Characteristics and benefits of professional work - CiteSeerX

Characteristics andbenefits of professionalworkAssessment of their importance over a 30-yearcareer

John WesternSchool of Social Science, The University of Queensland

Michele Haynes and Denise A. DurringtonSocial Research Centre, The University of Queensland

Kathryn DwanResearch School of Social Science, Australian National University

AbstractThe Professions in Australia Study is the first longitudinal investigation of theprofessions in Australia; it spans 33 years. Self-administered questionnaireswere distributed on at least eight occasions between 1965 and 1998 tocohorts of students and later practitioners from the professions of engineer-ing, law and medicine. The longitudinal design of this study has allowed for aninvestigation of individual change over time of three archetypal characteristicsof the professions, service, knowledge and autonomy and two of the benefitsof professional work, financial rewards and prestige. A cumulative logit ran-dom effects model was used to statistically assess changes in the ordinalresponse scores for measuring importance of the characteristics and benefitsthrough stages of the career path. Individuals were also classified by averagetrends in response scores over time and hence professions are describedthrough their members’ tendency to follow a particular path in attitudes eitherof change or constancy, in relation to the importance of the five elements(characteristics and benefits). Comparisons in trends are also made betweenthe three professions.

Keywords: autonomy, financial rewards, knowledge, longitudinal, prestige,professions, service

Journal of Sociology © 2006 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 42(2): 165–188DOI:10.1177/1440783306058482 www.sagepublications.com

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The first systematic investigation in Australia of the occupational groupknown as the professions was called, somewhat unimaginatively, TheProfessions in Australia Project, and commenced in the mid-1960s(Anderson and Western, 1967).1 Among other things, the study looked atthe orientations of engineering, law and medical students towards thearchetypal professional characteristics – service, knowledge and autonomy– and the benefits of professional work – financial rewards and prestige.Students of engineering, law and medicine were surveyed upon commence-ment of their professional degrees, at several points throughout their stud-ies, and upon completion.2 While the original researchers had not intendedto continue the study beyond the early 1970s, opportunities arose to revisitthe cohort after they had been in professional practice for several years inthe late 1970s and again when they were in mid-career in the 1980s, andfinally in 1998. At all stages, the students/professionals were asked aboutthe importance of the fundamentals of professional life identified above.Longitudinal designs of this nature are uniquely suited to the study of indi-vidual change over time, and so we have the opportunity to answer the fol-lowing questions:

1. Overall, how importantly did students in each profession rate these fun-damentals of professional life upon commencement of their universitycourses, and were there any differences between professions?

2. Did perceptions of the importance of these fundamentals remain stableor change over time for each profession? If their perceptions changedover time, how did they change?

3. What were the trends for individuals in each profession with respect totheir perceptions of these fundamentals, and were there any differencesin the composition of trend types between professions?

The professional ideal and other motivating factorsIn The ‘True Professional Ideal’ (1992), Kimball cogently argues that threecomponents lie at the core of professional work: service, knowledge andautonomy. The provision of a service to society or to different groupswithin society, be they patients, clients or, as some would have it in the newmillennium, customers, provides a normative base for the claims profes-sionals make vis-à-vis the conditions of their work and the benefits thataccrue from it. The ability to provide this service, whether it is building abridge, defending an individual accused of tax evasion or treating an elderlyperson for high blood pressure, rests upon a body of systematic knowledgethat has been acquired during a formal and extended period of training.Importantly, the acquisition of knowledge is commonly expected to con-tinue throughout one’s professional career. The extraordinary occupationalautonomy that professionals enjoy also characterizes professional activity.

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This autonomy is expressed in terms of both the content and context ofwork, and the levels at which professional autonomy operates (Schulz andHarrison, 1986; Coburn et al., 1997; Harrison and Ahmad, 2000;Marjoribanks and Lewis, 2003). Most significantly, in terms of autonomy,is the way the state has allowed professions to self-regulate, although, at thepresent time, governments are taking a greater interest in their affairs, aswitnessed by the role of the Australian Competition and ConsumerCommission (Fels, 1997).

In addition to these three core components of professional work, thereare of course outcomes following from such work in the form of economicand social rewards. These may be of a material kind such as income, ormore psychological in the form of the prestige that the society accords pro-fessionals. Interestingly, Kimball (1992) did not see these latter two com-ponents as part of the ‘professional ideal’ which for him comprised service,knowledge and autonomy, although they can be traced back to Bacon’s(1861) reflections on the professions. These five elements, the three compo-nents of Kimball’s professional ideal and the material and psychologicaloutcomes just mentioned, have been central to some of the controversiesthat can be found in the literature on the professions (see, for example,Parsons, 1939; Jackson, 1970; Johnson, 1972; Larson, 1977; Freidson,1994). These controversies are well known. Claims that the professionswere ‘functional’ for society and, in particular, their purported altruismcame to be questioned. A change in emphasis of subsequent theorizingabout the professions ‘away from their role in holding society together andtowards issues of conflict and power’ (Freidson, 1994: 3) was apparent.Western et al. (2001) and Western et al. (2002) discuss these issues in somedetail. Dwan (2004) and Dwan et al. (2004) apply this analysis to a con-sideration of communication problems found in the interactions of medicalpractitioners and government bureaucrats. Similarly, Marjoribanks andLewis (2003) look at medicine’s response to state-led reform of generalpractice. The increasing control of the professions by the state (Fels, 1997;Hanlon, 1997; Abel, 2003) and the expanding number of employed pro-fessionals (Freidson, 1994) have also caused questions to be raised aboutthe extent to which professionals can command autonomy in work(Freidson, 2001). Christine Parker (1997) argues the case for self-regula-tion, while not discounting the possibility of enforcement from outside theprofession. Drawing on the work of Ayres and Braithwaite (1992), she sug-gests that ‘reformers do better to project a capacity for ruthless impositionof reform only if the professions proves unresponsive to change itself’(Parker, 1997: 53).

