libraries must undergo transformational change or risk being left as "storehouses" with skeletal staff and little importance to the institution and its programs. It is not the purpose of this article to describe or prescribe what specific programs, products, or services will characterize libraries that successfully make the transformation. . . . Instead, what the authors are prepared to do in this article is to:
* describe why they believe academic libraries have to undergo radical, revolutionary organizational change, rather than continue to evolve based on past practice;
* identify what some of the organizational elements, assumptions, and approaches are that academic libraries have to change to forge a major institutional role;
* suggest how academic librarians might go about making the necessary changes.
Action research provides a series of tools to assist the novice practitioner research in moving comfortably through the research process. After defining and setting community-based action research into the context of qualitative research methodology, the book describes an uncannily simple but effective model for approaching action research: Look-building a picture and gathering information; Think--interpreting and explaining; and Act--resolving issues and problems. Author Ernest T. Stringer concludes with issues of legitimacy surrounding this type of research and ponders the future of community-based action research.
There's been a lot of talk lately about improving undergraduate education. . . .It all sounds wonderful, but take a closer look. . . . Part-timers together with graduate student teaching assistants are probably responsible for the major portion of undergraduate education at Rutgers. . . . "Doing more with less" means hiring more part-timers and paying them less. . . .
Beginning with the observation that there are many operationalizations of the construct, professionalism, this paper attempts to formulate an overarching theoretical model that causally links the different studies and approaches to the analysis of professions. The concept of structuration, which emphasizes both structure and process, serves as the conceptual framework for this essay.
The paper offers a critique of Total Quality Management. It is essentially in three parts: the first traces the rise of TQM through the western experience of Japanese development, the second examines the nature of TQM's promised cultural change and, finally, the very notion of 'quality' is questioned. Exploring this development is likened -- to use a metaphor from the work of Philip Crosby, one of the 'guru's of Total Quality -- to a journey down the yellow brick road. As the development of TQM is rich in icons and symbolism, it is argued that it acts both to legitimate current changes in organization through the penetration of the market, and also as a market model of organization based on customer and supplier links. In contrast to the claim of TQM to challenge bureaucracy it argues that, while it might counter some of its dysfunctions, it can be located within the bureaucratization process.
The author traces two decades of rapid change in the character of librarianship and consequent redistribution of duties and responsibilities among various levels of professional and support staff. He contends that the profession of librarianship is characterized by discontinuity rather than by continuity of trades and crafts; that librarians should be concerned with programmatic and decision-making matters supportive of academic programs with technical support in the production area coming from library technicians and assistants. He maintains that new technological developments constantly drive complex duties downward in the work hierarchy while developing new complexities in the programmatic and decision making areas challenge professionals with new responsibilities as they shed duties formerly considered professional. He contends that unlike classified positions, librarianship is not and cannot be a specific aggregate of enumerated duties and responsibilities; rather librarianship is a gestalt, a complex of flexible, interacting functions, ever-changing and ever-adapting, responsive to continuing developments in the fields of library and information science.
Computerization has transformed the bulk of library work from moving physical objects, for example, producing, sorting, and filing catalog cards, to electronically manipulating a vast array of symbols. In so doing, it has transformed virtually all library employees into knowledge workers; the once-simple bifurcate division of employees into librarians and support staff seems no longer tenable. What then, is the proper role for the academic librarian? Cautioning against overenthusiastic endorsement of popular, industry-derived management methods, the author focuses on the intellectual character of academic librarianship and defines the concept of librarians' programmatic responsibilities. The author maintains that programmatic responsibilities are by definition undelegatable and constitute an exclusive locus of power within the profession. The role of academic librarians--the design and management of information systems for the academic community--is determined by these exclusive programmatic responsibilities and related powers. To meet new conditions, academic librarianship requires a new manifesto derived directly from the academic community itself in preference to ready formulas from business and industry.
An examination of the present & future effects of technological change in the workplace. Several key technological innovations in factories & offices are examined with respect to their relevance to ten long-standing core issues: the "high flex" workplace; control of work; organizational change; impact on skill; technological unemployment; educational requirements & retraining; changing occupational & class structures; occupational safety & health; the interaction of work, leisure, & family; & the quality of working life. It is argued that while technological change sometimes makes work easier, cleaner, & safer, it also has a disruptive impact on many facets of working life that will have to be confronted by participants in & students of the "new economy."
Twenty-nine, non-administrative level librarians reveal meanings, values, and preferences they assign to work and work life. Demographic comparison with other academic librarians suggests participants may reflect a larger population.Work life content and context consists of tasks performed; technological and work systems; working conditions and securities; work setting; and beliefs, values, and preferences. The constant comparative method (grounded theory) was chosen because it allows (1) use of open-ended questions and face-to-face interactions for participant-driven data; (2) flexibility in data collection, coding, and analysis--necessary for identifying similarities, differences, and consistencies of meaning across emerging concepts; and (3) acknowledgment of the researcher's previous experience in similar work settings.
Findings demonstrate that, as a group, these librarians engage in collection, catalog, reference, and learning-teaching-training work. Librarians define their work as 'primarily' one of the first three; the fourth emerges from the data as a distinct kind of work. Librarians give greatest importance to primary work in a literal and conceptual sense. This work concept governs how they think, gives order to each day, assigns roles, determines the size of their work world, and defines a sense of 'place' and 'fit' within life-at-work. In pictorial terms, librarians place primary work in the foreground, followed by colleagues. Less strongly depicted are library system-related matters (like policy, management, communication, loyalty, and responsibility); very few university images are visible.
