How to analyse professional responsibility in a climate of
accountability? - towards a conceptual framework.
1Tomas Englund and Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke
tomas.englund@oru.se
, Department of Education
Örebro University
toneso@ped.uio.no
Institute for Nursing and Health Science,
University of Oslo
DRAFT in progress – not to be quoted without authors’ permission
1 Paper presented at the European Conference of Educational Research (ECER) in Vienna, 28-30 September 2009 at the Network 2; Vocational education and Training (VETNET)
Introduction
In May (13-15) 2009 the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported the following story regarding nurses. It said: Nurses employed by a private company who were also contracted by the public authorities for medical care in Stockholm, and were giving patients advices on the phone, were offered higher salaries if they managed to finish the telephone consultation in less than 3 minutes and 48 seconds. The news instantly led to sharp mass reactions and protests – a reaction to which the managers for the private company
immediately responded. They decided to withdraw their offer. The background for the decision was also said to be based on responses got in a survey among the nurses in which a majority reacted negatively to the idea. Their perceptions were that such a scheme generated stress with potential also to have a negative impact on the quality of advice. In rejecting such monetary incentives, was the majority of nurses saying no to this ‘accountability’ system while articulating their beliefs and using their voice of ‘professional responsibility’? At the same time there was an ongoing debate in the trade union paper for Swedish teachers at the comprehensive school Lärarnas tidning, 7 2009, based on teachers’ complains about the increasing demands of documentation that ‘stole’ important time (and energy) from preparing lessons and contact with students. Similar discussions are going in the Norwegian context as well.
At a minimum, we argue that this example from Sweden illustrates possible tensions in the concepts of accountability and professional responsibility concerning professional practice. The cases of teaching and nursing are particularly interesting as both professions play an important role as gatekeepers of the welfare state, and there are similarities between Sweden and Norway, countries in which we plan a forthcoming research project on the learning and formation of professional responsibility in nursing and teaching. Both countries are parts of the ‘social democratic’ culture of Scandinavia in which the professions of nursing and
teaching administer huge public resources, interpret regulations, distribute goods and interfere in people’s lives (Brint 1994, Eriksen, Grimen og Molander 2008). We may, then, with reference to the examples above ask what is at stake? For whom and what are professionals responsible? To whom are professionals to account?
We know from previous research in varied professional fields and national settings, that there is no simple answer to how professional responsibility is conceived and worked out in
practice. The influence from a local work context (Abbott 1983; Broadfoot et al 1988; Colnerud 2009; Gardner et al 2001; Nygren & Fauske 2004; Oma Ohnstad 2008; Solbrekke 2008a) as well as historical traditions, norms and values underlying national policy making seemingly impact individual conceptions of professional responsibility. Acknowledging cultural and contextual differences, is it then possible to define a normative definition of professional responsibility – as a guiding reference for studies on professional responsibility in nursing and teaching?
Nurses and teachers as social trustee professionals in a field of force
To a significant extent the quality of modern societies depends on various professions as providers of welfare and development (Grimen 2008). However, it has been argued that professionals’ responsibility for civic engagement has declined. For example, Steven Brint (1994) argues cogently that, most professionals’ conceptions of moral aims, professional responsibility, as well as their understanding of the purpose and societal role of the professions, have narrowed considerably to purely cognitive and technical dimensions of professional work and responsibilities. According to Brint there has been a historical
professionalism, which he defines as “social trustee” professionalism to more self-oriented and utilitarian considerations where the basis of professionalism is the expertise of technical knowledge. There is today a stronger emphasis on ensuring innovation and economic growth in society than on the moral and social dimensions of work. It has also been argued that this lack of collective orientation is partly a result of the global ideas of increased consumerism, flexibility, individualisation and efficiency, by what many is identified as a consequence of a new-liberal ideology (Sennett 1998).