The structural landscape in which the professions find themselves todayis somewhat different to what it was when the Professions in Australia Studycommenced some 40 years ago. Not only have there been changes in the pro-fessions’ relationship to the state, but also the number of occupations

Western et al.: Professional work 167



claiming professional status has increased substantially (Western, 1983;Dwan and Western, 2003). Information technology and the humanresources industry together have spawned a significant number. The growthin the non-manual component of the paid work force and the movement oflabour out of primary and secondary industry into the service sector hasalso meant a relative increase in the size of the professions compared toother occupational groups (Western et al., 2002). These changes togetherwith the increasing power of the market and the rise of neoliberalism as amajor force driving public policy have combined to produce the most sig-nificant transformation in Australian society since the Second World War,and one that has re-worked a framework in place since Federation (Kelly,1994; Castles et al., 1996). Despite these changes, concerns about service,knowledge, autonomy, prestige and material wellbeing were still central toour respondents’ Zeitgeist on our last contact with them in 1998. They havestood the test of time, and in one form or another their impact on ourrespondents has been explored over the course of our research.

DataFollowing two years of pilot work, the Professions in Australia Study com-menced in 1965 with incoming students in engineering and law. In 1967medicine was added to the list. The sample of students was drawn from sixuniversities: The Australian National University, Melbourne and MonashUniversities, and the Universities of New South Wales, Queensland andWestern Australia. The groups of students were invited to complete ques-tionnaires in their first week or two of university study. The initial self-administered questionnaire focused on students’ social backgrounds,reasons for choice of a profession, career plans, and attitudes to a varietyof professional and social issues. In addition to the first questionnaire, fur-ther data were collected using mailed surveys at the completion of the firstyear and then on three additional occasions throughout their courses. Theintention when the study commenced was to follow the groups of studentsuntil they left university, through either graduation or dropping out.

When the opportunity arose to revisit the original groups after they hadbeen in professional practice for several years our attention turned to theimpact of their early training on their professional careers and to severalother issues relating to professional practice. The first contact at this timewas made in the late 1970s. Partly this was to assess the feasibility of con-tinuing the study and partly to obtain detailed information on career his-tory since leaving university. Subsequently, further contact was made withthe groups in 1982, 1983 and 1984, and a final follow-up was conductedin 1998.

Our analyses focus on five waves of data: the first collected at the begin-ning of the first year of study, the second collected at the end of the first




year, then at the completion of university training, next in 1983 and finallyin 1998. We limit our analyses to these waves because information on thecore elements of the professional ideal was only included at these times.This restriction resulted in a sample of 1869 students, which included 652students in engineering (35 percent of the sample), 645 students in law (34 percent of the sample) and 572 students in medicine (the remaining 31 percent).

Comparative data regarding the demographic characteristics of thethree groups at Wave 1 are presented in the first, third and fifth columnsof Table 1. As shown, the three groups were disproportionately malealthough females do fare a little better in the group of doctors, making up20 percent of the 572 entrants. The great majority of our three groupswere still in their teens. Doctors were marginally the youngest, with amean of 18.04 years. Engineers were a little older, with a mean of 18.39years. Lawyers were the oldest, with a mean of 18.85 years. All threegroups were, in the main, in their first year at university. This proportionis slightly greater among doctors than among engineers and lawyers, andslightly greater among engineers than among lawyers. In terms of socialclass, Table 1 shows that the majority came from relatively privilegedbackgrounds; over half of them came from homes in which the father wasinvolved in professional or managerial work. The number of years of for-mal education by fathers of engineers was less than that for lawyers anddoctors. The income levels of fathers were lower for engineers than forlawyers and doctors (income is expressed in 1960s dollars). Around two-thirds of the prospective doctors and lawyers had attended private schoolsat a time when no more than 20 percent of school leavers nationallyattended such schools (Western, 1983: Chp 2). Interestingly, the youngengineers were more likely to have attended public schools, with over halfof them (61 percent) having done so. Finally, to wrap up this brief reviewof the social origins of the three groups, we can note that they were over-whelmingly from urban backgrounds.