Participants see academic librarianship as providing a professional identity associated with learning, teaching, and scholarship. They prefer as colleagues those who also approach work as think work and puzzle-solving. They prefer users who learn to independently manipulate a library while working with librarians to master new information or knowledge-seeking techniques and resources. A service ideal operates, as does a sense of personal achievement in making things happen for themselves and users. Librarians believe they are most creative and do highest quality work when they control the various tasks that comprise work. Autonomy, variety, and choice are also highly valued elements in their work life.
The faculty status issue continues to hold considerable attention among academic librarians. Although it remains a contested subject, there have been changes in general opinion about faculty status over the past few decades. This article is intended to identify the most significant aspects of the topic and to provide a general survey of the literature since 1974. An accompanying annotated bibliography of 121 items will be available through the ERIC Clearinghouse in early 1987.
The popular generalization is that occupations are becoming "professionalized." The label is loosely applied to increasing specialization and transferability of skill, the proliferation of objective standards for work, the spread of tenure agreements, licensing, or certification, and the growth of service occupations. This paper argues that these loose criteria are less essential for understanding professional organization than the traditional model of professionalism which emphasizes autonomous expertise and the service ideal. Examination of the history of eighteen occupations uncovers a typical process by which the established professions have arrived. Among newer and marginal "professions," deviations from the process can be explained by power struggles and status strivings common to all occupations. Barriers to professionalization are pinpointed. Analysis of the optimal "technical" base for professionalism suggests that knowledge or doctrine which is too general or too narrow and specific provides a weak base for an exclusive jurisdiction. Data on the clash between professional, organizational, and client orientation among 490 professors, lawyers, and engineers suggest that (1) bureaucracy may enfeeble the service ideal more than it threatens autonomy; (2) a client orientation undermines colleague control and professional norms. The main theme: (1) very few occupations will achieve the authority of the established professions; (2) if we call everything professionalization, we obscure the newer structural forms now emerging.
Professions are defined as a way of organizing work. The attack on professions is set within the context of world interdependence and conflict between capitalism and socialism. Professions are a capitalistic form of organizing work. Sources of attack described are radicalism, egalitarianism, consumerism, and affirmative action. Technology represents another problem for the professions. It may increase or it may decrease the cost of a service. The problem is how to modify professional education sufficiently and quickly enough to enable the profession to use technology in adapting to change. One source of power to counter attack is the professional association.Librarianship is an organizational public service profession and can not control the market for its services via direct exchange but is dependent upon government revenue. In this case the professional organization represents a form of countervailing power between the professional and the organization. Professional associations can set entry standards for employment, such as the MLS in librarianship and can define the task domain of the profession.
In general the literature on professionalization has claimed that to exert effective control such power must be structural, such as obtaining legal power to require licensing. The library profession does not possess this power. However, Reeves found in his 1974 study of Canadian librarianship that professional librarians still were able to exert control over the organization of library work in organizations whose staffs were professionally orientated and thus accepted the occupational standards of librarianship as normative. The existence of such a professionally oriented corporate culture correlated positively with the percentage of professional librarians in the work setting and with the level of financial support received by the library. It resulted in the standardization of library operations on the basis of norms promulgated by professional library associations.
There are many ways in which a profession through its association strives constantly to exert control over its work. In their attempts to deal with the radical attack on professionalism, consumerism, affirmative action, technology, relative declining financial position, bureaucracy, possible proletarianization, and unionism, librarians must use this source of occupational power
. . . In writing this volume, I frankly hope to change the way librarians think about their work, and indirectly the way they work. This challenges some dominant modes of thinking that have been around from some time, and certainly qualifies as a grand aim. The lesser, but perhaps more attainable, purpose of this book is to show how the sociological study of professions and occupations can be used to understand librarianship. Its subject and its method are both theoretical and interpretive.This work grew out of a long standing interest in the social theory of industrial society, the study of professions and occupations, and the nature and development of librarianship. All three of these are intimately related and are discussed at some length in Chapter 1, which sets the stage for the rest of the book. Chapter 2 critically examines the first systematic attempt at a theory of professions--which I call the trait theory--and shows how it might be applied to librarianship. Chapter 3 presents the functionalist view of professions, associated with Talcott Parsons and others, but its real business is to show how the contemporary sociological concern with occupational control emerged as a critical response to both the trait theory and the functionalist approach to professions. In Chapter 4 the occupational control approach is discussed further and applied in detail to librarianship. Chapter 5 examines the wider social context that is involved in controlling work, and situates librarianship in this context.
This book also grew partly from a sense of disquiet about librarians' and library educators' own understandings of librarianship. Far too much literature . . . dealt with the old question "Is librarianship a profession?" in too narrow and too simple a fashion, and far too little with the questions of professionalism and professionalization in a broader sociological context. Theories of professions and occupations, in other words, had become scorecards for quick rating and sorting; somehow their larger significance has been lost. This, too, is part of the background of the sociological discussions of the first five chapters. Chapter 6 confronts this situation directly and offers a critical view of the occupation/profession debate, urging that we abandon it, at least in its traditional terms. Chapter 7 tries to define what is living and what is dead in the study of professions and proposes a tentative synthesis as a framework for further thought. In Chapter 8 I hope to capture some of the richness of the sociological study of work and to make suggestions for further research, in this care research on librarianship as an occupation. . . . . I wish to suggest that there is an important sense in which the study of an occupation is far richer and more suggestive than the traditional concern with achieving the status of something we think of as a "true" profession.
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