As part of the reaction to an increasing mistrust due to unacceptable professional behaviour and also as a reaction to the lack of presumed efficiency delivered by the professions, politicians and bureaucrats have introduced and developed a governing means; “systems of accountability”, in order to ensure that professionals are loyal to the predefined political and economic goals. More restrictive demands for greater externally prescribed accountability have been developed in order to ensure that professionals use their competence in relation to the goals defined by the (new public) management agents, and in order to get better control of the money spent on the professional work. This externally driven accountability agenda is motivated by a belief that quality of professional work will be enhanced in the interest of the public through the adoption of various accounting mechanisms (Dubnick 2006). The
underlying idea is to develop control systems making professionals’ performances more transparent. According to Dubnick, there is a lack of research proving that the new systems of accountability ‘work’ in accordance with the intentions, yet there is a strong ‘belief’ in the system (ibid). However, social researchers in varied fields are starting to question the
consequences of politicians’ belief in the ‘audit society’ (Power 1997) and the mechanism and function of ‘accountability’ as a guarantee for the quality of professional work in the interest of a well functioning welfare system (Dubnick 2006).
It is argued, therefore, that we need more research on the consequences of these mechanisms of accountability and their implications for professional work (cf. Svensson 2008). We have to gain more insight into how the concepts of professional responsibility and accountability are conceived, developed and practiced by politicians, bureaucrats and professional agents in a time when logics such as managerialism, entrepeneurship and market oriented thinking has increasingly intruded the field of professions. In our view, these issues are related to the overall question of the role of professions in society, and to what purpose professionals should be dedicated. Thus we have to critically discuss how current conditions for professional work linked to demands of accountability challenge the classical normative ideas of professional moral and social responsibility (Brint & Levy 1999).
With these considerations in place, it is appropriate to articulate the main aim of this paper. It is an attempt to contribute to the clarification on professional responsibility in the sense that we will focus attention to and elaborate on the concepts of ‘accountability’ and professional ‘responsibility’ in relation to each other. By putting professional responsibility in a climate of
accountability in the title, we preliminary indicate a possible tension between the concepts of
professional ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’. It is assumed that current politics and use of accountability put the moral and social aspects of responsibility under jeopardy. From an empirical point of view, we are interested in investigating if and how the ideal of social trustee-professionalism and ‘collectivity-orientation’ is threatened by more management oriented forms of accountability and individual ‘self-realisation’ implying new demands on the individual professional. The following questions have been guiding our approach:
- How to develop a clarifying conceptual framework for the analysis of professional responsibility?
- Is there something to learn from making the conceptual distinction / kind of dichotomy between professional ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ in practice – or is it merely a rhetorical question?
Method
The approach we have chosen towards a clarification of what we may characterise as the “possibility” for professional responsibility in a climate of accountability, is inspired by pragmatism in the sense that we try to expose the ongoing struggle over and shifting meanings of the two concepts. In recent decades these concepts are also more often used
interchangeably. We are not searching for exact and definite meanings of the two concepts, as they are understood historically, socially and culturally constructed.. Our aim is rather to point to the possible consequences and specific challenges we encounter when using the
conceptions interchangeably in the field of professionalism by showing how these different concepts are located and given different meanings in different discourses or
conceptual constellations (Cherryholmes 1988; Rochberg-Halton 1986; Skinner 1988, 2002 cf. Englund & Quennerstedt 2008). All concepts, Skinner (1988) argues, gain their meaning from the place they occupy within a conceptual scheme, and when the meaning of a word is changed, its relationship to an entire
vocabulary is changed.
We intend to show how the two concepts have different origins and have developed within different traditions and contexts giving them different meanings even if they happen to be used interchangeably rhetorically. We will argue that the notion of professional responsibility relates to a conception of modernity and the moral and social ideas of classical
professionalism in which the meaning of community and solidarity is related to ideas the “public” (Brint 1994; Durkheim 1957/2001; Parsons 1951, 1968, cf. Englund 2008). Professional accountability, on the other hand has been elaborated in closer links to the movement of New Public Management in which we find ideas closer associated with individualism, flexibility, competitions and efficiency. Therefore, the concepts are
conventionally carrying different meanings grounded in different sets of relations that often can be characterized in dichotomies like collective-individual, public-private, and within different organizational structures, different degrees of professions’ autonomy and space for professional judgement with consequences for the responsibility relations to respective counterparts as for example students for teachers and patients for nurses.
