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It seems evident that many of the
most important features of our society are to a considerable
extent dependent on the smooth functioning of the professions.
Both the pursuit and the application of science and liberal
learning are predominantly carried out in a professional
context. Their results have become so closely intervowen
in the fabric of modern society that it is difficult to
imagine how it could get along without basic structural
changes if they were seriously impaired. (Talcott Parsons,
1939, p. 457, and 1949, p. 34).
Introduction I
understand
by professionalism the idea, institutionalization and working
methods of a systematic creation and application of special
expertise. That is, professionals as the term is used here are
specialist knowledge workers, an occupational group that
relies on skills that are unavailable to others, not because
they are in any way esoteric or are always highly remunerated
but simply because they require sustained training and practice.
Accordingly, and this is a second important characteristic,
professionals enjoy a degree of self-control in their
work, and of the standards of "good" work that they
apply to it, which other occupations do not usually enjoy. There are many
fields of professional practice (so-called "professions"):
medicine, law, engineering, management consultancy, operations
research, public policy analysis, planning, economic analysis
and consultancy, financial and fiduciary services (accounting,
trusteeship, auditing), academic teaching and research, applied
science (e.g., empirical social sciences applied to survey research,
evaluation research, etc.), primary and secondary education,
professional education, architecture, journalism, psychotherapy,
social work, and nursing, to name just a few classical professions.
Most professions
have developed well-defined notions of what it means to do a competent
job of applying their special knowledge and skills in specific
contexts of professional intervention, and consequently also of
what a proper
professional education and career should look like. Many also
have their own professional organizations and journals, formal
training programs, examination and review procedures,
codes of practice, and so on. Last but not least, a distinctive
ethos of service characterizes the self-understanding of
most professions, a dedication on the part of professionals
to serving the interests of others rather than their own. It is thus usually rather
clear to most professionals, as well as to their clients and
the larger public, what criteria determine whether one is a member of a professional community, adheres to its rules and requirements, and is
considered a competent professional.
Even
so, professional attributes such as competence, formal organization,
and dedication to service,
tell us remarkably little about the role and responsibility
of professionals in the occupational structure and institutional
framework of modern societies, and about what it means to do
justice to that role and responsibility. This is the issue to
which the American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1939) refers
in the classical essay cited at the outset.
It still provides worthwhile reading. It draws attention to
the question of the specific rationality and hence, justification,
of the professional's job within the fabric of modern
society, to use Parsons' words. I may not agree with all
of Parson's views on the subject, but there can be little doubt
that the question is relevant. It suggests to me that counter
to a view held widely among professionals, a proper understanding
of what "good" professional practice means cannot
rely mainly or even solely on the internal perspective of the
professions themselves. Clearly, it needs to include a sociological
perspective of the role assigned to professionals. We need to
understand, for example, how and why certain occupational groups
have achieved a position of power that apparently allows them
to define what is expert knowledge in a certain domain of practice,
and to control to a considerable degree the access to and application
of such knowledge. Perhaps even more importantly, we also need
to move beyond a descriptive sociological account, towards a
philosophical and methodological perspective of how else
we might try to understand good professional intervention; "good"
in terms of both its underlying rationality (How do we justify
its societal role and importance?) and its societal vision (Towards
what kind of society should it guide us?). I would like to outline
a personal approach to this topic in three steps:
- the
quest for practical reason;
- the
quest for rational action; and
- the
quest for professional competence.
The
three steps will be in the center of the next three parts
of this essay. The present part offers some introductory
considerations of a sociological (institutional) and philosophical
(ethical and methodological) nature.
From
an internal to a societal perspective of professional practice It
is proverbial that war is too important to be left to the generals.
Yet we find it quite normal that only doctors should be competent
to judge medical practice, only lawyers to control legal practice,
and so on – in short, that it is mainly an internal affair of
the professions to define their notions and standards of good
practice. Sociologically speaking, though, this appearance
of normality is obviously the result of particular historical
developments in the occupational system and in the institutional
and political framework that legitimizes it, developments that
might have occurred differently but which today allow certain
occupational groups such as doctors, jurists, professors, scientists
and others to have a far-reaching influence on the definition
of what counts as relevant knowledge and rational action in
their domains of special expertise (see, e.g., the major studies
by Larson, 1977, and Abbott, 1988). The internal ethos of service
held by the professionals themselves thus finds its sociological
counterpart in an incapacitation of other
occupational groups and of the citizens to be served.