Details regarding the response rates of the three groups over the fivewaves are provided in Table 2. As shown, 733 respondents (39 percent ofthe initial sample) completed the 1998 questionnaire, which comprisedroughly equal numbers of engineers, lawyers and doctors. While thereappear to be no differences in attrition by cohort, the large drop in num-bers across each of the three professions over the five waves is of some con-cern. Therefore, in addition to presenting comparative data regarding thedemographic characteristics of the three groups at Wave 1, Table 1 presentscomparative data regarding the demographic characteristics of the threegroups at Wave 5 (columns 2, 4 and 6). The data enable us to examinewhether the percentage distributions for the demographic variables ofrespondents at Wave 1 are similar to or different from the percentagedistributions for the characteristics of those who remain in the study. In





Table 1: Demographic characteristics of the three professions at the beginning ofthe first year and in 1998 (percentage distribution)

Engineers Lawyers DoctorsMarch August March August March August65/67 98 65/67 98 65/67 98

Variable n=652 n=234 n=645 n=234 n=572 n=265

Sex of studentMale 99 99 89 90 80 78Female 1 1 11 10 20 22

Age of student17 and under 32 38 27 30 38 4118 37 41 42 39 41 4119 13 12 13 16 14 1220 and over 18 10 18 15 7 6

First year at universityYes 90 90 84 85 95 96No 10 10 16 15 5 4

Father’s occupationProfessional 24 28 31 34 32 33Managerial 35 31 34 35 24 27Clerical sales 18 17 11 9 20 20Blue collar 23 24 24 21 24 20

Father’s educationSome primary school 3 3 4 3 46 46Primary school graduate 14 13 16 14 18 17Some high school 34 36 28 26 29 30High school graduate 14 13 11 13 11 13Post-high qualification 17 19 17 17 13 11University graduate 17 15 22 23 26 26Other 4 4 6 7 3 3

Father’s incomeunder $2001 10 9 6 5 5 5$2001 to $4000 43 43 33 31 31 28$4001 to $6000 22 26 22 23 21 19$6001 to $8000 12 10 14 14 16 19$8001 to $10,000 6 7 7 8 10 14$10,001 to $12,000 4 3 6 5 7 9over $12,000 2 2 12 15 10 6

School typePublic 61 61 33 31 35 36Catholic 18 20 29 29 27 24Other private 21 19 38 40 39 40

Rural backgroundYes 19 17 18 14 20 17No 81 83 83 86 80 83

Note: Chi-square analyses indicated significant group differences for all demographic charac-teristics within each wave except for rural background.



general there appear to be no systematic background differences betweenrespondents in our initial sample and those lost at follow-up.

MeasuresThree of the five dependent variables used in this study represent core ele-ments of the ‘professional ideal’ as described by Kimball (1992). These ele-ments are the service rendered to society, the esoteric knowledge bases ofthat service, and autonomy or control over the conditions of one’s work. Inaddition to these three core components there are the benefits practitionersaccrue as a result of their work. These may be of a material kind, such asfinancial rewards, or more psychologically based, as in the prestige societyaccords professionals. The specific survey items used to measure the five ele-ments are listed in the Appendix.

As shown in the Appendix, the question wording was altered to reflectthe stage in the student’s degree or the professional’s career that was beingaddressed. First-year students were asked how important a number of con-siderations were in their decision to study engineering, law or medicine,while third-year students were asked how much they agreed with a numberof reasons that students have given for finding engineering, law or medicineattractive, and practitioners were asked to indicate the importance of anumber of factors for a ‘satisfying career.’ Items were rated on a 4-pointscale from either ‘very important’ to ‘not at all important’ or from ‘stronglyagree’ to ‘strongly disagree’.

Excluding the 1983 and 1998 questionnaires, service was measured dif-ferently for the three professions. The issue of how to assess service was amatter that concerned Anderson and Western in the early days of the pro-ject (Anderson and Western, 1966; Western and Anderson, 1968). Ourjudgement at that time, supported by quite detailed interviews during thepilot phase of the project, and one from which we do not resile (Western etal., 2001), was that these different forms of the question all tapped the ideaof service that professionals can provide.


Table 2: Response rates for each of the professions over the five waves

Engineers Lawyers Doctors TotalWave n % n % n % n %

March 65/67 652 100 645 100 572 100 1869 100November 65/67 546 84 509 79 528 92 1583 85November 68/70 352 54 310 48 333 58 995 53August 83 312 48 288 45 327 57 927 50August 98 234 36 234 36 265 46 733 39



The collection of five waves of longitudinal data over 33 years, for eachof the five measures outlined above, provides a rich source of data withwhich to assess how these fundamentals of professional life are played outover the career paths of individuals from the time that they commenceduniversity studies. In this article we are concerned with tracing change inthese elements over the career path at two different levels. First, we exam-ine average trends in each of these five measures for a specific professionand determine how these trends vary among the professions. Second, todescribe the typical composition of the career path for a profession, wetrace the trend for each individual and then group individuals based ontheir estimated trend in responses relating to the five measures. This willenable us in the future to identify individuals who are likely to have indi-cated that the measure under consideration is important or unimportant atthe beginning of their university degree and becomes either more importantor less important as their career progresses or stays the same.

Methods of analysisA common statistical method used to identify the main determinants ordrivers of an outcome variable in a cross-sectional study (i.e. where onlyone observation is recorded for each individual participating in the study)is ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. A primary assumption of thisanalysis is that the observations among individuals are independent of eachother. The methods used for the analysis of longitudinal data differ fromtraditional methods, such as OLS regression, because the repeated obser-vations recorded for an individual can no longer be considered as inde-pendent of each other. Therefore, we employ an alternative method ofanalysis, which assumes that an individual represents a cluster of repeatedobservations over time and that the variation in the data can be separatedinto two components measuring both the variation between clusters ofobservations (between individuals) and the variation within clusters (orindividuals). This approach is known as a random effects model (Johnson,1995; Singer and Willett, 2003) and assumes that unobserved differencesbetween individuals are random variables rather than fixed quantities. Asthere are many unobserved factors that could contribute to an individual’sreasons for choosing a particular profession, this assumption wouldappear to be a reasonable one along with the assumption that the differ-ences between individuals remain constant over time. We took thisapproach to assess stability and change in the five core elements over timeusing the longitudinal data.