We will elaborate this kind of analysis in various ways below and in doing so, we will draw on several sources to build a platform for the conceptual framework against which
conceptions and practices of professional responsibility in nursing and teaching will be analysed. We employ classical ideas of professionalism stemming from Durkheim and Parsons as well as more recent theories and empirical research. In the clarifying discussion on the distinctions between the concepts of responsibility and accountability we also make use of sociological perspectives and political science and even etymological definitions as found in newer dictionaries. For the problematizing of professional responsibility in current societies, we also utilize moral philosophical perspectives. Empirical studies on professionals’
conceptions of professional responsibility will provide us with most important knowledge on how responsibility is understood in practice. Starting out from the perspectives and data presented we will introduce arguments on how to deal with the complexity of professional responsibility.
We are self-consciously aware of the different cultural and contextual conditions framing the theories and perspectives we utilize for elaborating and developing a conceptual framework. For example, the conditions of professional education and work life in Scandinavian still differ from the North American system in matters of organisation and governance (cf. Clark 1983; Bleikli et al. 2000). There are profound differences between the prevalent “social democratic” culture of Scandinavian countries, and the liberal and conservative opinions dominating North American tradition, in the governance of professions and higher education (Brint 1994). For instance, relatively coherent welfare-oriented and egalitarian attitudes are more established both within higher education and among professionals in Scandinavia than in North America. There is also a broad influence of state mediation regulating work in Norway and Sweden (Johnson 1972).
However, theories and empirical findings from Anglo-American settings seem to gain
increased relevance also in Scandinavian contexts. The tradition of a strong non-profit public-service sector has been challenged – as the Swedish example in the introduction indicates. In recent years, a demand for increased privatisation of public services in health care and education has evolved (Heggen & Wellard 2004, Svensson & Karlsson 2008). In addition, The Bologna process, starting out from the declaration in1999 which aims at being a binding commitment for higher education policy in Europe uses a language putting emphasis on the need for expertise and flexibility and the utilitarian interest of education in order to ensuring economic strength and competitiveness through the production of skilled workers (Karseth 2008). Seemingly, the new trends indicate a profound shift from the “old” classical ideas of professionalism (cf. Brint 1994) toward a “new” content of the normative dimensions of professional work and professional education (Solbrekke 2008b). The cultural and moral dimensions of professionalism, implied in the moral ideas of “social trustee professionalism” (Brint 1994) or “civic professionalism” (Sullivan 2005) are less visible than the obvious economic interests in the new rhetoric of professionalism and higher education and its preparation of future professionals in both American and European contexts (Skinner 1999). In the following we will elaborate the ideas and research which constitute our main reference frame in the discussion on ‘professional responsibility’ and ‘accountability’. We aim at making the elaboration and discussion as transparent and eligible as possible by
distinguishing between these two concepts in which we see some tendencies, however ambiguous, and we will ‘use’ the assumed tension between the two concepts to show the inner dynamics of this tension.
The normative dimensions of professional responsibility
As introduced above, traditionally professions have been agreed to play an important role as mediators between individual citizens and the state in most western democratic societies (Durkheim 1957/2001; Parsons 1968). Durkheim (1933, 1957/2001) promoted a strong belief that the professionals’ role in society is to safeguard democracy by acting as mediators between the state and the individual citizens (Turner 2001). In his view the purpose of professionalism would have a moralising effect by upholding purposes and motives beyond the utilitarian goals of the market place. This is the moral and political dimension of
professionalism characterised by Steven Brint (1994) as ‘social trustee professionalism’. Such a normative claim of the professions requires professionals who are able to perform with judgment and discretion in knowledge and skill and a sense of professional morality and integrity emphasising the responsibility for their practice and its consequences for their clients as well as the public interest (Brint 1994; Freidson 2001; Sullivan 2005).
However, the neoliberal economic agenda that includes competition, choice and privatisation seems to have put professions as well as individual professionals under a constant pressure of efficiency and accountability, implying a need to adapt to a more competitive world while they also are required to meet the needs of patients, students and local communities.