To
be sure, society imposes limitations on the amount of control
that any profession is allowed to exert and thus, indirectly,
on the amount of incapacitation which those not belonging to
the profession have to accept. These limitations may be formal
or informal. There are, for instance, informal and partly unconscious
patterns of thought and behavior that determine our views of,
and respect for, "the experts," due to attitudes we
acquire in the course of our socialization and general education
as well as through professional training. Formal limitations
consist, for example, in the contractual or occupational conditions
under which professionals work. To an important part they
also consist in legal requirements
that professionals need to observe like everyone else, such as general standards of liability
and contract law, of public health and safety, environmental
concerns, social security, technical norms, and many other legal requirements; but
since everyone has to observe them,
they cannot stipulate specific ends and criteria of good professional practice. Conversely,
inasmuch as specific standards are increasingly becoming a part
of special legislation aimed at particular professions, they tend to focus
on questions of due process and proper procedure
rather than questions of good and rational (i.e., justified)
outcomes – good and rational, that is, for those
served as well as for those not served by the professional activities
in question.
In
sum, there is a tendency to describe "good" professional practice
without asking for the societal rationality and values
that provide the basis of assessment. Where do these normative
assumptions come from, where should they come from? What
is the professional's role with respect to them? What constitutes
competence in dealing with the value content of "good"
and "rational" practice? And if knowing the answers
to such normative questions is not considered an essential part
of the professional's role and responsibility (and implicitly,
of the rationality of professional intervention) – if professional
expertise can
be properly practiced without asking for the value of the "good"
in good practice, or for the rationality (justification) of
the claims to "rationality" that go with it – is it,
then, apparently a mainly technical matter?
The
classical sociological concept of the professional's role and
special competence Indeed: the claim
to good practice, or what
in the managerialist jargon of our epoch is now more often (somewhat euphemistically)
claimed to be best practice, appears to be a response to "How?"
questions rather than to "What?" and "Why?"
questions. The focus
is on the "input"
side of professional intervention, as it were, the means of professional
intervention, not on the "output side," the ends.
At first glance though, the earlier reference to the
professional's ethos of service
might suggest that this is not so; that competent service indeed
entails a professional focus on ends, albeit not the professional's
personal ends. However (and here I return to Parson's analysis), this focus on ends is of a rather limited
nature. Unlike politicians or entrepreneurs, professional people
are not necessarily expected to identify themselves with
the ends they serve, nor to question them. Rather, they are expected to take a disinterested
stance of professional objectivity and neutrality, making sure
they serve their clients or client institutions according to
professional standards of competence, regardless of the extent
to which they personally share the clients' ends. The responsibility
and rationality of professional intervention is in this respect seen
as a basically instrumental one. Or, as Talcott Parsons
puts it in his early discussion, the social role and status
of the professions is primarily defined by their superior
technical competence in a particular field of knowledge
and skills (Parsons, 1939, p. 38), that is, by their qualification
to identify the "best" means and ways for achieving
given ends on the basis of rational analysis rather than just
convention, tradition or personal opinion.
On
this peculiar combination of technical competence (regarding
means) and personal detachment or neutrality (regarding ends) rests the specific
authority that professionals enjoy in modern society.
It entails not only a high degree of social recognition and influence but also
a certain independence from other authorities, in particular from
political authority (an issue discussed in more detail in Parsons,
1952, pp. 371 and 374). We trust professionals and are
willing to accept their
advice precisely because of this role-specific independence of judgment,
along with a demonstrated competence in proposing the best means
for achieving the ends of others:
There
is a very important sense in which the professional practitioner
in our society exercises authority. … This professional authority
has a peculiar sociological structure. It is not as such based
on a generally superior status [but rather] on the superior
"technical competence" of the professional man. He
often exercises his authority over people who are, or are reputed
to be, his superiors in social status, in intellectual attainments
or in moral character. This is possible because the area of professional
authority is limited to a particular technically defined sphere.