The methods used for tracing change in the five fundamental character-istics were divided into two stages. In the first stage of the analysis themethods used addressed our first two questions, where we were interestedin assessing and comparing the importance associated with each of the five




dependent variables (service, knowledge, autonomy, financial rewards andprestige) upon commencing university studies and whether the likelihoodor probability of importance changed over time. Furthermore, if a changedid occur, did the measure increase or decrease in importance? As theresponses for each dependent variable take only four possible ordered val-ues (1, 2, 3, 4) it was appropriate to use a cumulative logit model, with theassumption of proportional odds, to analyse the ordinal data (Agresti,2002).3 In addition, due to the longitudinal nature of the data, randomeffects were imposed on the intercept of the model to ensure that individ-uals were treated as clusters of observations to account for the dependencyamong observations. For ease of interpretation in this analysis, theresponses were reverse scored so that the scores are coded as follows: (4)very important, (3) somewhat important, (2) not very important and (1)not at all important.

To estimate a smooth trend in the probability of importance over thecareer path, time is measured in years since the commencement of a uni-versity degree. The continuous variable representing time therefore takesthe five values of 0, 1, 4, 18 and 33. Profession is represented by a factor inthe model with three levels corresponding to engineering, law and medicine.A term representing the interaction of time and profession (e.g. Engineeringx Time) is also included in the model so that trends in the probability ofimportance can be compared statistically among professions.

The methods used in the second stage of the analysis addressed our thirdquestion, which was to describe the composition of the professions in termsof the individual trends in responses to each of the five core elements overthe career path. For this purpose it was necessary to group individuals,within professions, by their average change in scores over the five waves. Asthe focus of this analysis is now on the trend in scores from Wave 1 to Wave5, the number of years between observations is of little consequence and sothe wave number is taken to be the longitudinal measure of interest. A lin-ear regression model was used to estimate the trend in scores across the fivewaves, separately for each individual.4

Individuals were classified into groups of trend types based on their esti-mated score at Wave 1 and estimated slope of the trend. Estimated scoresat Wave 1 were classified into two categories. A Wave 1 score of 2.5 ormore was considered to be ‘important’ while a score of less than 2.5 wasconsidered to be ‘unimportant’. Estimated slopes were classified into threecategories. To detect an average change in score of at least one unit overfour time periods requires a slope in the fitted regression line of at least 0.25units. If the slope of the trend was 0.25 or more then the measured coreelement was seen to increase in importance over the career path; if the slopewas less than 0.25 then the measure was seen to decrease in importance. Aslope closer to zero indicated that there was no clear pattern of change fromthe Wave 1 score. That is, scores remained relatively constant. When the




two-category score classification was crossed with the three-category slopeclassification, six possible combinations of trend types were created. Thesesix groups were collapsed into four categories. The four categories are asfollows:

• Continuing importance: Respondents who indicated importance at Wave1 and whose slope was negligible or positive over time.

• Decreased importance: Respondents who indicated importance at Wave1 and whose slope was negative over time.

• Increased importance: Respondents who indicated unimportance atWave 1 and whose slope was positive over time.

• Continuing unimportance: Respondents who indicated unimportance atWave 1 and whose slope was negligible or negative over time.

It is worth noting that these four categories represent a change processover time and not simply two points at the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of thatprocess.

Results

Stage 1

The first stage of analysis assessed the level of importance assigned to eachdependent variable by respondents at the beginning of their course and thechange in that level that occurred throughout the career path, by fitting therandom effects cumulative logit model to the longitudinal data for each ofthe five variables representing the three core elements of the professionalideal and the two benefits of professional work. The results of this analysisare shown in Table 3 as estimated odds ratios for scoring a response of atleast three (at least ‘somewhat important’). For individuals undertaking lawand medicine, an estimated odds ratio that is significantly greater than oneindicates that, on average, the odds of being ‘important’ are greater for thatprofession than they are for engineering. A series of graphs were also pro-duced to illustrate the trends in the marginal probability of importanceassociated with each of the five measures over the 33 years of the study (seeFigure 1). The following paragraphs discuss the graphs in Figure 1, alongwith the results shown in Table 3, beginning with service considerations.For the five measures Table 3 shows that the component of variance mea-suring unobserved differences between individuals is significant, supportingthe specification of a random effects model.

