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The knowledge work of professionalassociations: approaches tostandardisation and forms oflegitimisationMonika Nerland a & Berit Karseth aa Department of Educational Research , University of Oslo ,NorwayPublished online: 07 Jun 2013.

To cite this article: Journal of Education and Work (2013): The knowledge work of professionalassociations: approaches to standardisation and forms of legitimisation, Journal of Education andWork, DOI: 10.1080/13639080.2013.802833

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The knowledge work of professional associations: approaches tostandardisation and forms of legitimisation

Monika Nerland* and Berit Karseth

Department of Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway

(Received 6 July 2012; final version received 29 April 2013)

This paper examines how professional associations engage themselves inefforts to develop, regulate and secure knowledge in their respectivedomains, with special emphasis on standardisation. The general empha-sis on science in society brings renewed attention to the knowledge baseof professionals, and positions professional bodies as key regulatoryagencies. At the same time, knowledge takes distinctive forms in differ-ent areas of expertise, and the ‘knowledge work’ of professional associa-tions is embedded in complex settings of actors and interests that needto be negotiated. Based on documents and interviews with core represen-tatives, we examined approaches to standardisation in three associationsthat represent the main bodies of nurses, teachers and auditors inNorway. The analysis shows that all associations engage themselves inefforts to develop standards for knowledge and professional practice, butthat they do so in different ways and with alternative sources of legitimi-sation. Standardisation is initiated for variegated purposes, and involvesthe ongoing negotiation of tensions between different concerns. Wediscuss the approaches taken in relation to conditions for professional-ism, and argue that the knowledge work of professional associations isbecoming increasingly important in a society where knowledge, as wellas the market for professional services, is becoming internationalised.

Keywords: professional associations; knowledge work; standardisation;professionalism; institutional logics

Introduction

Professionalism has historically been seen as a distinct model for organisingwork, marked by the capacity to manage an exclusive area of expertise byway of specialised education, commitment to profession-specific values,collegial control and occupational closure (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001;Evetts 2011). During the last decades, this model has been challenged andbecome more blurred. One aspect of this is related to the marketisation ofprofessional work, in which professions have adopted the logic of business

*Corresponding author. Email: monika.nerland@ped.uio.no

Journal of Education and Work, 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2013.802833

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and have begun to understand their work and mandate in terms of efficiencyand customer orientation (Brint 1994; Brock, Powell, and Hinings 1999;Brint 2001). Another aspect is related to the emergence of managerialism,which brings the logic of the bureaucracy to the fore and generates regimesof accountability in which the indicators used to measure professionalperformance are audited by external actors and systems (Beck 2009; Dentand Whitehead 2002). Quite a few researchers have described how theprofessional field is increasingly infused with the logics of the market andthe bureaucracy and have examined the effects of this development in spe-cific professions (e.g. Forrester 2000; Allsop and Saks 2002; Carey 2007).In this research, the current trends are often discussed in terms of deprofessi-onalisation and erosion of professional communities. Others claim thatprofessional communities still are powerful and important constituencies, butthat their constituting mechanisms and principles of organisation are chang-ing and that the ongoing generation and distribution of knowledge now playa key role (Jensen and Lahn 2005; Adler, Kwon, and Heckscher 2008).

One question which is particularly at stake today concerns the profes-sions’ relation to science-generated knowledge. There seems to be a generalexpectation that professional actions can be justified by referring to somekind of evidence or universal knowledge. In some sense, this is not new.Professional work has historically been understood as a matter of applyingabstract knowledge to particular cases, and to be entrusted as a secure basisfor work, such abstract knowledge should be science-based (Abbott 1988).The basis for professional work today lies, as in previous times, in thecapacity to perform work in ways that are informed, guided by andvalidated against shared knowledge and established conventions for practice.Today, however, rapid development and circulation of new knowledgemeans that the knowledge base of a profession is not stable but rathercontested and subjected to transformations in a continual manner(Bechmann, Gorokhov, and Stehr 2009; Styhre 2011; Jensen, Lahn, andNerland 2012). Hence, the rules and approaches for connecting professionalwork to science are in transition, and need to be negotiated and justified ona continual basis.

As the generic mode of formal organisation for professions (Freidson2001), professional associations are positioned as nodal points in these inter-sections. They will typically handle and negotiate the professions’ collectiverelationships towards users and stakeholders, and play a key role in definingthe internal rules and norms of the professional community.

The aim of this paper is to examine how professional associations inthree different fields engage in developing, regulating and securingcollective knowledge in their respective areas of expertise, with specialemphasis given to standardisation. The term ‘knowledge work’ is employedto encapsulate the work directed towards the collective knowledge base ofthe profession, as well as towards the distribution and use of this knowledge

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in professional practice. This work is analysed as approaches and attitudestowards standardisation. Regulating collective knowledge and modes ofenactment is basically about constructing consistency in practice acrossspace and time, that is, creating and distributing standards (Timmermans andEpstein 2010). Such efforts may, however, be generated to address differentconcerns and with different forms of justification. The questions we raiseare: What characterises approaches to standardisation in different associa-tions as means to regulate knowledge and secure knowledge-based practice?And how are the approaches taken legitimised?

