The mainstream literature on management fashions assumes that fashions appear and disappear without having lasting effects. This article identifies the conditions under which management fashions become institutionalised and hence entrenched as management practices. Professionalisation is proposed as a mechanism through which fashions can become legitimate and accepted practice. The argument is ...

In the last five years, the Safety Institute of Australia Limited (SIA) has developed and implemented a number of strategies to gain professional recognition for the “generalist occupational health and safety (OHS) professional” in Australia and internationally. Despite a considerable amount of work by the SIA aimed at gaining professional status, there does not appear to have been any publishe...

The term ‘profession’ derives from the Latin word ‘profiteor’ meaning to profess. Professionalisation, is the process whereby a gainful activity moves from the status of ‘occupation’ to the status of ‘profession’. Claims for professional status and the emergence of standards and awards are typical of the journey that occupations make (or attempt to make) towards professionalisation. However, so...

Analysis of the terms profession and professional is problematic, and this limits our understanding of professionalisation as a process. On the one hand, there seem to be no necessary or sufficient criteria to define a professional, yet there are undeniable status markers between existing professions. This paper suggests that confusion arises because of the legacy of naïve functionalism. Naïve ...

Overall, the findings of the present study suggest that teachers have low to moderate levels of professionalisation, high level of career identity and moderate levels of career resilience, and career planning. From the T-tests and F-tests conducted, it was found that gender has a significant impact on career identity whereas age and marital status have significant impact on career planning and ...

This article centres on a particularly intense debate within British analytical chemistry in the late nineteenth century, between local public analysts and the government chemists of the Inland Revenue Service. The two groups differed in both practical methodologies and in the interpretation of analytical findings. The most striking debates in this period were related to milk analysis, highligh...

Over the last few years the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) has developed and implemented a number of strategies to gain professional status for the ‘generalist occupational health and safety professional’. Two of the most significant developments have been the publication of the ‘Core Body of Knowledge for the Generalist OHS Professional.’ and the accreditation of university OHS courses. D...