Service

The odds of scoring the provision of service as at least ‘somewhat impor-tant’ in the initial career decision were four times higher for individualsstarting a degree in medicine than they were for engineering students. As




shown in Figure 1, the probability of a medical student responding with ascore of at least ‘somewhat important’ was 0.9 compared with 0.7 for bothengineers and lawyers. In effect, medical students clearly valued the provi-sion of a service more strongly than either students of engineering or law.However, these odds were reduced significantly over the career path as indi-cated by the significant interaction (see Table 3, Medicine x Time) and atthe final assessment wave in 1998 the predicted probabilities were similarfor all three professions. Therefore, the idea of providing a service came tobe less attractive to doctors over time. There were no significant differencesbetween engineers and lawyers over the career path and as well there waslittle change in their assessment of service over time. It will be recalled thatthe question wording for ‘service’ for engineers and lawyers changed forboth waves four and five leading to identical question wording for all threegroups over these last two waves of data collection. It is possible that thechange in question wording contributed to the change over time in ‘service’as reported by engineers and lawyers. However, additional qualitative dataprovided by respondents support the validity of the responses demonstratedby the quantitative trends, reported in Figure 1.

Knowledge

As shown in Figure 1, the majority of students endorsed the acquisition ofknowledge. However, the odds ratios for both law and medical students aresignificantly smaller than one, indicating that the odds of scoring at least‘somewhat important’ were lower for individuals starting a degree in theseprofessions than they were for engineering. This means that students enter-ing engineering valued the knowledge component of their chosen professionmore strongly than either students of law or medicine. A significant andpositive main effect of Time (see Table 3, Time) was observed for knowl-edge, indicating that as time progresses, the probability of judging knowl-edge to be at least ‘somewhat important’ increased. Again there was asignificant Medicine x Time interaction indicating that the odds increasedsignificantly over the career path, indicating that the knowledge base ofmedicine became more important to doctors over time.

Autonomy

The odds of scoring autonomy in work as at least ‘somewhat important’were significantly higher for individuals starting a degree in both law andmedicine than they were for engineering students. This suggests that stu-dents of law and medicine were more attracted to the perceivedautonomous work conditions of their respective professions than werethose beginning in engineering. However, for individuals undertaking law,the odds were reduced significantly over the career path as indicated by thesignificant Law x Time interaction, that is, the odds of scoring at least‘somewhat important’ for lawyers and engineers converged over time.




176Journal of Sociology 42(2)

Table 3: Estimated odds ratios for the effects of profession and time since commencement of degree, on attitudes to core elements(characteristics and outcomes) of professional activity

Dependent variableFinancial

Independent variable Service Knowledge Autonomy rewards Prestige

Regression coefficientsProfession

Engineering1 – – – – –Law 0.84 0.41** 1.56** 0.95 1.54**Medicine 4.29** 0.62** 1.56** 0.37** 1.59**

Time 1.01 1.02** 1.07** 1.00 1.00Profession x Time

Engineering x Time2 – – – – –Law x Time 1.00 1.00 0.98** 1.00 0.97**Medicine x Time 0.96** 1.02** 1.00 1.07** 0.99*

Individual level variance 1.88** 1.12** 1.59** 1.99** 1.70**(Standard Error) (0.15) (0.12) (0.13) (0.15) (0.13)

Level 1 units3 5915 5915 5903 5906 5904Level 2 units4 1867 1868 1867 1865 1867

1 Reference category for Profession.2 Reference category for Profession x Time.3 The term level 1 units denotes the total number of individual responses over time.4 The term level 2 units denotes the total number of individuals.* p < .05; ** p < .01.

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Interestingly, a significant and positive main effect of Time (see Table 3,Time) was observed for autonomy, indicating that autonomy in work wasincreasingly seen as an attractive feature of professional life for all threegroups over the career path (see Figure 1).

Financial rewards

With respect to financial rewards, the engineers and lawyers started outsimilarly by reporting it as important in their initial career decision and theyonly marginally increased this assessment over time. The odds of scoringfinancial rewards as at least ‘somewhat important’ were significantly lowerfor medical students than they were for engineering students and by impli-cation for the lawyers as well. However, financial rewards became moreattractive for the doctors over the career path as indicated by the significantinteraction (see Table 3, Medicine x Time) and this group eventually over-took both engineers and lawyers in terms of the attractiveness financialrewards finally assumed.

Prestige

Over the career path the probability of any student giving a response of atleast ‘somewhat important’ was less than 0.6. The prestige of the professionwas not particularly important for the initial decision and did not changemuch over time, although those in law and medicine did have a greaterappreciation than engineering students of the prestige that was likely to beaccorded professional practitioners as indicated by the odds ratio for lawand medicine of 1.54 and 1.59, respectively (see Table 3). However, theseodds were reduced significantly over the career path, meaning that theimportance of prestige decreased for lawyers and doctors in comparison toengineers over the course of their career.

Stage 2

The results discussed above from the first stage of the analysis are the pre-dicted probabilities that are marginalized over all individuals (the popula-tion average) within a profession and provide a statistical assessment ofsignificant trends over time and comparison among professions. While thisanalysis allows conclusions to be drawn about differences between profes-sions in averaged patterns of change over time, the patterns of change dis-played by discrete individuals might be very different. While the majority ofone group might ‘start out’ by scoring ‘important’ for a particular variable,service for example, not everyone does so, and while a pattern of changefrom ‘important’ to ‘attractive’ represents the ‘average’ some members ofthe profession contributing to this pattern may remain constant over timewhile others may change in the opposite direction. The second stage of theanalysis focuses on identifying ‘who’ follows a particular type of trend inthe five different measures and how the composition of trend types varies




178Journal of Sociology 42(2)

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Figure 1: Predicted population averages for probability of responding with a score of at least ‘somewhat important’ on measures of thecore elements of professional activity over time

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among the professions. The trend type followed by each individual whowas still participating in the survey at Wave 5 was determined using themethod described in the previous section. Percentages of respondents whofollowed one of the four specified trend types identified earlier are presentedby measure and profession in Table 4. It is clear that there are differencesboth between professions and with respect to trend types.