Empirically, the paper focuses on three key organisations in Norway: theNorwegian Nurses’ Organisation, the Union of Education Norway and theNorwegian Institute of Public Accountants. All three organisations assumeresponsibilities and function as professional associations at the nationallevel. For two of the organisations, this role is combined with the role as anational union. This is true for the Norwegian Nurses’ Organisation and theUnion of Education Norway, which both have collective bargaining rights,while the Institute of Public Accountants does not have such rights and ismore specialised as a professional association. Because of the strong role ofthe state and the way the professional services are regulated in Norway,several national organisations embody both the functions of a union andthose of a professional association. In this paper, however, we focus on theorganisations’ roles as associations and limit our analysis to their ways ofregulating knowledge and practice. Our analysis draws on data fromdocuments collected from 2005 to 2011, as well as in-depth interviews withcore representatives from the respective associations. The approaches takenby the respective associations are analysed and discussed as embedded indifferent institutional logics which direct attention to certain issues andgenerate different sources of legitimacy.

The paper is organised as follows: first, we briefly review relatedresearch on professional associations as regulatory agencies. Then, we pres-ent our analytical framework and core concepts, which combine perspectiveson standardisation and types of standards with the notion of institutionallogics as constitutive for organisational actions and sources of legitimisation.This is followed by a section describing data and methodology, before wepresent the analysis of knowledge work in the three associations. We discusshow the associations’ knowledge work is legitimised through different insti-tutional logics, and propose the need for a more nuanced discussion aboutstandardisation in the professions and its implications for professional work.

Professional associations as regulatory agencies

Professional associations are key regulatory agencies in their respectivefields (Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002). They constitute a site forformal organisation in which different voices and viewpoints meet, norms

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are negotiated and agreements achieved. They also decide on formal rulesand procedures to be followed by members in different organisations, andquite often, they are responsible for monitoring and sanctioning behaviourswith reference to these rules. Hence, they are critical instances both whereformal regulations, shared values and styles of reasoning are concerned(Scott 2001, 2008).

Professional associations are often regarded as conservative and protec-tive agencies, who strive to maintain jurisdiction over their given domain ofwork by resisting changes. In recent times, however, researchers have shownhow professional associations also act as change agents who contribute tolegitimise and enhance change introduced by external forces (see forinstance Greenwood et al. 2002; Noordegraaf 2011). Moreover, during thelast decades, researchers have pointed to a shift in the foci of professionalassociations, towards an increased emphasis on collective knowledge and onsecuring their members’ opportunities for continuous learning (Watkins1999). This concern, among other things, the circulation of knowledge andthe opportunities for practitioners to stay updated on advancements withintheir area of expertise. At the same time, conceptions of professional devel-opment are quite ambiguous (Cervero 2001; Friedman and Phillips 2004)and different stakeholders may have different expectations as to the kind ofregulations and support structures needed (Morgan, Cullinane and Pye2008). Hence, although the importance of knowledge development and con-tinuous learning seems to be generally embraced by professional associa-tions worldwide (Webster-Wright 2009), research also points to how itbecomes an object of negotiation which can take very different forms indifferent organisations.

The wider environment in which professional associations are embeddedis also in transition. Among the changes facing professions and professionalassociations today is the increase in international regulations. Evetts (2011)discusses in this regard how the emergence of professional federations at theEuropean level constitute new mechanisms of regulation, e.g. related to theneed for aligning educational requirements and standards for good practicein a European market for professional services. International relations forman important context for the regulatory work of professional associationsalso at the national level. Such relations may be especially important fortheir knowledge work, as science-generated knowledge and standards forpractice typically are seen as universal.

In sum, these studies reflect a renewed orientation towards knowledgedevelopment and knowledge regulation in the professions, in whichprofessional associations play a key role. In spite of this, research thatfocuses specifically on professional associations’ work directed towards theircollective knowledge base (rather than their professionalisation efforts morebroadly) is limited. Some studies have been conducted in the accountancyprofession (e.g. Lee 1995; Walker 2004) and in the nursing profession

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(e.g. van Achterberg et al. 2006; Holeman et al. 2006), focusing on effortsto define a common knowledge base and on the role professional associa-tions in promoting evidence-based practice. Comparative analyses acrossprofessions are less common, although professional bodies clearly learnfrom each other in their efforts to develop and secure their fields of exper-tise (Cooper and Robson 2006).

In a previous article, we explored how four Norwegian associationsmobilised discourses of knowledge as a means of developing professional-ism (Karseth and Nerland 2007). Here, we found that the associationsdiffered significantly in their emphasis on external and internal regulations;that is, the extent to which their efforts were directed towards relationshipswith external agencies compared with regulations directed towards the asso-ciations’ members and their professional practice. Zietsma and Lawrence(2010) distinguish in a similar way between ‘boundary work’ and ‘practicework’ as two modes of operation in professional associations, which bothare important for the development and continuance of professionalism. Thepresent article takes these ideas further by focusing more specifically on theknowledge work of professional associations, with emphasis given to theirapproaches to standardisation and their sources of legitimisation. To do so,we employ concepts and perspectives from the ‘sociology of standards’ andresearch on institutional logics.

Standardisation and sources of legitimisation

Standardisation is commonly defined as a process of constructing uniformityacross space and time, through the generation of agreed-upon rules (Bowkerand Star 1999; Timmermans and Epstein 2010). In this sense, it is not anew phenomenon to the professions. Standards have always been critical forprofessional work performance, as they form the basis for collective actionsand shared conventions of good practice.

