Professionalization as Career Immobility

Examination of the use of professional career ladders in industry indicates thatpower is the ignored variable that obviates the usefulness of such a structure for engineers and other professionals whose work requires co-ordination or the allocation of scarce resources. Although engineers differ from other professionals in a number of ways, an analysis of their place in large organizations throws doubt on the utility of the concept of professionalism for understanding large, complex organizations. This is particularly true when the executives of an organization attempt to utilize current popular beliefs and images about professions in an attempt to manipulate definitions of success and failure for organizational members.