Service

At the beginning of their studies in medicine 91 percent of respondents indi-cated that service was an important consideration (continuing importance;decreased importance) compared with 59 percent for engineering and 57percent for law (Table 4). However, almost one third of the doctorsreported a decline in the attractiveness of providing a service as their careerprogressed. Certainly there was a decline in importance for the other twogroups but this was not as great. More important was the increasing attrac-tiveness of service to the engineers and lawyers where around a quarter ofboth groups changed in this direction, while there was a negligible increaseamong the doctors.

Knowledge

Knowledge is seen as the core of professional practice. It was an importantfactor in the initial decision (95 percent of the engineers, 86 percent oflawyers and 89 percent of doctors) and it remained important for the 30 ormore years of their professional lives.

Autonomy

The likelihood of autonomy in work was a significant consideration foronly a minority at the time of entry to university but it became importantas individuals moved from the role of student to that of practitioner. Amongthe engineers, while only 30 percent acknowledged its importance at thebeginning of their university courses, 82 percent saw it as important some30 years later. Among the lawyers a similar increase from 43 percent to 79percent occurred and for the doctors the change was from 37 percent to 82percent.

Financial rewards

For the majority the financial rewards they were likely to obtain from pro-fessional work were always important. Around two thirds of the engineersand lawyers (65 percent for each) and a little more than half (53 percent)of the doctors saw this as important when they commenced university anddid not change this view over the next 30 years. A further 11 percent ofengineers and lawyers and a larger 27 percent of doctors came to see theattraction of financial rewards over time. Interestingly, around 10 percentof all three groups were not concerned with financial rewards at all and 13




percent of engineers and 14 percent of lawyers also came to this view overtime. The doctors were less likely to come to this view over time with onlyfour percent doing so.

Prestige

Prestige was viewed quite differently. Nearly half the engineers (41 per-cent), more than one third of the lawyers (38 percent) and more than aquarter of the doctors (29 percent) did not consider prestige as an impor-tant consideration throughout their career. However, for around onethird of the lawyers and doctors (31 percent and 30 percent, respectively)and for almost a quarter of the engineers (23 percent) prestige was animportant determinant at time of entry and continued as important astheir career progressed. Among those who changed there were mixedviews. Some saw it as an increasing attraction of professional work (23


Table 4: Percentage of respondents in the four trend types by measures of the coreelements of professional activity and profession

Trend type over 5 waves Engineering Law Medicine

Service (n = 219) (n = 208) (n = 257)1 Continuing importance 43 40 632 Decreased importance 16 17 283 Increased importance 21 24 54 Continuing unimportance 20 19 4

Knowledge (n = 219) (n = 209) (n = 257)1 Continuing importance 86 75 842 Decreased importance 9 11 53 Increased importance 3 10 104 Continuing unimportance 2 4 1

Autonomy (n = 217) (n = 209) (n = 257)1 Continuing importance 30 43 372 Decreased importance 4 6 33 Increased importance 52 36 454 Continuing unimportance 14 15 15

Financial rewards (n = 218) (n = 209) (n = 257)1 Continuing importance 65 65 532 Decreased importance 13 14 43 Increased importance 11 11 274 Continuing unimportance 11 10 16

Prestige (n = 219) (n = 208) (n = 257)1 Continuing importance 23 31 302 Decreased importance 13 27 163 Increased importance 23 13 164 Continuing unimportance 41 29 38



percent of the engineers, 16 percent of the doctors and 13 percent of thelawyers) while similar percentages reported prestige as decreasing inattractiveness (27 percent for lawyers, 16 percent for doctors and 13 per-cent for engineers).

In this analysis, individuals have been classified by trends in the impor-tance they attached to the five measures representing what we have calledthe fundamentals of professional work. Given this classification of individ-uals, future research will examine relationships between individual anddemographic characteristics and each of the trend types to explain furtherhow these trend types came about.

DiscussionThis article has been concerned with what we have described as five funda-mentals that guide professional work. To reiterate, they are the view thatprofessionals provide an important service to individuals and/or the widercommunity, that a body of esoteric knowledge underlies the delivery of pro-fessional services, that autonomy is essential to the performance of profes-sional work, and that material and psychological rewards follow from acombination of these.

Because we were persuaded that these five considerations guided the wayin which professionals operate in their work environment, we asked themembers of the three groups at various points over 30 odd years, howsalient these considerations were to them. At the beginning of their courseof study we wanted to know whether they were important considerationsin their decision to begin an extended period of training that would ulti-mately lead to professional practice. Then, as they progressed through theircourse and started work in the different professions and progressed alongtheir chosen ‘career path’, we enquired about the continued salience or oth-erwise of these factors.