What is more characteristic of our times is that standards become moreexplicit and linked with formal regulations (Timmermans and Epstein 2010).This is partly due to the emergence of a ‘culture of performativity’ and newaccountability regimes, which bring attention to organisational control andgenerate expectations to make visible which actions are taken and whatknowledge they rely on. Standards are often used for the dual purpose ofsecuring the quality of professional work and to make the principles and deci-sions taken more transparent for user groups and other stakeholders (Evetts2011). At the same time, the increased formalisation is related to the need forcoordinating actions and services across wider geographical contexts. In thisregard, we have seen a growth of standard-setting agencies, whose regulatoryefforts may have global aspirations. They form agencies at the macro levelwhich also play a key role in the regulation and distribution of knowledge,e.g. like the Cochrane Collaboration does in the medical domains.

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A core issue in current debates about professionalism is the relationshipbetween standardisation and discretionary decision-making; that is, thedegree and space for flexibility when standards meet professional workwith specific clients. Standardisation is often regarded as a threat toprofessionalism, as it may undermine the space for judgment in worktowards specific clients (Strathern 2000; Styhre 2011). It is, however, notgiven that standardisation implies a detailed prescription of professionalactions. Standards can have different origin, take different forms, vary inthe degree of flexibility and be directed towards different aspects of work.In the context of health care, Timmermans and Berg (2003) distinguishbetween four types of standards: design standards, performance standards,terminological standards and procedural standards. The first type refers tospecifications of technologies or instruments which are used in work, whilethe second refers to specifications of outcome. The third deals withprofessional knowledge in terms of concepts/vocabulary for identifyingproblems and envisioning solutions, while the fourth is directed towardsprocedures for good practice (Timmermans and Berg 2003; Nes and Moen2010; Timmermans and Epstein 2010). The different types of standardswill thus be directed towards different aspects and phases in work, theyengender different allocations of responsibilities, and they may take differ-ent forms relative to their underlying domain of expertise and principlesfor validation.

To investigate how choices are legitimised and negotiated in theprofessional associations, we turn to the concept of institutional logics(Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton 2002; Reay and Hinings 2009). Thisconcept is frequently used to understand organisational behaviour, and restson the core assumption that ‘the interests, identities, values and assumptionsof individuals and organisations are embedded within prevailing institutionallogics’ (Thornton and Ocasio 2008, 103). Examples of institutional logicsare the capitalist market, the bureaucratic state, the family, democracy andwhat is sometimes conceptualised as the logic of truth, which may play outin either religion or science (Friedland and Alford 1991). Although theselogics operate in and through particular organisations, it is important tounderstand them as precisely logics which provide rationales for understand-ing and acting on the world. The concept of institutional logics help us tounderstand individual and organisational behaviour patterns that impact onwhat sort of issues and problems organisations and individuals give attentionto, which issues and problems become salient as well as which answers andsolutions are taken into consideration by the organisation and the individu-als. With a change in institutional logic, the organisational attention willshift to alternative issues and solutions (Thornton 2002). Moreover, an orga-nisation will often be influenced by competing institutional logics that needto be negotiated and managed in organisational life (Reay and Hinings2009). Institutional logics are, however, more than strategies or logics of

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action. They are also sources of legitimacy and provide a sense of order andontological security (Thornton and Ocasio 2008).

In the professions, as in other areas of social life, a logic of science isbrought forward as increasingly important and also at issue. What this logicbrings is an orientation towards truth and towards ways of knowing thatsomething is more true or valid than something else. Drori and Meyer(2006, 40), for instance, emphasise the extraordinary authority of modernscientific rationalisation whereby ‘the science speaks with highly legitimateauthority on the widest range of questions’. Social scientists have pointed tohow this logic is spreading beyond its traditional spheres in universities andresearch organisations. Not only are the products of science dispersed – thatis, knowledge in different material and symbolic forms – but also modes ofpractice and logics of appropriateness characteristic to scientific institutions(Knorr Cetina 2002, 2007). In the professions, however, this ‘epistemifica-tion’ of work (Jensen et al. 2012) is one but several trends and develops inparallel with increased managerialism and market orientation. Moreover,science and science-based knowledge could mean different things in differ-ent expert cultures, and lead to different epistemic orientations. Furthermore,as researchers who are concerned with knowledge differentiation argue, thedistinctiveness of the disciplines in play is an important entry in order tounderstand the knowledge structures and hence the knowledge work of aprofession (see Becher 1989; Beck and Young 2005; Muller 2009). Whatconstitutes the sources of legitimisation in efforts to standardise knowledgeand practice in the professions is, therefore, not given, and emerges as animportant research topic.

Empirical context and methodology

We use the term ‘associations’ as a label for professional organisations thatengage in efforts to regulate knowledge and competencies in their respectivefields. As noted earlier, a distinguishing feature of the professional sector inNorway is that such organisations are established at the national level and thatthere is no strong organisational division between unions and associations.The reason for this is that traditionally the state has always been a strong part-ner and constitutive force, and that labour markets as well as professionalservices have been regulated in collaborative efforts between the state, localauthorities, the professions, employers and educational institutions (Østerudand Selle 2006). Moreover, the professional sector in Norway has beenmarked by stability, continuity and egalitarianism in the sense that access topracticing the professions has been regulated through national curricula.

The organisations attended to are the Norwegian Nurses Organisation(NNO), the Union of Education Norway and the Norwegian Institute of Pub-lic Accountants. The NNO was established in 1912. The association speakson behalf of all registered nurses, nurse specialists, midwives and public

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health nurses in Norway and has about 96,000 members. The Union ofEducation Norway is the largest trade union for teaching personnel, and com-prises about 150,000 members. The union, founded on 1 January 2002 as amerger between two previous teachers’ unions, organises members workingin all areas of the education system. The Norwegian Institute of PublicAccountants (DnR) is the professional body for registered public accountantsand state-authorised public accountants in Norway, and has about 5000 mem-bers. The association was established as an institute for state-authorisedpublic accountants in 1930. In 1998, this institute and its sister organisationfor registered public accountants merged and founded the Norwegian Insti-tute of Public Accountants. More than 90% of the state-authorised publicaccountants in public practice in Norway are members of the Institute.

