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| Are Engineers Managers or Professionals?
What Is a Profession?by Richard Barker,
professor at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School in
England
Professions are made up of particular categories of people from whom
we seek advice and services because they have knowledge and skills that
we do not. A doctor, for example, can recommend a course of treatment
for an illness; a lawyer can advise us on a course of legal action. We
cannot make these judgments ourselves—and often we cannot judge the
quality of the advice we receive. The Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow wrote
about the medical profession, “The value of information is frequently
not known in any meaningful sense to the buyer; if, indeed, he knew
enough to measure the value of information, he would know the
information itself. But information, in the form of skilled care, is
precisely what is being bought from most physicians, and, indeed, from
most professionals.” It is true, of course, that most nonprofessional providers of goods
and services also have knowledge that we don’t. We cannot, for instance,
manufacture a computer or operate a train service. Nevertheless, we can
judge whether or not our demand has been met: We know what to expect
from our computer, and we know if our train is delayed. The difference
is that we might act on a lawyer’s advice and not know its quality, even
after the case has been completed. Perhaps she gave us good advice but
the case was lost, or vice versa. The outcome might have been more or
less favorable had her advice been different. We are in no position to
know, because the professional is the expert and we are not. There is an
asymmetry of knowledge. In some cases the knowledge asymmetry is relatively transient. A taxi
driver in a foreign town provides us with a service, using his
knowledge of the local geography. Once we arrive at our destination,
however, we can ask a local whether the driver’s route was the most
direct, and thus reduce the asymmetry. But who evaluates legal advice
for us? Although we could ask another lawyer, he couldn’t offer a second
opinion without being informed of the details of our case—which would
amount to hiring two lawyers to do the work of one. Furthermore, the two
lawyers might advise us differently, and we’d be unable to distinguish
the better advice. In practice, our lawyer herself implicitly assures us that we can
rely on the legal advice she is giving. This relatively permanent
knowledge asymmetry is the mark of the true profession; as consumers, we
have no option but to trust the professionals with whom we transact.
Nevertheless, we might be unwilling to transact at all without some
guarantee that the services we receive meet a minimum quality threshold.
That requires the existence of professional bodies, whose regulatory
role enables consumers to trust their advisers, thereby making a market
for professional services feasible. For a professional body in any given field to function, a discrete
body of knowledge for that field must be defined, and the field’s
boundaries must be established: When, for example, is something a
medical or legal issue, and when is it not? There must also be a
reasonable consensus within the field as to what the knowledge should
consist of: If physicians cannot agree on how the human body functions,
or lawyers on the nature of a contract, no discrete body of knowledge
can be said to exist. The boundaries and consensus for any profession
will evolve over time, but at any given moment they can be defined—which
is what enables formal training and certification. Certification
signals competence to consumers who would benefit from it. Professional bodies hold a trusted position. They have, in effect, a
contract with society at large: They control membership in the
professions through examination and certification, maintain the quality
of certified members through ongoing training and the enforcement of
ethical standards, and may exclude anyone who fails to meet those
standards. Society is rewarded for its trust with a professional quality
that it would otherwise be unable to ensure. This is the model for the
legal and medical professions and others, including accounting,
architecture, and engineering. |
| |
| Are Engineers Managers or Professionals?
What Is a Profession?by Richard Barker,
professor at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School in
England
Professions are made up of particular categories of people from whom
we seek advice and services because they have knowledge and skills that
we do not. A doctor, for example, can recommend a course of treatment
for an illness; a lawyer can advise us on a course of legal action. We
cannot make these judgments ourselves—and often we cannot judge the
quality of the advice we receive. The Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow wrote
about the medical profession, “The value of information is frequently
not known in any meaningful sense to the buyer; if, indeed, he knew
enough to measure the value of information, he would know the
information itself. But information, in the form of skilled care, is
precisely what is being bought from most physicians, and, indeed, from
most professionals.” It is true, of course, that most nonprofessional providers of goods
and services also have knowledge that we don’t. We cannot, for instance,
manufacture a computer or operate a train service. Nevertheless, we can
judge whether or not our demand has been met: We know what to expect
from our computer, and we know if our train is delayed. The difference
is that we might act on a lawyer’s advice and not know its quality, even
after the case has been completed. Perhaps she gave us good advice but
the case was lost, or vice versa. The outcome might have been more or
less favorable had her advice been different. We are in no position to
know, because the professional is the expert and we are not. There is an
asymmetry of knowledge. In some cases the knowledge asymmetry is relatively transient. A taxi
driver in a foreign town provides us with a service, using his
knowledge of the local geography. Once we arrive at our destination,
however, we can ask a local whether the driver’s route was the most
direct, and thus reduce the asymmetry. But who evaluates legal advice
for us? Although we could ask another lawyer, he couldn’t offer a second
opinion without being informed of the details of our case—which would
amount to hiring two lawyers to do the work of one. Furthermore, the two
lawyers might advise us differently, and we’d be unable to distinguish
the better advice. In practice, our lawyer herself implicitly assures us that we can
rely on the legal advice she is giving. This relatively permanent
knowledge asymmetry is the mark of the true profession; as consumers, we
have no option but to trust the professionals with whom we transact.
Nevertheless, we might be unwilling to transact at all without some
guarantee that the services we receive meet a minimum quality threshold.
That requires the existence of professional bodies, whose regulatory
role enables consumers to trust their advisers, thereby making a market
for professional services feasible. For a professional body in any given field to function, a discrete
body of knowledge for that field must be defined, and the field’s
boundaries must be established: When, for example, is something a
medical or legal issue, and when is it not? There must also be a
reasonable consensus within the field as to what the knowledge should
consist of: If physicians cannot agree on how the human body functions,
or lawyers on the nature of a contract, no discrete body of knowledge
can be said to exist. The boundaries and consensus for any profession
will evolve over time, but at any given moment they can be defined—which
is what enables formal training and certification. Certification
signals competence to consumers who would benefit from it. Professional bodies hold a trusted position. They have, in effect, a
contract with society at large: They control membership in the
professions through examination and certification, maintain the quality
of certified members through ongoing training and the enforcement of
ethical standards, and may exclude anyone who fails to meet those
standards. Society is rewarded for its trust with a professional quality
that it would otherwise be unable to ensure. This is the model for the
legal and medical professions and others, including accounting,
architecture, and engineering. |
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