Back in the 1960s, when the group began university courses leading toprofessional practice, the notion of providing a service to the communitywas paramount among medical recruits in a way it was not to the law orengineering neophytes. This is not surprising, as medicine alone can claimto support the ‘almost infinitely expansive goal of health and relief fromsuffering, a goal that is of transcendent importance to the public at large’(Freidson, 1999: 128). However, the notion of selfless professional servicehas not always been accepted among scholars of the profession. Indeed, ser-vice became the ‘whipping boy’ of sociologists in the 1970s (see, for exam-ple, Freidson, 1970; Johnson, 1972; Larson, 1977). But even Freidson hadsoftened by the 1990s, maintaining that what may appear as self-servingjustifications may otherwise be understood as ‘a natural outcome of thedeep commitment to the value of his work developed by the thoroughly




socialized professional who has devoted his entire adult life to it’ (Freidson,1994: 69).

Time wrought considerable change among our groups. Service becamemore important to lawyers and engineers, but notably less important to thedoctors. By 1998 there was very little difference among the three groups,with around two thirds of each asserting that the ability to provide a ser-vice was an attractive feature of their work. While recent qualitativeresearch among general practitioners suggests that many of them stilladhered to the belief that general practitioners have ‘the privilege of caringfor the whole person in an ongoing relationship’ (Majoribanks and Lewis,2003: 2234), this ideal does not blind them to the reality of their currentwork life (Majoribanks and Lewis, 2003: 52). Of course, not all profes-sionals in our cohorts felt this way. Around one fifth of engineers andlawyers had never felt that providing a service to society was important, butonly 4 percent of doctors felt similarly. After 30 years around one third ofall three groups did not consider service a terribly important element oftheir work. The lacklustre interest in service may, in part, reflect changes inthe way states manage and prioritize their affairs. For instance, Hanlonstates that governments today have ‘little tolerance of the concept of uni-versal service’ and are rather more concerned with ‘national competitive-ness’ (Hanlon, 1999: 92). It has also been stated that ‘Justice is no longerconsidered a universal right provided on the basis need but rather a com-modity provided in profitable market niches’ (Hanlon, 1997: 208). In sup-port of this contention Evetts writes that the question is no longer, how doprofessions capture states, but rather, why do states allow professions toexist (Evetts, 1999: 82).

Knowledge was a different matter. All three groups were drawn to theiruniversity courses by ‘an interest in the subject matter of the discipline’, andthe great majority of all three continued to be attracted by the nature of thework they were doing. The universal appeal of knowledge, as a fundamen-tal consideration of professional practice, is due in part to ‘the link betweena profession and its work’ (Abbott, 1988: 22). Engineering seems particu-larly well placed to meet the new challenges of managerialism in that it isbetter able to demonstrate the cost-benefits of its services based on profes-sional knowledge (Leicht and Fennell, 1997: 218–21). Medicine faces amore complex and emotionally fraught task, and law lacks the culturaladvantage conferred by a scientific base. Knowledge can also be understoodas conferring the ‘cultural legitimacy’ to the expertise of professionals(Abbott, 1988: 16). But as Freidson points out, ‘knowledge itself does notgive special power: only exclusive knowledge gives power to its possessors’(Freidson, 1994: 67), and this exclusivity is determined by control of one’soccupation and conceivably those of others in the same field, a situationotherwise known as professional autonomy.




Autonomy in work was not an important consideration for entry intothe professions but it became far more important as time progressed, andby 1998 an overwhelming 80 percent or more saw the opportunity forindependence in professional work as being one of the most attractive facetsof their working life. It is possible that the early disinterest in autonomyreflects the would-be professionals’ lack of experience in the world of paidemployment. Certainly mid-career enthusiasm for occupational autonomyis supported by any number of studies, which define autonomy in any num-ber of ways (see, for example, Leicht and Fennell, 1997; Warren et al.,1998; Harris, 1999; Harrison and Ahmad, 2000; Marnoch et al., 2000;Marjoribanks and Lewis, 2003). Nevertheless, a respectable 15 percent ofprofessionals never felt that autonomy was an important consideration andanother 4 or 5 percent came to this view over time.

The importance of financial rewards, while not as consistently importantas a knowledge base, was seen quite consistently nevertheless as an attrac-tive outcome of professional practice. For the groups that held ambivalentviews about this at the beginning of their course (e.g. medical students), wecan report that these were dispelled as their careers progressed, and after 30years all three groups agreed that a financially secure career was a good out-come. Again there was a small consistent group who rejected the majorityopinion. Finally, the prestige associated with professional practice was nota compelling issue for the majority. Of all the elements it was the least likelyto be considered important at any stage of the career. It was not a consid-eration at the time of entry for significant numbers and the numbers whoconsidered prestige to be unimportant grew over the years, so by 1998 overhalf of each group did not see the social prestige associated with profes-sional work as an attractive feature. Nevertheless, there was a hard core of30 percent who, over time, continued to see the social prestige accorded toprofessional practitioners as attractive. Prestige has long been associatedwith professional practice (Carr-Saunders and Wilson, 1933), so it is sur-prising to learn that it played so small a part in the lives of this professionalcohort. Perhaps our professionals were pragmatists, who had little time forthe intangible benefits of their chosen career. Conversely, we may be observ-ing a coy response to an ontologically challenging assertion, namely one isin it for the glory. Esteem and prestige are not to be denied. As long ago as1978 William Goode wrote about prestige as a control system, and then inDecember 2004 Geoffrey Brennan delivered the Cunningham lecture enti-tled ‘The Esteem Engine’, in which he concluded ‘the desire for esteem is asignificant force in motivating behaviour’ (Brennan, 2005: 14). Perhaps theminority who persisted in espousing the attractiveness of prestige had thesefacts in mind.