These selected professional bodies operate in the same national context;however, their professional fields are structured and regulated in differentways. Among other things, they differ as to their number of members, theirrole in collective bargaining and their market relations. One important differ-ence in this respect is between the for-profit and non-profit sectors (cf. Brint1994, 2001) which place the associations differently in relation to the marketand the state. As to similarities, all associations organise professionals whohold at least a bachelor’s degree in a professional programme provided by auniversity college or university in Norway. Furthermore, all are entrustedwith a position from which they contribute to the provision of criticalservices in society, and they are all challenged to explicate and secure theircollective knowledge as a basis for these services. We may also argue thatall of them represent continuity, as the services they are concerned withhave existed for more than 50 years.

Although the organisations may also be involved in traditional unionactivities, our focus is on their role as regulatory agencies for knowledge intheir respective fields. In the context of Norwegian policies, their respectiveprofessional fields are still marked by a space for discretionary decision-making compared with e.g. the situation in UK. Moreover, the currentNorwegian policies regard lifelong learning as an individual right more thanas a formal obligation to be controlled, and propose research-based educa-tion as ideal also in professional programmes without clarifying in detailswhat this means. There is, however, an increased tendency that individualprofessionals are held accountable for their performance (Englund andSolbrekke 2011; Wellard and Heggen 2011).

Given that professional associations largely work by producing documentsand texts, we started by conducting a document analysis. The documents wereproduced from 2005 to 2009. Due to differences in organisational structureand modes of operation, the types of documents differ somewhat between theassociations. However, the main documents selected for analysis include for-mal documents, such as statutes, ethical codes and legal regulations; approvedpolicy documents, such as strategic plans, annual reports and congress and

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board decisions; policy statement documents, such as letters to the govern-ment and comments; documents describing requirements and guidelines forpractice; and, finally, historical descriptions of the profession provided by orapproved by the association in question. These texts reflect conceptions ofknowledge and professionalism that guide and adjudicate the knowledgework of the associations. At the same time, the modes of articulation broughtforward in the documents embody ‘institutional vocabularies’ (Suddaby andGreenwood 2005) that reflect different institutional logics.

To strengthen and enrich the document analysis, we interviewed keyinformants in the three associations. The informants were responsible forissues concerning knowledge and professional development within therespective associations. We invited two persons from each association toparticipate in a semi-structured discussion guided by some core themes: theassociations’ responsibilities and strategies for professional development;their role in managing the knowledge base of the profession; and the infor-mants’ depictions of current changes in their respective fields that influencethe associations’ position and work. The interviews were conducted in thespring of 2009. They lasted between 90 and 120min, and were recordedand transcribed verbatim. Summaries of the talks that reflected our initialanalytical reading were sent to the interviewees for validation.

As a third step, the interviews were followed up by an analysis of coredocuments emerging in 2010–2011, in which some of the future strategiesand concerns mentioned during the interviews were materialised and forma-lised in e.g. strategic plans.

For this paper, the types of data were read together for the sake ofidentifying characteristics of the three associations’ knowledge work. Wefirst performed a content-oriented reading to map strategies and activitiesrelated to standardisation, which was guided by the distinctions proposed byTimmermans and Berg (2003). Next, we conducted a reading focused on theforms of language and arguments used to frame interests, draw attention toconcerns and justify choices of action. This was done to identify the institu-tional logics in play as constitutive for the knowledge work.

Knowledge work in three associations

The analysis revealed that all associations were concerned with standardisa-tion of knowledge and practice, and that this issue was one of increasingconcern, but also that they engaged themselves in quite different ways. Wewill briefly describe the approaches taken in each of the associations, anddiscuss their sources of legitimisation.

The Norwegian Nurses’ Organisation (NNO)

To start with the Norwegian Nurses’ Organisation (NNO), a main concernfor this association in the period covered by this study was to uphold various

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sources of knowledge as basis for clinical practice. This was brought forwardin the interview as an attention towards the complexity of the professionalfield and an expressed need to protecting the values of practice-based andpersonal knowledge in a time marked by increased standardisation. Yet, therewas also an overall concern about the lack of systematic documentation anduniformity in nurses’ clinical work and its consequences for the nursing pro-fession’s contribution to patient care. Furthermore, there was a worry that thismay lead to critical questioning of the validity of nursing as a foundation forresearch and knowledge development.

Important for the NNO’s activities with regard to documentation andstandardisation is its ownership of the publishing house Akribe. A publish-ing house that, among other things, has developed Practical Procedures forthe Nursing Service (PPS), a commercially ICT-based repository containinga set of basic, standardised nursing procedures that adhere to legalregulations, national standards, professional guidelines and research-basedknowledge (Nes and Moen 2010).

In a publication concerning professional responsibility (NNO 2008b), theNNO describes the importance of understanding how professional work islegally regulated through different sets of laws. In this text, the NNO pro-duced guidelines and exemplifications on how to behave and act responsiblywhere the necessity of standardised professional actions as well as gooddocumentations in health care is emphasised. Good documentation,according to the NNO, facilitates the nurses’ workday and safeguards patienttreatment and the NNO sees itself as a driving force for national standardsof documentation and information exchange (NNO 2007a).