Evidently, this is a condition that often creates dilemmas for professionals, and an observed consequence is the move away from the collective-orientation towards more individualism and utilitarian interests among professionals (Brint 1994, Gardner et al 2001). In light of this, there is, in our mind necessary to investigate how professionals in non-profit sectors, such as nurses and teachers both in practice and in the professional training, learn about, develop conceptions of, and live out their professional responsibility in practice.
Conceptualising ‘professional responsibility’ and ‘accountability’
‘Professional responsibility’ is a concept which on a normative and general level appears to be relatively unambiguous. It connotes to the traditional idea of professionalism of dedicating specialised knowledge and skills for serving the good of others and to the
social/institutionalised claims of accountability of professions as being gatekeepers of the welfare state (Bertilsson 1990, Durkheim 1957/2001; Freidson 2001; Gardner 2008; Grimen 2008; Parsons 1968; Sullivan 2005). However, when digging into the concept, we find that that ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ is often used interchangeably, yet with different meanings depending on the interest of the stakeholders defining it (Valor 2006). This causes problems of clarification while it also suggests different orientations depending on what is at stake and given priority. A typical example is the possible conflict of interest between health governments and the individual nurse in what is seen as ‘best practice’ of elderly people and the tension between the caring for the individual patient against the concern for more patients. Evidently, then, when ‘professional responsibility’ appears as a relatively clear normative mandate on an overall level, it becomes a slippery concept in ‘real world’ settings when trying to operationalize it in practice (Solbrekke & Heggen in press). What it means to act
professionally responsible becomes a complex matter not least because we today live in a time of pluralism representing a ‘jungle’ of plural expectations and conflicting ideas of how to deliver the best service to each citizen and at the same time taking into account collective concerns (Barnett 1997; Sullivan 2005). When accountability ideas embedded in concepts like ‘efficiency’, ‘competitiveness’ and ‘consumers’ interests’ are increasingly intruding the language of professionalism, the moral dimension of professionalism becomes contested and elusive and may thrust professionals into an utilitarian attitude at the expense of the moral claims.
Is there a risk then, that for example nurses and teachers may be thrust towards more accountable, ‘economically’ based priorities in order to live up to the claims of efficiency? Are there any reasons for this concern? We will, by tracing the underlying ideas of the
concepts of responsibility and accountability, discuss the possible implications when using the concepts interchangeably. In our view, we need to investigate and consciously interrogate what, in line with which has up to now been developed, may be called the ideology behind the two concepts in order to constitute a moral base of professionalism (Sockett 1993) that may function as a guide for each professional in the more and more complex work life (cf. May 1996).
The roots / origins of ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’.
In his opening speech on the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg from 26 August–4 September 2002 in terms of the evolving definition of
cooporate citizenship, United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan raised the idea of ‘responsibility’ as a guiding principle of the Summit: ‘If there is one . . . concept that
embodies everything that we hope to achieve here in Johannesburg, it is responsibility!’
(Annan 2002 in Hamann, Acutt & Kapelus 2003, p. 33). Why did Annan not use the concept ’accountability’ in this connection? Might this be an appeal to pay specific attention to moral and social actions embedded in being ‘responsible’?
We do not know if Annan’s use of responsibility was a result of a deliberate and conscious process. But if it was, it might be related to the fact that despite the good intentions of accountability; to ensure good governance and ‘public accountability’, the concept today seems to connote more to ‘accounting’ to external control systems than to the needed moral dimension of individual and civic responsibility implied in the concept of ‘responsibility’? And if so, what has happened to the good intentions of accountability? In order to approach the problem, we will turn to in the historical development of the two concepts in order to understand today’s practices.