So stability and change in the relative importance of how these five fun-damental characteristics are perceived distinguish our three groups.Interestingly, the similarities between the groups appear to be greater than the




differences. All three rated knowledge highly, and all three, perhaps not asuniversally, thought that financial rewards were important. Service becameincreasingly important to engineers and lawyers, and was continuouslyimportant for around two thirds of the doctors but was more inclined todecrease in importance for the doctors who started, it must be noted, froma much higher position. All three groups came to see the importance ofautonomy in work over time, and while prestige increased in importancefor some, there was a hard core group in each profession for whom it hasnever been important. Similarities in patterns of change and stability weregreater among the professions than among the factors, with perhaps theexception of service. Phrased differently, patterns of change and stabilityare more likely to distinguish among the factors than they are among theprofessions.

To what extent do these fundamental characteristics drive professionalbehaviour, influence career trajectories, and contribute to successful out-comes of professional work? These issues will be taken up in later articlesin this series.

Notes1 The Professions in Australia Study began in the 1960s under the direction of

John Western at the Australian National University (ANU) and Don Andersonat Melbourne University. The project recruited Trevor Williams in the late1970s when he came to the ANU. By that time Don Anderson had moved to theANU and John Western had moved to the University of Queensland. The pro-ject attracted the attention of a number of others. Toni Makkai, MargaretShapiro and Elbita Tabaka-Malinowski completed PhD theses in 1988 usingproject data. Margaret Shapiro focused on doctors, Toni Makkai on engineersand Elbita Tabaka-Malinowski on self image and work commitment. LynDavies explored ‘dropouts’ in a Masters thesis in 1970, and Julie McMillanexplored the determinants of income and status attainment in an Honours the-sis in 1992. More recently Kathryn Dwan, because of her interest in the medi-cal profession, also became involved. And finally, Denise Durrington andMichele Haynes have brought a particular analytic expertise to the complica-tions of longitudinal analyses.

2 Trainee teachers were included in the first stage of the survey but subsequentlyomitted because of the difficulties experienced in locating them. We suspect thepreponderance of women among the students combined with the likelihood ofname change after marriage contributed to the difficulty.

3 The cumulative logit model allows us to estimate the linear relationship betweenthe logarithm of the odds ratios for the probability of scoring a response of atleast 3 (‘somewhat important’) and the factors representing time and profession.

4 Individuals were discarded from the analysis if less than three observationswere recorded. Therefore the trend is estimated from three to five observations.The average change in scores from Wave 1 to Wave 5 for an individual isobtained by extracting the slope of the fitted line from the results of the regres-sion analysis.




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studies of social change and development. Address: School of SocialScience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.[email: [email protected]]Michele Haynes is a lecturer in statistical methods and statistical advisor forthe Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, The University ofQueensland. Her main interests are in statistical modelling of longitudinalsocial data and the Bayesian approach to statistical model estimation.Address: Social Research Centre, Faculty of Social and BehaviouralSciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.[email: [email protected]]Denise Durrington is a research officer in The University of QueenslandSocial Research Centre. She is also completing her PhD in the School ofSocial Science at the same university. Address: Social Research Centre,Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Queensland,Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. [email: [email protected]]Kathryn Dwan is an ARC Post-Doctoral Fellow (2005–7) at RegNet,Research School of Social Science, ANU. She is currently investigating themeanings health practitioners ascribe to terms like safety, quality and error.She has a background in health policy and her research interests, publica-tions and grants lie in the areas of the sociology of professions, health infor-matics and social inequality. Address: Regulatory Institutions Network(RegNet), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.[email: [email protected]]





Appendix: Description of variables

At the beginning of the first year of study:

In your decision to study [profession] how important were thefollowing considerations?

Service A desire to be of service to the community (doctors only).An interest in the maintenance of individual liberties and civilrights (lawyers only).An interest in developmental works of national and socialimportance (engineers only).

Knowledge An interest in some aspects of the subject matter of[profession].

Autonomy A desire to be independent of bosses.Financial rewards The financial attractiveness of [profession].Prestige The relatively high social standing of [profession] in the

community.

At the completion of the first year and at the completion of university training:

A number of reasons that students have given for finding[profession] attractive are shown below. Please indicate theextent of your agreement with each of them.

Service I am interested in being of service to the community (doctorsonly).I am interested in the maintenance of individual liberties andcivil rights (lawyers only).I am interested in developmental works of national and socialimportance (engineers only).

Knowledge I am interested in some aspects of its subject matter.Autonomy I would like to be independent of bosses.Financial rewards The financial awards of the profession appeal to me.Prestige The profession has a relatively high social standing.

In 1983 and in 1998:

Professionals report finding the practice of [profession]satisfying for a variety of reasons. How important to youpersonally are the following reasons?

Service Being of service to the community.Knowledge Having interesting work.Autonomy Having the greatest possible scope for independent action.Financial rewards The chance to live a financially secure life.Prestige Having prestige in the community.



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