As part of this work, the NNO is concerned with developing terminologi-cal standards. In 2008, the NNO established a council (terminologiråd) toassess the terminology used in the electronic patient record (EPR) system inNorway and recently recommended the International Classification of Nurs-ing Practice (ICNP) as the terminology system for documentation of nursingcare (Rotegaard and Ruland 2010).

The NNO points, however, to the crucial challenge in working with elec-tronic tools, standardisation and terminologies to maintain the focus on thenurse’s responsibilities and professional and ethical foundation (NNO 2009,8). In describing the knowledge base of nursing, the NNO tries to combinedifferent approaches and argues that the different sources of knowledge laythe groundwork for knowledge-based practice:

The use of knowledge-based practice implies that nurses use various sourcesof knowledge in clinical practice, among others research-based knowledge. Atthe same time, research-based knowledge is insufficient. Professional judg-ment based on clinical experience and ethical assessment, together with thepatient’s wishes must be the basis for nursing actions. In addition, the frame-work that nurses work under influences how clinical practice is performed.(NNO 2008c, 6)

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In the quotation above, the NNO makes a statement that includes differentapproaches to nursing and what counts as knowledge. In this respect, theNNO is concerned with producing a sense of continuity between today’sactivities and ‘calling tradition’ of the ‘founding mothers’ in the field ofnursing. Nevertheless, the discourse of evidence-based practice seems togain increased footing in this associations’ knowledge work.

When it comes to sources of legitimisation, the NNO’s work on proce-dural standards is primarily guided by the logic of science. This makes itdesirable to stay in touch with the latest advances in medical treatment andto bring these insights to Norwegian health services. The notion of univer-salism at play in this association is related to scientific evidence, and theknowledge work enacted to manage the local–global relationship takes theform of promoting science-based procedures and guidelines for nursing prac-tice. This brings an overall attention towards the scientific knowledge baseunderlying professional actions and how it should be operationalised inpractical work. At the same time, to legitimise and institutionalise theseefforts, the NNO deliberately tries to anchor its strategies in the longer tradi-tions of nursing as a normative and practice-based profession.

In a wider context, an important source of legitimisation for thisknowledge work is the concern for establishing nursing as a science-basedprofession which should be entrusted jurisdiction of their field of expertisein relation to other health professionals, especially towards the physicians.For that reason, to define the jurisdiction of the nursing profession and tomobilise support for the importance of high expertise of the work force ofnurses is, therefore, an important task, which is reflected in the NNOsefforts to secure the educational requirements and in their argument that allfurther education and competence building should provide credit in the for-mal educational structure (NNO 2008a). The NNOs ways of legitimisingstandardisation also includes arguments about patient safety and trust. Thisis also generated from the logic of science, which give rise to the idea thatevery patient should receive care based on the best knowledge available.

In sum, this generates an epistemic orientation marked by collectivityand control, which favours collective knowledge and procedures overpersonal, experience-based knowledge, and which makes procedural stan-dards a relevant and necessary way of responding to these professionaldemands. However, as these procedures become organisationally embedded,formalised and linked with accountability issues, they also activate thebureaucracy logic with its emphasis on command lines, hierarchical struc-tures and organisational efficiency. Moreover, they link with market logicsas health services as well as the production and distribution of libraryresources and ‘best practices’ increasingly take place in international marketsfor medical knowledge production. Despite this blend of institutional logics,we would still claim that the main logic guiding the knowledge work of theNNO is that of science and truth.

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The union of education Norway

The approaches taken in the Union of Education are quite different fromthose of NNO. Securing a space for differentiation in teachers’ work toallow for personalised teaching has been and still is a central concern forthe Union of Education. Hence, the Union’s knowledge work comprisesstrategies to resist attempts from national and local authorities to standardiseteachers’ work and to regulate the teacher profession more strongly.

In 2009, we witnessed a shift in the discourse towards emphasisingteaching as a research-based activity (Utdanningsforbundet 2009). This wasreflected in the agenda and documents produced for the national congress in2009. As stated by the president in her opening speech to the congress:

A stronger approach towards research is the way to go. We have to useresearch as a basis for the development of our profession. But we have to beable to be critical of research of lower quality. We know that all results haveto be seen in a pedagogical context. There are no recipes that will workalways and everywhere. (Hjetland 2009, 8)

The embracement of this rhetoric creates tensions within the profession inwhich the new relation to science needs to find its form. In recent years, theUnion of Education has produced different documents discussing evidencein education and its implications for the teaching profession. As a responseto an ongoing international debate about the knowledge base of the teachingprofession and policy-makers (cf. OECD 2007), a report was producedwhich discusses whether a stronger emphasis on evidence-based practicejeopardises professional autonomy (Utdanningsforbundet 2008, 36). Thisreport can be seen as an attempt to secure a space for professional auton-omy. However, it also reflects efforts to redefine the knowledge base of theprofession. In this respect, the Union states that the ability of the teacher todemonstrate and document her or his knowledge base is crucial. Access toresearch as well as competence to use it is seen as important for the profes-sion. The report states that evidence-based practice in the field of educationshould be defined broadly and should include a variety of perspectives andmethods of inquiry (Utdanningsforbundet 2008, 35). In other words, throughthis report the Union both maintains a critique of standardisation and intro-duces evidence as a valid aspect of the professions’ collective knowledgebase. This argument is followed up in a report commenting on the politicaldecision to establishing a Knowledge Centre for Education in Norway(Utdanningsforbundet 2010).