Historically, the concept of accountability is closely related to the practice of accounting. According to Dubnick (2002: 7-9 in Bovens 2005: 183) it stems from bookkeeping in the days of William I. In 1065 he required all property holders to render a count of what they
possessed. Today, however, accountability has moved far beyond this meaning but is still increasingly associated with being responsible for delivering good and efficient services and being accountable to the public. In modern political discourse, ‘accountability’ holds promises of fair and equitable governance and can be seen as a “social relationship in which an actor
feels an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct to some significant other”
(ibid: 184). The function of strategies deployed by the ‘accountability movement’ is to reduce the ambiguity of professional practice by obliging professionals to adhere to, and be
accountable for, prescriptive policy standards of quality and making their judgements and performance transparent to the public (Hoyle & Wallace 2009). While this is a legitimate aspiration, there is also a risk that too much focus on efficiency, flexibility, and transparency reduce accountability to a set of managerial requirements at the expense of a holistic
professional responsibility (Bovens 2005). The ‘autonomy’ of the professions has frequently been accompanied by goals and standards of quality defined by politicians resulting in
demands for greater ‘oversight’, ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ (Dubnick 2006; Svensson 2008). Collegial standards defined by the respective professions to which each professional had to be responsible, and answer to, are subsequently substituted by control of performance of in-service work in accordance to predefined criteria defined by politicians or other
stakeholders outside the profession.
Thus, it is not the concept of accountability that causes the problem - it is rather the politics of the new forms of accountability that challenge the moral implications of a professional responsibility. To find support for this argument, we have to interrogate why the system of accountability is somewhat problematic in regards to acting professionally responsible. For this purpose, we will elaborate further on the distinction between ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’.
Distinctions between responsibility and accountability
Dictionaries provide some helpful nuances between ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’. In Thesaurus we find that key synonyms for ‘responsibility’ are trustworthiness, capacity, dependability and reliability. Concepts associated to responsibility include trust, capability, judgement and choice. On the other hand, key definitions of ‘accountability’ include
answerability, blame, liability and obligation (http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/ responsibility, accessed July 05, 2009). Accountability emphasises the duty to account for one’s actions and involves what is rendered to another. Responsibility is a moral obligation taken on by one self, or bestowed upon a person to be used, as for example in nursing to be and act for the other (Martinsen 2006). As followed from this, responsibility involves ‘doing’ whereas accountability involves ‘reporting’, and perhaps it is the obligation to act Annan had in mind when he used ‘responsibility’?
’Responsibility’ as a concept presumes a proactive attitude and an approach in which a professional voluntarily takes responsibility for ‘the other’ by involving his or her capacity to act morally responsibly (Martinsen 2006). In the cases of teaching and nursing this
presupposes that teachers and nurses are given the opportunity to act responsibly for their students and patients by leaving them with time and a space for moral action and a ‘room’ in which professional discretion may be conducted. In other words, a teacher or a nurse must be able to listen to and have the capacity to see the needs of his or her student and patient – yet within a broader perspective – in a balance between the needs of the individual and collective concerns. Such a notion of ’professional responsibility’ relies on a mutual trust and respect between the one who has taken the responsibility for the other (the professional agent) and the one who is been taken responsibility for. ’Responsibility’ in this meaning, implies that the professional agent, for instance a teacher or a nurse, has the possibility to, and do deliberate on the different alternatives for action, and is able to argue for his or her decisions in the specific setting from a professional point of view based on a knowledge based grounding as well as moral reasoning. However the actions taken, and their ‘outcome’, are not always measurable in terms of clear and predefined descriptors or indicators. To perform such a responsibility is linked to the sense of freedom, and professionals are trusted, yet also committed, to act in the interest of others (Sullivan 2005) - and the greater freedom, the greater responsibility.
’Accountability’ on the other hand, implies quite different notions. It relates to concepts like accounting and the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable which associates to legal, economic and organisational actions (Svensson 2008). Accountability is bound to a
contractual obligation, and emphasises the duty to answer for your actions to others or society. In such a relation, the professional agent’s actions are to be controlled by evaluating them against predefined measures. In other words, ‘accountability’ orients towards control rather than trust. In this logic, ‘trust’ means relying on measuring and ‘accounting’ through control instruments rather than relying on professional discretion.
It is also from these kinds of distinctions between professional responsibility and
accountability that we can analyse the implications for the (higher) education of teachers and nurses, where the different meanings of these two concepts also give rise to different
educational practices.
