Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change by Harriet Martineau

Author:Harriet Martineau [Martineau, Harriet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781351488976
Google: LCAxDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35634970
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

These four essential characteristics, then, define the scale of professionalism, the degree to which it is present in different forms of social behavior. The most professional behavior is that which realizes all four of the characteristics in the fullest possible manner. Justice of the United States Supreme Court or professor of physics and Nobel Prize winner in a distinguished university would be highly professional roles. A $100,000-a-year vice-president in charge of legal affairs for a large business corporation would be somewhat less professional in terms of this scalar definition. A $6000-a-year schoolteacher who had graduated from an inferior college would be defined as less professional on the scale established by our four essential characteristics. Professionalism is best construed as a matter of degree to be measured against particular values of some general attributes of all behavior.

Now it will be readily apparent that American business behavior can certainly not be classified as highly professional in the light of this definition of professional behavior. Nor does it appear so either to American public opinion as a whole or, indeed, to businessmen themselves. Reporting his conclusion “based on a sampling of public opinion about business over the past fifteen years,” Elmo Roper says, “There is a large body of American opinion which is convinced that business at best is amoral and at worst is greedy. . . . There is a latent fear on the part of the public that business will at times grab off more than its share of the national gain . . . the people believe that at best only a few businessmen have the good of the country in mind when they are making important business decisions. . . . Thumping majorities have reported to us time and time again that they believe business is making too much money and that top-level businessmen are paid too high salaries.”35 This is not to say that American public opinion has a single simple image of business behavior or that it does not see its beneficial effects. A study of the attitudes of a representative national sample of the United States population toward big business made by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center reports “no simple homogeneous stereotypes or evaluation.”36

Nor does business opinion itself see business behavior in predominantly professional colors. Although Rotary has recently changed its motto from “He profits most who serves best” to “Service above self,” thus making the emphasis on community interest a little stronger, the dominant American business ideology is not yet one filled with professional claims and aspirations. In their study of the American business creed as it could be discovered from business writings and speeches in 1948-1949, Sutton, Harris, Kaysen, and Tobin describe a predominant business ideology, the “classical” ideology, and a subordinate variant, the “managerial” ideology.37 It is this subordinate variant that expresses the views and hopes of the American businessmen who think of themselves as “professional managers.”

Where ideological change has occurred we should look also for institutional change.

We have already traced

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