The Union of Education also performs knowledge work directed at theconceptual vocabulary of the teaching profession. As stated in the interview,‘our field of expertise lacks a well-developed professional language’.According to the informants, everyday language is not accurate enough todiscuss professional issues. However, the Union’s work is marked by

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ambiguity and negotiation between different concerns. On the one hand, theUnion expresses a need for a professional language that standardises termi-nology and ensures stability in meaning across different sites. On the otherhand, there is a concern that languages reflecting other fields, such as thelanguage of management, will take over as the main vocabulary definingprofessional work. The latter argument aligns with the long-standing critiqueof educational policies that emphasise marked orientation, instrumentalityand efficiency on the cost of recognising education as a public good andteaching as an ethically responsible activity.

While several of these concerns resemble those of the NNO, the Unionof Education engages itself in a different way, and with different sources oflegitimisation. Although there are arguments that recognise the importanceof developing a research-based teacher profession and a consistentprofessional language, a main concern for this association is to protect theautonomy of the individual teacher and to secure equal conditions forteachers’ professional practice across schools and districts. Hence, ratherthan bargaining jurisdiction in a context of competition between professionalgroups, this association acts towards the state, often with the aim of resistingmore external regulation of practice. In a context where various stakeholdersincreasingly try to play a central role in defining teacher qualifications, theUnion is concerned with taking a leading role in defining professionalrequirements by advocating the views of the profession itself.

At the same time, the knowledge work of this association is guided bythe logic of bureaucracy. The emphasis on formalising standards for teacherswork in terms of teacher to student ratios and educational requirements,combined with the reluctance to define collective knowledge and best prac-tices in the profession, generates a positioning of the Union as a watchdogfor government initiatives and regulations, and brings organisational issuesto the forefront. The state is a prime partner in this regard. Moreover, thebureaucracy logic comes into view in the way the global–local relationshipis handled. While the teaching profession is increasingly influenced by inter-national benchmarking and performance standards, e.g. through programmesfor measuring educational achievement like PISA and TIMSS, the Union ofEducation do not seem to engage itself extensively on the internationalscene. Our interpretation of this matter is that the transnational trends in theteaching profession are filtered through the bureaucracy in which the state isa prime actor. Hence, much of the work related to adjusting and aligningnational regulations to international standards is enacted by the state and itsagencies. When it comes to teachers’ professional practice, the Union’sknowledge work is more concerned with securing opportunities for differen-tiation than with universalism. The source of legitimisation is linked toimages of the teacher as a responsible professional who act in line with aninner core of strong beliefs and commitment shared by the profession.Within this image, individual autonomy has a strong footing, which leads to

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a rather weak professional regulation of practice. Although there are signsthat this association is now assuming other approaches guided by the logicof science, the responsibility to define and operationalise the knowledgebase as well as to monitor the performance is to a great extend handed overto the individual member and other stakeholders.

The Norwegian institute for public accountants (DnR)

More than the former associations, the Norwegian Institute for PublicAccountants speaks explicitly about standardisation in their knowledge workand regard it as a prime responsibility to secure that Norwegian audit prac-tices are at all times in line with international standards.1 While the Institutestresses the importance of independent financial audits and the auditor’s roleas a representative for the public interest, this is regarded best achievedthrough general rules and standards that are valid across financial entitiesand activities.

The Institute’s approach to standardisation is oriented towards the imple-mentation and use of formal terminological and procedural standards, andprimarily related to translating standards into different contexts of auditingwork. As described in the interview, many standards created by the Interna-tional Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the International Auditing andAssurance Standards Board (IAASB) are translated into Norwegian:

Very few standards are created in Norway. For the most part, we act as trans-lators. (…) If Norwegian legislation, for instance the Limited Liability Com-panies Act, states that something else needs to be done, we will adjust it. Ifnot, the standard is directly translated.

The word ‘translate’ is here used in literally terms, meaning the very act ofpresenting the international standard in the Norwegian language. Challengesin consistency and in securing that the translation does not at the same timetransform the meaning were not raised as an issue. This may reflect a strongprofession-specific and internationalised terminology which in itself is stand-ardised, and used as a means to enhance the circulation of more specific stan-dards across national boundaries. At the same time, the terminology is itselfan object of the Institute’s knowledge work, especially when new nationalregulations come to the fore and need to find their conceptual expression.

Moreover, the Institute’s engagement with standardisation comprisesstrategies to clarifying the use of these standards in auditing different clients.Here, the Institute appoints advisors in different auditing specialties whoprovide online guidance to auditors in how the standards should beunderstood. In the interview, the Institute’s responsibility was described as amatter of providing information in how the rules should be understood,without involving themselves in the particular case to be audited. Toenhance members’ understanding and enactment of the standards, the

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Institute has also developed a Windows-based audit methodology andsupport system, Descartes, that incorporates new standards on a continualbasis. By way of Descartes, the Institute develops and promotes proceduralstandards as the system links audit standards to methodological structures.In this way, standards become linked in a wider infrastructure for audit workin which the terminology and the procedure support each other (Mathisenand Nerland 2012).

Thirdly, the Institute’s knowledge work comprises initiatives towardsNorwegian authorities to promote changes in financial regulation. Through-out its history, the Institute has strived to initiate changes in regulationsbefore such changes are sought by the national authorities as a way ofmaintaining a sense of professional jurisdiction (Bredal 2005; Karseth andNerland 2007). In the period of our study, the Institute’s work on legislationhas concerned the use of international standards on auditing (ISAs) onsmall- and medium-sized businesses, the question of statutory audit forsmall, limited liability companies and the auditors’ role and responsibilitiesin providing assurance on corporate social and environmental responsibility(DnR 2007, 2008, 2009). All these efforts are, however, tightly linked withthe work on audit standards.