It is only in matters touching health that the doctor is by
definition more competent than his lay patient, only in matters
touching his academic specialty that the professor is superior,
by virtue of his status, to his students. Professional authority,
like other elements of the professional pattern, is characterized
by "specificity of function." … A professional man
is held to be an "authority" only in his own field.
(Parsons, 1939, p. 38)
Our
contemporary notion of professional competence may thus be said
to rely on two strong assumptions: first,
that the specific role and rationality of professionals is linked
to a "disinterested" motivational basis,
which makes sure professionals do not pursue ends of their own; and secondly,
that decisions on ends and decisions on means can be strictly
separated, so that a specific technical competence can be deployed
free of value judgments. I would like to comment on
both assumptions, as a basis for outlining a different concept
of professional competence. I will do so under the two headings
of "disinterested professionalism" and "means
and ends in good practice."
Disinterested
professionalism In the disciplines concerned
with the motivation of human action,
particularly in psychology, sociology, and ethics, it is traditionally assumed that one
of the most fundamental distinctions
for understanding human behavior is that between self-interested
(or "egoistic") and disinterested (or "altruistic")
motives of action. While classical virtue ethics, for example
in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1976), assumed
that the quest for personal excellence and good practice precludes
merely self-serving behavior, at latest with the economic liberalism
and utilitarianism of Adam
Smith (1776) it became a basic ethical tenet of the institutional framework
of a modern and open society that the rationality and success
of the market economy is compatible with, and actually
depends on, the pursuit of self-interest. It is by pursuing
their own interests that individuals promote the over-all interest
of society most effectively, as if "led by an invisible
hand" (Smith, 1776, p. 447).
However,
this is obviously not true in all cases. Modern societies also
depend on a division of labor in the occupational system that
requires some specific functions, such as those of the professional
or the civil servant, to renounce the pursuit of self-interest.
As mentioned above, we trust professionals and accept their
advice precisely because and inasmuch we believe they (i) do
not pursue ends of their own and (ii) are competent to serve
the ends of others. Similarly we expect civil servants to be
"disinterested" and competent, although their limited
independence from political authority does not allow them to
enjoy quite the same professional status and self-control as
we tend to attribute it to doctors, lawyers, researchers, and
so on. By contrast, the competence
and authority we ascribe to politicians and business people does
not depend on this peculiar combination of technical (or administrative)
skills with disinterested service. Rather than on personal attributes,
it depends on attributes of their office, for example, democratic
election, hierarchical level, or executive power. In this respect,
the situation of professionals is indeed different from that
of most other functions in the occupational system:
The
business man has been thought of as egoistically pursuing his
own self-interest regardless of the interests of others, while
the professional man was altruistically serving the interests
of others regardless of his own. Seen in this context the professions
appear not only as empirically somewhat different from business,
but the two fields would seem to exemplify the most radical
cleavage conceivable in the field of human behavior. (Parsons,
1939, p. 36, similarly p. 43)
We
have accordingly become used to associate good professional practice,
but not entrepreneurial or political practice, with this requirement
of a disinterested deployment of technical competence. Similarly,
Freidson (2001, e.g., p. 179) explains the special role
and working methods of professionals and professional institutions
by means of a distinct institutional rationality or, as
he calls it, a different ideal-typical "logic," as
compared to the "consumerist" logic of the market
and the "managerialist" logic of bureaucracy. This
"third logic" partly conflicts with the logic of all
other institutions and makes professionals act differently.
In particular, only the "professional" logic allows
workers to control their own work, whereas in the market logic
it is the consumers, and in the bureaucratic logic, the managers
or politicians, who are in control and determine what constitutes
"good" work.
The
freedom to judge and to choose the ends of work is what
animates the institutions of the third logic. It expresses the
very soul of professionalism. (Freidson, 2001, p. 217)
Indeed!
I certainly recognize in these accounts of Parsons and Freidson
important elements of my experience as a long-term evaluation
researcher and policy analyst in government. By explaining the
particular motivation of professionals working with or for commercial
or bureaucratic institutions, they highlight an aspect that
is as crucial for understanding the professional's role as it
is often poorly understood and appreciated by client organizations.
At the same time, these accounts also help us appreciate the
particular difficulties of professional work that are due to
the different institutional rationalities at work.
Both
in the public and corporate sectors, professional intervention
finds itself in a constant tension between two conflicting imperatives.