- different kinds of readiness for action
Collectively, we may argue that ‘responsibility’ implies a proactive action, an action the professional initiate and voluntarily takes the responsibility for, while ‘accountability’ is a reactive action, it is about reporting on actions and results the professional has to account for to others. Accountability is to a larger degree used as a reaction to unethical professional performance or to what politicians or bureaucrats regard as ‘not good enough’ results. The logic underlying accountability in this sense, is that ‘mechanisms’ of accountability, that are based on clear descriptors and a simplified language that ‘communicates’ well the ‘results’ to
external stakeholders will ensure and enhance the quality of work and thereby the service to the public (Dubnick 2006). However, this kind of governance challenges the classical ideas of professionalism where the individual professional agent is trusted to act in accordance with professional discretion based on professional standards and collegial control (Freidson 2001) – even though the standards may not always be ‘transparent’ and easy to control by external stakeholders.
From the above distinctions, it is tempting to argue that it is more challenging to act
professionally responsibly than accountably. Professionals who are impeccably accountable are recognised by being occupied with acting in accordance with predefined standards and that professionals should not differ from what has been agreed upon, or rather, what is stated in one way or another. In other words, there is less flexibility to circumstances that surround their agreed-upon actions. They are predictable in the sense that they most probably follow the rules rather than using their ‘professional discretion’ to consider how to respond to the needs of an individual or society. Professionals who are characterised as responsible tend to a larger degree to be unpredictable because their decisions are not predetermined but rather dependent on professional deliberation and professional judgements. They are less ‘true’ to common agreements and rules unless these are in accordance with what they consider to be their primary commitment; namely to respond to others’ needs and deliver the best service to clients and society.
Behaving professionally responsible implies, in our view, both actively made personal choices in accordance to a knowledgeable and moral base and reports to the public and individual clients such as patients and students. We do not argue for a nostalgic view on the autonomy of professions, when professionals where held in awe for their special knowledge and did not have to account for their actions or outcomes (Brint 1994; Leraci 2007). We need an ongoing open communication / dialogues and deliberations on what is “best practice”. However, a conscious awareness of the professional responsibility and the capability to deliberate is something that must be established early in professional programmes and continuously renegotiated in working places so that professionals may be supported and encouraged to act professionally responsible. In our mind, future professionals must learn to grasp and realise the dilemmas they will encounter at work, and get the possibility to deliberate on how to make their practice as transparent and trustworthy as possible. Transparency is good in the sense that patients and student and their relatives are allowed to question the practice and services of a professional nurse and teacher. It is legitimate to ask for efficient health care and teaching methods. The problem occurs if public accountability is reduced to “what is measurable”. Then professional values of “respect”, “personal regard”, “competence” and “professional integrity” (indispensable to the exercise of professional judgement and renewal of a
professional identity) can very quickly become compliance, conformity and passivity rather than proactive professional agency (MacBeath 2002, p. 14 in Solbrekke and Sugrue 2009/ in press).
Possible consequences of an increased focus on professional ‘accounting’
There is evidence from a variety of professions that the mechanisms of accountability imposed by versions of new public management have lead to ‘technicisation’ or
‘instrumentalism’ and the reduction or elimination of professional discretion and judgement (Svensson 2008). Thus, for many professionals employed in public services, ‘accountability’ is a concept met with skepticism (Hoyle & Wallace 2009). Current professional life is
increasingly intruded by ‘audit systems’ (Power 1997) which in many respects feels alien to traditional professional practices (Freidson 2001). Mechanisms of accountability (Dubnick
2006), too often implies reporting data to an overall level which the professional agent do not find meaningful or productive for the purpose of professional practice (Svensson 2008). Moreover, many professionals claim that the mechanisms of accounting take up much of their working time, as the example from the teachers in the introduction illustrates. A most