While the Institute promote standardisation in active ways, the associa-tion is concerned for securing a space for judgment in auditing work, andstrives to avoid a too-detailed system of standards (DnR 2008, 2009). Asexplained in the interview, international standards are significantly moredetailed than Norwegian ones: ‘If the international standards comprise 2,000pages, the Norwegian ones constitute about 300 pages. And if you turn tothe American ones, they are 20,000 pages ...’ Thus, one strategy concernssimplifying international standards to facilitate their use in Norwegian con-texts and to avoid over-regulation.

When it comes to sources of legitimisation, the Institute of PublicAccountants emphasises universalism in the sense that they supportinternational legislation and uniformity across organisational and nationalboundaries. Hence, their standardisation efforts are related to legislationrather than to scientific evidence. This orientation towards legislation is,however, not bounded to the nation state but rather extended to the Euro-pean sphere. The Institute is a spokesperson for harmonisation of rules andstandards across Europe, and seeks influence on European standards throughmembership in international accountancy federations (as IFAC, FEE, NRF2).Nevertheless, adopting and integrating pre-existing rules is a major task. Asstated in the interview: ‘We adopt whatever comes from the EuropeanUnion, whether we like it or not’. Although this adoption also requireextensive knowledge work in the form of streamlining protocols and align-ing different types of regulations, their arguments for doing so are first andforemost related to the need for formal rules and control lines which reflecta logic of bureaucracy. The knowledge work of the Institute is, however,

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not purely guided by the bureaucracy logic. A core argument for keepingaligned with international legislation is that this is necessary for doing busi-ness in an emerging global economy. Here, the institutional logic of themarket is in play, highlighting conditions for doing business and the roleaccountants play in this machinery.

In sum, we conclude that although the Institute of Public Accountants ispaying extensive attention to collective knowledge in terms of terminologi-cal and procedural standards, its knowledge work is guided more by the log-ics of bureaucracy and the market than by the logic of science. The questfor transparency is a prime driver, and the professional knowledge ofaccountants is, in the Institute’s regulatory approach, more related to keepingup with and understanding the enactment of current audit standards than itis about applying science-generated knowledge in concrete cases.

Standardisation: walking the tightrope between regulation anddiscretion

Our analysis shows that all associations engage themselves in efforts todevelop and circulate standards for professional knowledge and practice intheir respective fields, but that they do so in different ways and havedistinctive ways of legitimising their approaches. In this final section, wewill discuss how the logic of science has a varying influence on the associa-tions’ knowledge work. Although some of these differences may reflect theirparticular ways of handling their double position as unions and professionalassociations in the Norwegian context, we find it interesting that regulationof knowledge and practice comes forward as a major concern in all threeassociations. In this final section, we will discuss the implications of theapproaches taken with regard to the role of standards in regulating andsecuring professional knowledge and practice.

First, the analysis shows that efforts to regulate and secure knowledge inand for professional work take place within contested terrain in which differ-ent concerns need to be negotiated on a continuous basis. A strong emphasison evidence-based practice, as in the NNO, activates a need for knowledgework that secures the inclusion of other forms of knowledge in the commonknowledge base. Moreover, as shown in the analysis of the Institute ofPublic Accountants (DnR), an emphasis on uniform standards across profes-sional and geographic areas seems to activate a need for securing a spacefor flexibility in local work performance. To understand the differences inhow these tensions are generated and handled, we suggest that analyses, notonly of the types of standardisation efforts but also of the way these arelegitimised and informed by institutional logics, are useful. While the logicof science operates as a main source of legitimisation in the NNO, theUnion of Education seems to have embraced its rhetoric but not really itsstrategies and logic for action. The DnR strives to relate its profession to

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science; however, the overall emphasis on legislation and bureaucraticregulation in this field might be too much of a counteracting force for thescience logic to gain ground. Both the Union of Education and the DnR areguided by a bureaucratic logic in their knowledge work. However, this takesdifferent forms in the two associations, leading to an emphasis on regulatingboth professional practice in the accountancy association and the wider workconditions in the teachers’ union. As illustrated in Figure 1, the implicationsof the approaches taken for the regulation of professional work are quitedifferent. The knowledge work is nevertheless not static. Within the timeperiod of this study, as illustrated by the arrows in the figure, we witness agreater concern regarding standardisation, as well as the need for profes-sional regulation, in all three associations.

As mentioned initially, some form of standardisation is required in orderto ground professional practice in shared knowledge. Standards play adouble role in professions. On the one hand, standards are important in thejurisdictional work of the profession as they help to define the competencesneeded for professional work and thereby allocate responsibilities. In thissense, standards are important to secure spaces for professional discretion.On the other hand, standards may regulate practice in ways that limit thespace of action for the professionals in their daily work. The balancing ofthese two functions of standards is at the core of the knowledge work of theprofessional associations.

Given that professional work is characterised by collective ways ofperforming tasks and solving problems, as much as by the knowledge base,procedural standards are especially important. As regards the professionstargeted in this article, and from the perspective of professionalism, wewould argue that it is crucial that the development of procedural standards isin the hands of the profession itself. This is because procedural standards aredirectly related to the performance of work; they represent ways of

Figure 1. Dimensions in knowledge work.