On the one hand, there is the imperative of adhering to the
distinct "third" logic of the professional's own discipline,
as an indispensable condition of valid and publicly defensible
work. On the other hand, there is the imperative of serving
the needs of the client institution. I would like to illustrate
this tension with my personal experience as a researcher in
government. There was on the one hand the constant need for
defending the logic of independent and unbiased research, according
to the standards of the empirical social sciences and of policy
analysis, against institutional pressures; on these very standards
depended not only the value of my work for the government but
also my personal credibility and reputation as a researcher
among fellow researchers and in the public media, and the recognition
my evaluation reports or policy proposals received by the public
health or social welfare programs and institutions concerned.
At the same time, if my work was to be used as a basis for the
government's decision making, it needed to observe the very
different logic of the political-administrative system, which
tended to value the results of my research according to the
political pressures and opportunities of the day rather than
its intrinsic merits. Thus, while the political and bureaucratic
logic constantly resisted my professional claim to, and need
for, independence with respect to working methods and judgment,
my own professional logic obliged me to insist that I was entitled,
and indeed obliged, to formulate critical findings and conclusions
no less than positive ones, unwelcome as they might be. The
result was a somewhat unstable balance that often but not always
allowed for my research findings and conclusions to be published,
more or less completely and with more or less appreciation,
while institutional selectivity made sure only those results
were flowing into the political-administrative process of decision
making which were not seen as too "disturbing." In
some cases, the institutional logic at work meant that unwelcome
results were misunderstood as a case of disloyalty rather than
disinterested service, and consequently that the messenger tended
to be accused of causing the bad news that he reported.
Generally
speaking, the situation is somewhat paradoxical. The institutional
logic of clients, whether it is of a political-administrative,
bureaucratic-managerialist or marketing-consumerist type, makes
them forget that professional intervention serves them precisely
because and to the extent its rationality is different
– and independent. Because it is independent, its method of
working and its results do not follow the institutional logic
of the client. Because its rationality differs, it can make
a difference – and "disturb." Thus it is ultimately
the very "third logic" that makes professional intervention
valuable in the first place, which also causes it to be seen
as a disruptive factor. In the client's institutional logic that
often means the professional's efforts and results need to be controlled and weakened, rather than supported
and strengthened.
My
impression is that the sociologists' traditional emphasis on
the distinct motivation, role and function of professionals
within an apparently clear-cut division of labor in the occupational
system and institutional framework of modern society, tends
to underestimate the difficulties and pressures that professionals
face in the real world of working for and with corporate and
governmental organizations. In any case, it appears to have
the lasting effect that the proper use of professional expertise,
its value and limitations, is not always well understood by
the larger public, no more than by decision makers and professionals
themselves. In particular, there are reasons to doubt whether characterizing
the professional's role in terms of disinterested
or altruistic service, as distinguished from the self-interested or
strategic orientation of other roles such as (ideal-typically)
those of the politician, the entrepreneur or the manager, is conducive to understanding
the essence of good professional practice. Real-world practice
rarely
allows us to separate professional, political and administrative
functions neatly along these lines, for at least two basic reasons.
The first reason builds on Parson's and Freidson's sociological perspective,
the second considers the ethical implications of professional
intervention.
The
sociological argument: Sociologically
speaking, professionalism essentially owes its rise and
importance to the same institutional framework that
has brought forth the capitalist market economy and
the bureaucratic modern state. To
secure its success, professionalism needs to be "successful"
not only according to its own standards but equally
according to the requirements and pressures of the institutional
environment within which it works, in particular the
specific corporate cultures and values of client organizations
but also the larger institutional framework of society,
including legal and bureaucratic requirements, political
mechanisms, and commercial imperatives. The pursuit
of professional activity thus needs to be seen as subject
to largely the same institutional conditions as those
which in a particular society and domain of application
govern politics and business, for example, institutional
requirements and incentives defined by "the market,"
by the need for "capital realization" and economic
growth, by vested interests, party politics, the media, the
internal dynamic and micro-politics of bureaucracy, hierarchical and clique structures
in organizations, and so on.