common experience in teaching and nursing is the conflict between an accountability meaning spending time on reporting about class-room activities and students’ scores rather than a professional responsibility meaning engaging with and teach the students, or, as in the case of nurses reporting about the procedures of caring rather than being with and care for the patient. Claims for efficient treatment of more patients may compete with the need to provide a good caring situation for the sick person. For teachers, the need to produce the best results in international comparative educational tests, like PISA and PIRLS, may conflict with the values of “inclusion” and “equivalence” and participation for all students in education. It is questionable, therefore, whether this externally driven accountability agenda provides the most efficient means to enhance the quality of professional work in the interest of the public (Dubnick 2006). There might rather be a danger that accounting what is “economically measurable” becomes privileged over social and moral politics and professional responsibility and ethics are reduced to “efficiency”, often prescribed by not situation-based managerial modes of organising work. Within such a scenario, the moral aspects of responsibility may be jeopardized. While the claims to deliver efficient services are legitimate - professionals are obliged to make their services transparent to the public - there is a risk that governance by the accounting mechanisms reduce the possibilities for professionals to act in accordance with their professional discretion and judgement of what is the best both for their clients and in a perspective of societal welfare and goodness. This may restrict their performance to what is technically, economically and efficiently accountable (Solbrekke & Heggen 2009). This may be understandable strategies in the jungle of expectations characterizing today’s work market – yet not defensible from a professional responsible point of view. Data from a research project within the frame of a Norwegian research project "Power and Democracy"(Vike et al 2002) in which it was envisaged how responsibility was handled at different levels in the health care sector, indicate that quite often professional agents were forced to make decisions which conflicted with their sense of professional responsibility (Kroken 2006). And typically, to many professionals, being held accountable, means being the one who has to bear the blame if they do not meet the goals and criteria defined by politicians or bureaucrats (Bovens 2005).
These examples indicate that if technical reporting in accountability takes too much time and requires too much of a professional agent in his or her daily work it seems to jeopardize the moral dimension embedded in the willingness of the professional to act responsibly. It is argued that the way ‘accountability’ has been practiced within the flow of the global
(“western”) market driven economy and governing through New Public Management seems to have encouraged practices of accounting the “efficiency” and a control of the performance of work (Svensson 2008) rather than encouraging each professional to maintain the content of public accountability as a “social trustee” professional (cf. Brint 2004) and with civic
responsibility (cf. Sullivan 2005)
Tentative conclusion - and what can we learn from making the distinctions?
The profound assumption underlying the discussion in this paper is that individual
conceptions and practices of professional responsibility are results of situated and dynamic practices, influenced by local as well as global discourses. They represent a reflection of ongoing global and normative discourses on professionalism - whereas also they disclose
what is given precedence, what is regarded most important and valuable in a specific work context whilst also indicating who has/have the power to define the standards for qualitatively “good work“(Solbrekke 2008a). Therefore, the empirical approach towards how professional teachers and nurses understand and practice their professional responsibility, have to take into consideration the norms and practices in different situated contexts, while also investigating how professional programmes prepare students for future responsibility.
To be trusted as a competent professionally responsible actor by others, responsibility has to be performed in certain approved ways and it must rely on the individuals’ ability to make moral and self-reflective choices that relate to other people’s needs and interests. In other words, to gain trust, a professional’s intended actions need to be comprehensible, trustworthy, and intelligible to others (Mäkitalo 2002). This means that professionals have to learn the ‘means of representation’; the norms and values that work as instruments in the making of responsible practices (Shotter 1984, p. 28). It involves a gradually increasing familiarity with the situated use of certain kinds of tools and discourses, the norms and values of professional work. What it also involves, is the need to learn to handle multiple conflicts in daily work, learn to develop a critical reasoning (Benner et al 2009) which help each professional to reach ‘legitimate negotiated compromises’ through professional discretion (May 1996). A professional is, due to his or her unique professional expertise, expected to be loyal to the moral obligation of the professional claim; using knowledge to serve others - the individual client as well as the public. However, this does not imply uncritically ‘obedience’ to the delineated professional ethics and norms or unrealistic self-sacrifice on the professional’s part (May 1996:110). Rather it includes the capacity to cope with tensions between societal concerns and individual clients’ interests and also the ability to balance commitments in private life with diverse and multiple requirements of work life. The ability to act in such a way is what characterises responsible professionals. In addition, taking the professional responsibility seriously means letting the moral and societal mandate become the driving force for professional performance while the technical accounting systems should function as a useful tool supporting the main normative dimension of professional work. This is a claim that should concern all professionals, also the academics responsible for professional
education in higher education.
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