Glacial Erratics

An interesting perspective on professionalism, but my (admittedly biased) reaction is that it’s overly negative. Doctors and journalists make easy targets, but in lots of less-prominent professions (allied health professions, say, or maybe teaching) professionalization is actually regarded as a good thing, because it brings a collective identity and recognition that ideally bring in more people who want to work in that field, so it flourishes, creates new ideas, and develops.

There’s a case to be made that professionalization, if it’s accompanied by additional education (yes, and professional training) which will necessarily drive the evolution of the field, can also result in higher salaries for its practitioners, which may not matter to technocrats but certainly matters if you’re working in, say, a pink-collar ghetto.

All this may be a little too Utopian for Howard Zinn (whom I’ve not read).

We’ve administered a community of practice at work for over a year now and I’m not sure that the overtones of the Lesser & Prushak reference are as sinister as you’re making them. In my experience communities of practice are valued by their members because they give people the information they need to do their jobs better. Yes, one of the outcomes may be increased worker productivity, but what’s the alternative? Finally, how does increased worker productivity logically (or inevitably) lead to “taking precedence over worker freedom”? Seems like a leap to me.

I think we are talking from two different paradigms. You say professionalization might result in higher salaries for its practitioners. While that may be true I'm questioning the value system that says creating higher salaries is a good thing.

If we accept things as they are, then sure, they are a good thing, but things as they are just isn't good enough.

"Questioning the values that say higher salaries are a good thing"? OK, but how are you going to establish an alternative if you don't appreciate what ordinary people want and need? Nothing I have read here indicates an understanding of this. Instead, you give us abstractions.

You are concerned lest creeping professionalism rob your collaboration work of its creativity and, I suppose, its meaning. But how are you going to establish meaning in the first place if you can't make a difference where it's needed?

By this I mean: there are people out there who are genuinely undervalued and underrecognized, and maybe collaboration could help them. At my workplace, we're betting this is the case. If there are ways that collaboration can be used to help people do their jobs better right now, any insights collaboration practitioners could share would constitute a tremendous service.

(Back to the professionalism thing, which is really a sidelight: Yes, I should have realized that the matter of salary was a red flag that was going to override everything else in the argument for you. But it's not all about salary. Things like being treated with respect in the workplace, instead of like a glorified secretary, can't be commodified. I realize this probably isn't a problem for the collaboration discipline. And aren't you lucky?)

Certainly I'm tossing out a lot of abstractions, but isn't that okay? If we accept that there are a whole bunch of really smart people out there filling in various voids with various ideas, from the very concrete to the very abstract, we're in good shape, no?

Your responses demonstrate that you've got some of the bases covered. Together we've had some thoughts, that separately need some work, but together point out at least a bit of direction.

My concern with professionalization and "making a discipline" are not with robbing my own work of its creativity, but rather that as far as I can tell aggregating and formalizing collaborative work underneath systems and guidelines robs it of the dynamic energy that makes it effective in some contexts.

I'll try and come up with something more constructive to say later. Right now I really don't care. For the last four months or so I've dreamed immaturely about the collapse of modern corporate capitalism and the death of billions. Not constructive, I know.

There are (at least) a couple very different aspects to professionalism:

1. set of supposedly shared values/ethical standards. (Some members of course are not guided by these at all.)

2. systematization of practices.

3. ???

1. 2 can help accelerate progress (and improve marketability through packaging of ideas to reduce perceived complexity), but it can also unnecessarily limit options for action/thought, or push action/thought toward approaches which can be more easily systematized, whether that's appropriate or not. Note attempts to treat "software engineering" in ways similar to (outsiders' perception of) building construction.

I think all approaches can be exploited. The trick, I think today, is to find approaches that help people create non-exploitive relationships that still provide a Living.

I like the use of uppercase 'L'.

3 for me, or maybe it is just a result of 2, is that the packaging can create boundaries that create priests, people who hold the knowledge (knowledge is power, knowledge is dangerous!) close to themselves for safety (keeping other people safe, keeping themselves safely in power).

That leaves other people disempowered.

I'm not opposed to expertise and I guess professionalization certifies expertise, but, as with everything, a balance is needed.