This
circumstance suggests that "disinterestedness"
is perhaps not quite as fundamental a criterion as is
traditionally assumed for understanding what distinguishes
good professional practice from good political, entrepreneurial
and managerial practice. A more fundamental criterion
may be seen in the professional's awareness (or
alertness, reflective stance, critical distance, etc.) regarding the institutional
patterns at work, along with the worldviews, values, and interests
that shape them and which put pressure on
professionals to adapt to them, whether consciously
or not. In view of such institutional pressures, perhaps
a better word to describe the special personal quality that
we expect of professionals is integrity. Professionals will not
always be in a situation that would allow them to remain entirely
disinterested and neutral (i.e., objective and impartial); but
they may still be expected to maintain their personal
and professional integrity in handling such pressures,
that is, to preserve a basic independence of judgment and, where
necessary, to disclose the conditioned nature of their findings
and conclusions to all the parties concerned.
A
second conclusion is that any claims to "good practice" need
to be
understood and examined against the background of the
institutional rationalities and pressures at work, and of the selectivity
of the professional's judgments and concerns they may entail.
In one phrase, it is never a bad idea to check professional
findings and conclusions for possible effects of what I have
described, inspired by Offe's (1972, pp. 65-78) analysis of
structural selectivity in the capitalist system, as institutional
selectivity (see Ulrich, 1983, pp. 149f and 395-400). Professional
disinterestedness cannot preclude or overcome institutional
selectivity. Hence, professionals cannot credibly claim, by
referring to their professional detachment and ethos of service,
objectivity in the sense that no institutional selectivity
would have influenced their findings,
and thus that their intervention does not effectively (though perhaps not deliberately)
serve particular interests while harming or neglecting others. The only basis for such claims
is an empirical examination of the actual consequences of
an intervention. What professionals should strive for and
are entitled to claim, however, is professional integrity
in handling institutional selectivity, by undertaking a
systematic effort to examine and uncover the way it may influence
their assumptions and results.
The
ethical argument: Ethically
speaking, serving the interests of others in a "disinterested"
rather than "self-interested" way is still
a form of "interested" action; for its rationality
is still oriented to the particular interests of some
people – usually those
involved – rather than to the general interest of all
those potentially concerned. An ethos of service always
raises the question, service to whom and to whom not? This
ethical argument is somewhat parallel to the previous sociological
argument but is independent of it. The concern it addresses
is the unavailability of comprehensive rationality rather
than the unavoidability of institutional selectivity; it
is of a methodological rather than sociological nature.
Accordingly it needs to be considered regardless of whether
in a specific context of professional intervention there
actually are some institutional pressures at work. Even
where not only self-serving
motives on the part of the professional but also institutional
pressures are wholly absent, such ideal circumstances would
still not imply that the interests of all those concerned
are given due and fair consideration. The motivational
difference between the professional's disinterested, altruistic
or in any case value-neutral, ethos
of service and the manager's or politician's self-interested
selectivity does not overcome the dilemma at issue, namely, that no
action can serve all interests equally at the same time.
Even in the best conceivable professional practice,
conflicts of interest or of commitment can rarely be
fully avoided (cf., e.g., Werhane and Doering, 1995).
The crucial conjecture from
an ethical perspective is that there are always options for defining
relevant standards of improvement, as well as for selecting
conforming means, assessing
possible consequences
and side-effects imposed on third parties, and identifying
legitimate
stakeholders to be involved. It follows that ethical
issues arise in all professional intervention, regardless
of personal motivation, institutional conditions, and
the technical and administrative competence deployed
in choosing and implementing means. References to a stance
of professional objectivity and neutrality, or to an
absence of self-serving motives and institutional pressures, do not supersede the need for systematic examination
and discussion of these ethical issues. Accordingly
insufficient it is methodologically to conceive of the
rationality of professional intervention solely in terms
of disinterested and value-neutral, or even altruistic,
instrumental action.
The
normative core of all practice What
the above two arguments against the role given to professional
disinterestedness for good practice have in common is that they
both point to an
unavoidable normative core of professional practice.
There is thus a need for examining this core in each
specific case of professional intervention, as well as for understanding
its general methodological implications. Without such an effort,
we cannot hope to fully understand
what good professional practice means. It follows that the conventional
account of professionalism in terms of the discussed, peculiar combination of "technical" competence
regarding means with a simultaneous "disinterested"
stance or value
neutrality regarding ends, is insufficient. It cannot grasp the normative
core of good practice, much less help professionals in dealing with
it systematically and critically.