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operationalising the collective knowledge base and – provided that they arenot too detailed – they are important for safeguarding discretion, as well astrust, in professional services. Our analysis shows that the NNO and the DnRpay extensive attention to this work and see it as their responsibility. TheUnion of Education seems reluctant, however, and by and large leaves thiswork to external agencies. Hence, this association’s approach seems morevulnerable in the long run. While the argument for not engaging itself instandardising the processes of work is presented as a concern for protectingprofessional jurisdiction, the opposite may be the result. Metaphoricallyspeaking, by avoiding knowledge work on procedural standardisation theUnion of Education stands on ‘fewer feet’, which makes the profession lesssolid in institutional terms and probably more exposed to external regulation.However, in order to understand the work of the Union of Education, theknowledge structures informing the teacher profession becomes important.Here, we find, similar to Beck and Young (2005), that the knowledge workof the Union of Education reflects weak ties to a conceptual knowledge base.This may lead to a lack of procedural standards that are generated fromknowledge ‘itself’. The DnR, on the other hand, may be in danger of over-emphasising a bureaucracy logic in their knowledge work, which leads tomore control at the cost of professional discretion. The NNO holds perhapsthe strongest position of the three. This association performs its knowledgework in closer relation to science and engages in producing, distributing andwarranting profession-specific knowledge for different purposes. At the sametime, this association’s knowledge work pushes specialisation in ways thatmay challenge the idea of a unifying profession in the long run.

From a wider perspective, the analysis also shows how approaches to stan-dardisation are dependent on – and shaped by – the history and normativebasis of the different professional associations. While standardisation of pro-fessional work is seen as appropriate by the DnR, its normative basis is ques-tioned by the Union of Education. For the NNO, standardisation ofprofessional knowledge and work is seen as legitimate; however, it must bereconciled with the history of the profession and nursing as an independentfield of knowledge.

In the context of increased internationalisation and transnational regula-tions of professional work, profession-specific standards may take on newfunctions. Standards can be seen as intermediaries providing connectionpoints between local work and wider circuits of knowledge (Nes and Moen2010; Timmermans and Epstein 2010). While the DnR and NNO make ref-erence to international standards for professional work, this reference is notcentral for the Union. Although there are signs that underscore how individ-uals and organisations are tied into globalised models of modernity whichexpand isomorphically (Meyer 2000), the knowledge work of the Union rep-resents a national script embedded in the history of the profession as well asthe norms of ‘a national democratic mindset’. This may, however, also be

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understood as having generated from a bureaucratic logic, which contributesto the definition of the Union’s regulatory efforts as nationally boundedrather than as embedded in a transnational field of knowledge and expertise.

Our analysis indicates that the value-based rationality traditionally associ-ated with professionalism (c.f. Brint 1994) has been supplemented andpartly replaced by more technical rationalities related to the distribution ofknowledge and professional standards. A reservation should be made to thefact that the professions targeted in this paper all perform client-centredwork in the context of the welfare state, and within a framework that valuesconsistency and predictability in their services. The categories and distinc-tions made in our analysis may thus be less relevant in professions whichplace higher value on creativity, change and experimental modes of practice,such as e.g. designers and craft professionals. However, in the professionsselected for this analysis we notice that a more scientific logic comes to thefore, which alters established rules and norms for the knowledge work ofthe associations. We believe that future opportunities to maintain a sense ofprofessionalism in these fields will depend on – and be shaped by – the pro-fessions’ ways of adopting this logic, and that the professional associationswill play a key role in this respect. They will become increasingly importantknowledge agents in a society where knowledge, as well as the market forprofessional services, becomes internationalised. We, therefore, suggest thata future research agenda should pay more attention to their knowledge work,and that more comparative analyses across professions, as well as profes-sion-specific analysis across nations, should be conducted in this respect.

AcknowledgementsThis research has been conducted as part of the project Learning Trajectories inKnowledge Economies (LiKE), funded by the Research Council of Norway. Wewould like to thank the participants in the LiKE project and the reviewers forvaluable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Monika Nerland would alsolike to thank the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, for providing her with a stimulating work environment duringthe spring term 2012 when this paper was finished. The two authors havecontributed equally to this work.

Notes1. DnR is short for ‘Den norske Revisorforening’, which is the Institute’s Norwe-

gian name.2. The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), The European Federation

of Accountants (Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens (FEE) and TheNordic Federation of Public Accountants (Nordisk Revisor Forbund, NRF).

Notes on contributorsMonika Nerland is a professor at the Department of Educational Research,University of Oslo. She conducts research on institutional practices and learning in

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professional education and work. A particular interest is the ways in whichorganisation of knowledge in professional communities constitute practices oflearning and identity formation. She has recently been the leader for the researchproject Learning Trajectories in Knowledge Economies (LiKE, 2008–2011) whichconducted comparative studies of knowledge practices and learning in fourprofessions in Norway: Nursing, Teaching, Computer Engineering and Accountancy.

Berit Karseth is a professor at the Department of Educational Research at theUniversity of Oslo. Hermain research interests are curriculum policy, curriculumchange and issues related to professionalism and knowledge development. Atpresent, she is engaged in research on recent curriculum reforms in education inEurope. Her publications include ‘Building professionalism in a knowledge society:Examining discourses of knowledge in four professional associations’ (Journal ofEducation and Work 2007, co-authored with Monika Nerland) and QualificationsFrameworks: The Avenue Towards Convergence of European Higher Education?(European Journal of Education 2010, co-authored with Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke).

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