2015/08/14 by Graham P. Martin, Graham Martin, Natalie Armstrong +5 · 83 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Health Professions · Psychology · #Business #Control (management) #Economics #Enthusiasm #Epistemology #Ethnography #Health care #Healthcare Quality and Management #Law #Management #Management and Organizational Studies #Marketing #Mental Health and Patient Involvement #Political science #Psychology #Public relations #Quality (philosophy) #Service (business) #Social psychology #Sociology
paper · open access · doi:10.1177/0022146515596353
published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior 56(3), 378-397 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2015/08/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Recent decades have seen the influence of the professions decline. Lately, commentators have suggested a revived role for a "new" professionalism in ensuring and enhancing high-quality health care in systems dominated by market and managerial logics. The form this new professionalism might take, however, remains obscure. This article uses data from an ethnographic study of three English health care improvement projects to analyze the place, potential, and limitations of professionalism as a means of engaging clinicians in efforts to improve service quality. We found that appeals to notions of professionalism had strong support among practitioners, but converting enthusiasm for the principle of professionalism into motivation to change practice was not straightforward. Some tactics used in pursuit of this deviated sharply from traditional models of collegial social control. In systems characterized by fissures between professional groups and powerful market and managerial influences, we suggest that professionalism must interact creatively but carefully with other logics.