As
a last comment on this issue, there is of course a valuable
self-critical moment in the idea of professional
self-limitation to an instrumental kind of competence. Likewise,
an ethos of disinterested rather than self-interested service
is a true and indispensable professional virtue. I do appreciate
both ideas. But to appreciate an idea correctly, we also need
to see its limitations. As the sociological and the ethical
arguments outlined above should make clear, conceiving of professional competence in
terms of a "technical" responsibility for means only is not
good enough to secure good
practice. How should practice make sure it is "good"
if it has no methodological conception of its own value content
and hence, no systematic way to appreciate its own normative
implications and what they may mean for those who have to live
with the consequences? A better starting point for critical and responsible
practice, it seems to me, is to acknowledge that all professional
intervention tends to have consequences
that concern different people in different ways, and that
the choice of means shapes these consequences no less than the
choice of ends. Good and competent practice, then, must
not turn a blind eye to its own normative content, read its
consequences for all the parties concerned (including those
not involved), regardless of whether they are rooted in the
ends pursued or in the means deployed. Philosophically and methodologically
speaking, we need to deal more carefully with the inextricable
interdependence and ethical relevance of both means and ends.
Let us, then, turn to a core philosophical and methodological
issue of good practice, concerning the relationship of means
and ends in the quest for rationality. This relates to the second of the "two strong assumptions"
mentioned at the outset, regarding the separability of decisions on ends and decisions on means.
Means
and ends in good practice Many professionals
shy away from a notion of professional
competence that would include its normative core in addition
to its technical core, as such a notion obviously entails questions of value
judgment and ethical responsibility. They have learned in their training that a good professional,
not unlike a good scientist, maintains a stance of professional objectivity and neutrality,
a requirement that (they assume) is more easily met by restricting
themselves to the choice of adequate means for reaching "given"
ends while avoiding questions related to the choice of ends,
as ends are not theirs to judge. The question
is, is this true? Does such a narrower, science-oriented concept of professional competence
really "avoid" value judgments in the positive sense
of securing objectivity or of resolving the issue in some other
ways, or might it merely avoid them in the
negative sense of turning a blind eye on the unavoidably normative
content of all practice?
The
answer, I would argue, is neither simply black nor simply white
but involves some shades of gray. Professional expertise
undoubtedly has a role to play that primarily addresses questions
related to the choice of means rather than ends. Professionals
may be expected to rely first of all on empirical knowledge, theoretical understanding, and
analytical skills rather than on value judgments. But why exactly?
It is important in this context that readers
gain a clear and precise understanding of the methodological
connection between a "technical" concept of competence
and the "scientific" aspect of a focus on the choice
of means. Most people assume that there is some such a connection,
without however being able to explain it accurately.
Applied
science and the means-end scheme: Why and in what way
exactly does a scientific stance imply a focus on means? The
crucial question is how far the selection of means, unlike that
of ends, can and needs to rely
on empirical knowledge, theoretical understanding, and
analytical skills rather than on value judgments. Methodologically
speaking, this is so inasmuch as the identification and implementation of good means is logically
equivalent to the transformation of knowledge into "what-if"
kinds of statements. We thereby translate empirical statements
that involve theoretical hypotheses – more exactly, causal
or statistical statements of the kind "Given circumstances
Y, event X regularly produces effect Z" – into instrumental propositions,
that is, technical prescriptions as to what needs to
be done if a certain effect is to be achieved: "To
produce effect Z, bring about event X under circumstances Y!"
The transformation as such (and this is the important point)
involves no value judgments. Its
validity only depends on analytical correctness and empirical
corroboration, in that the stated relationship between
X, Y and Z must lend itself to
empirical reproduction so that both statements can be said to be "true"
and furthermore, relying on them for practical action can be said to be "rational."
The underlying concept of rationality
remains the same, in that both kinds of statements are expressions of
theoretical rationality. Both can be assessed scientifically,
by means of theoretical explanation and empirical testing. Because
instrumental reasoning can thus be based in theory and science,
it lends itself to a science-based notion of expertise
and professional competence. We may conclude that inasmuch
as professional competence relies on instrumental reasoning,
a science-based notion of competence is useful – no more, no
less.
