Professional Ethics

Through comparative analysis, this paper estabilishes five basic properties of professional ethics codes: universal distribution, correlation with intraprofessional status, enforcement dependent on visibility, individualism, and emphasis on colleage obligations. After discussing traditional explanations of these properties from the functionalist and monopolist perspectives, the paper adds a third perspective,relating ethics directly to intra-and extrapofessional status. A final section analyzing developments in professional ethics in America since 1900 specifies the interplay of the three processes hypothesized in the competing perspectives.