Professional
practice goes beyond applied science: The above "inasmuch"
implies that such a science-based notion of expertise and
professional competence, useful as it its, is insufficient. An obvious
first objection is that not all fields of professional activity are
as close to empirical science as are, for example, engineering,
medicine, economic analysis, evaluation research, and others; the legal and teaching professions may
serve as counter examples, but also architecture, social planning,
social work, or psychotherapy.
Professional competence reaches beyond applied science. The
rationality of that "beyond" cannot be explained in
the terms of science theory.
A
second objection is that professional practice, even in those
disciplines which are relatively close to empirical science,
does not take place in the laboratory of the scientist, nor
in the lecture room of the theorist. As soon as we turn to applying
the conclusions gained by the (avowedly value-free) technological
transformation of empirical into instrumental propositions,
the normative core of practice creeps back in, as it were. There
is no way to keep practice "pure" in the sense of
relying on what-if statements only, with the "whats"
standing for value-free selections of means and the "ifs"
for ends that fall outside the researcher's or professional's
boundaries of concern (and for this reason, unlike the means,
can safely be avowed to be value laden). The earlier-advanced
"ethical argument" applies: the choice of means,
no less than that of ends, has consequences that may affect
different people differently. Hence, although the choice of
efficient means can as such rely on a merely "technological"
transformation of knowledge into what-if statements and to that
precise extent can be justified in terms of "applied science,"
the implementation of these what-if statements in specific contexts
of application cannot be so justified. The "pure"
character of what-if hypotheses gets lost the moment we implement
them and thereby produce specific consequences for the different
parties concerned. The purely
analytic nature of the transformation in question thus furnishes
no compelling argument as to why good professional practice could and should
exhaust itself in a merely "technical" notion of competence,
a focus on means according to the means-end scheme.
The
means-end scheme is faulty! A third objection is methodologically
even more fundamental: the focus on instrumental
reasoning and rationality – the professional's self-limitation
to the selection of means – does not buy as much immunity from
value judgments as is generally assumed. This is so
because the crucial underlying concept, the so-called
means-ends scheme, is faulty. It assumes that means and
ends are philosophically distinct categories and accordingly
can be handled independently from one another. This assumption
relies on the idea that the two tasks of justifying means and
justifying ends require different forms of reasoning. To some
extent, as we just have seen, this is true. Selecting
means raises primarily questions of technique, strategy, and economics,
whereas selecting ends raises primarily questions of ethics, morality,
and legitimacy. But to some extent, it is false and lends itself
to uncritical employment. The mistaken assumption is that all normative issues
of practice can be associated
with the selection of ends, whereas the selection of means can
be kept free of value implications. Once the ends have been chosen, so
goes the reasoning, adequate
means can be determined in a value-free or at
least value-neutral ("disinterested") manner, as they
simply "serve" the ends previously chosen on avowedly
normative grounds. But what at first glance looks like
a clear-cut distinction turns out to be far less clear in practice.
While
it is true that the selection of means requires theoretical
and instrumental knowledge and to that precise extent can be
grounded in science and expertise, it does
not follow that professional practice can select, justify, and
implement adequate means free of any value judgments.
Rationality
cannot be divided up along these lines. Yet another
way to state the same conclusion is this: Not
even the most rational selection of means, grounded
in perfect theoretical and instrumental expertise (which
ensures the chosen means are reliable, effective and efficient),
can secure good results if thus-chosen means are used
to promote questionable ends. Questionable ends achieved
by rational means amount to a questionable kind of rationality.
Efficiency is rational only to the extent it promotes
well-chosen and justified ends; otherwise, it implies
not a gain but a loss of over-all rationality.
The efficacy (effectiveness and efficiency) of means is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for claiming their rationality. And finally,
even where the ends are generally agreed and entirely
beyond reasonable questioning, it remains a fact that practice
virtually always confronts us with options. Ends can be achieved by different means; but different
means for reaching one and the same end may have different consequences
for different people and thus confront us with normative
questions as to whose concerns should be given priority.
Conclusion:
towards a two-dimensional
concept of rational practice There is no way,
in practice, to keep the choice of means, however rationally
arguable they may be with respect to their efficacy, entirely free of normative content. Limiting one's professional
efforts to the choice and implementation of means simply does not do
the trick. It is not possible to avoid values, wordviews, and all
subjectivity
whatsoever by associating the normative content of professional
practice with the choice of ends only and then focusing safely
on the choice of means. Means, just like ends, have consequences.
Means matter,
they have a normative content of their own.
We
can see it in TV debates and hear it on the bus: in real-world
problem solving and decision making, the selection of means is often more in
dispute than that of ends. How could this be so if the means-end scheme
had got it right? The contrary is true: because
means are value-laden, and because there are always options
for choosing them even when the end to be reached is given and
generally agreed, the disputes get stronger the more they focus
on means. They become more emotional, and the ethical issues involved become
more difficult (just think of nuclear power plants as a means
to produce sufficient electricity for everyone).
We
can easily agree that our societies should offer
all young people educational chances according to their talents;
that wordwide economic disparities should be reduced and poverty
and malnutrition should be eradicated; and that electricity
should be produced in ways that do not cause further global
warming. But
we cannot so easily agree, despite all the professional expertise
available, about what kinds of educational opportunities, economic
policies, and poverty-fighting programs might be the best and
should be deployed, or about the options (nuclear, fossil, renewable,
energy saving) for securing a sufficient supply of electricity.
The
reason is, of course, that different means to reach these general
ends amount to different notions of improvement, and ultimately
to different notions of what kind of societies and global society
we want to live in.
Different means amount to different specific
ends, which is just another way of saying they have normative
implications of their own. (Take again the debate about energy policy
options: they weight different ends, such as minimizing
the cost of energy production, preserving oil reserves for future
generations, fighting the process of
global warming, or avoiding incalculable health risks for present
and future generations, differently.) The two categories
of ends and means cannot be separated nearly as neatly as the
means-end scheme stipulates. Counter to what it
assumes, ends and means are not substantially distinct categories (Ulrich,
1983, p. 72). There is something wrong, then, with
the idea that all normative questions raised by professional
practice can be associated with the choice of ends, so that
once the ends have been chosen in legitimate ways, expertise can
inform us "objectively" about the best means to be
used without involving further (and essential) value judgments.
(For fuller discussion of the methodological
inadequacy of the means end-scheme, see
Ulrich, 1983, pp. 67-79; 2001, pp. 9-11; 2006b, pp. 7-18;
and 2007, pp. 2-8).
The
conclusion is inevitable: professionals cannot, by limiting
themselves to a technical concept of competence, avoid value judgments.
Yet this is precisely what the means-end scheme, and the prevailing
concepts of expertise and professionalism built on it, imply.
To the extent professionals do try to avoid value
judgments on this basis, they risk "avoiding" them merely in the sense of turning
a blind eye on them. The implication is not a gain but a loss
of competence.
In the terms familiar to regular readers
of the Bimonthly, we risk relying on a concept of rationality
that reduces practical to merely instrumental reason. But such
an impoverished concept
of rationality cannot help us in dealing reasonably with the
non-instrumental, genuinely normative
side of practice. Yet it is precisely those non-instrumental
issues which regularly confront us all – whether as decision-makers,
professionals, or citizens – with the most difficult and
most contested issues.
It
should be clear, then, that a well-understood quest for good
professional practice must not rely one-sidedly on the pursuit
of instrumental reason and hence, on a merely "technical"
understanding of professional competence. Rather, a two-dimensional
concept of rational practice is required, in which practice
is considered rational to the extent it is grounded in "good"
reasons for its practical-normative as well as for its theoretical-instrumental
presuppositions and implications. Thus-understood, competent
practice will need to identify and unfold the value implications
of alternative means as well as their underlying assumptions
of fact. Conversely, it will need to examine the assumptions of fact and
feasibility in the choice of ends as
well as their underlying values and specific notions of improvement. In sum, it will
need to deal systematically with both the normative and the
empirical content of proposals. This is what a two-dimensional
notion of rational practice is all about: practice either is
rational in both the theoretical and the practical dimension
of reason, or it is not rational at all. In good practice, theoretical
and practical reason come together.
It
is imperative, therefore, that competent practitioners understand
the concept of practical reason. How can good practice
strengthen practical along with instrumental reason,
rather than relying on a systematic neglect of either dimension
of reason? This question will be in the center
of the next, second part of this essay. So long!
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