Professional Identity and Citizen Participation: Shrinking Professionalism and Hybrid Professionals

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Professional Identity and Citizen Participation: Shrinking Professionalism

and Hybrid Professionals.

Name: Koen Berghout StudentID: S1292358 Subject: Master Thesis The Hague, 04-10-19

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Abstract

This study examines the possible effect of citizen participation on professional identity in public professionals working in Dutch municipalities. The relation was based on current trends in citizen participation in the Netherlands aiming to change the dynamics during citizen participation between public professionals and citizens. Previously public professionals carried more responsibility as a part an expert class of people that through authoritative exclusive knowledge that citizens did not possess. However, current trends aim to make this dynamic between public professionals and citizens more equal and this raises questions about what this means for public professionals and their position as authoritative experts that were previously based on exclusive expertise. This question is examined through the lens of professional identity; a professionals’ self-perception of belonging to a social group with a shared knowledge, set of skills and ways of thinking rooted in common educational and professional community backgrounds.

The expectation was that professional identity would weaken among public professionals in Dutch municipalities. These expectations were modified by whether or not the idea of citizen participation had a ‘mission fit’ with their existing professional identity and whether or not particular public professional possessed the ‘professional autonomy’ to act on their preferences. Additionally the types of professionals where examined as a factor with the expectation that more ‘pure’ type professionals holding more strongly to their professional identity than more ‘hybrid’ type professionals. However, this study did not conclude that citizen participation weakens professional identity per se, but there was a shrinking of the part of their professional lives spent dedicated to their particular profession. While all public professionals were very receptive to citizen input and viewpoints they guarded their own assumptions and wisdoms stemming from their professional identity. Public professionals, especially the more ‘pure’ type, heavily compartmentalized the different parts of their job and took on new tasks separate from their professional identity. The effect is that public professionals perform a job with a range of task that is increasingly less dedicated to their professional identity. Only when citizen input intruded directly was there a conflict between the two a defending of the professional identity took place.

There was however a general tendency among more ‘hybrid’ public professionals to see citizen participation as a legitimate part of their organizational environment and as a source of authoritative knowledge. Their professional identity quickly identified citizen participation as a legitimate part of it rather than a separate viewpoint of the layperson. They often saw the experience of citizens as the end-user experience and thus more important than theoretical knowledge of experts.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 The Puzzle

When the topic of expertise in governance is discussed it is not simply the body of knowledge or ideas contained within the public sphere that is subject of discussion; often it is the role of social dynamics that surround a class of experts. This research will view these dynamics of professionalism as it relates to citizen participation within governance. Which is to say; a number of experts within the field of governance derived their expertise from their profession and now have to negotiate their expertise with those outside their field. Public professionals have long been expected to embody and have been characterized as ‘experts’ or ‘professionals’, but over time this role has changed. From an authoritative Weberian expert, to customer oriented role under New Public Management and now perhaps even to equal partners with citizens (Brandsen & Honigh 2013; Moynihan & Thomas 2013). How then is the self-identity of public professionals as ‘experts’ being negotiated with the increasing demand that public professionals and citizens take a more equal role and responsibility in governance?

This puzzle is largely inspired current trends in co-production in the Dutch public sector and a research paper on the professional identity of teachers in the United States reacting to government policy running counter to said identity. The current trends in co-production are characterized by changes in the relation between public professionals which is much closer and increasingly expects citizens and other non-governmental parties to share authority and responsibility. The aim is to increasingly give citizens equal say in not just how governance is executed on but to take up key roles in the implementation of this as well. With these changes there is a question about the possible loss of autonomy on the part of the public professionals (Steen & Tuurnas 2018). This is because public professionals are increasingly having to negotiate with their co-producing partners that can take another view while the public professional assert some type of authority by way of their profession.

The research paper described by Buchanan(2015) on teachers in the US focused on how teachers adapted to the sweeping changes of the No Child Left Behind policies and reforms of the US schooling system. These policies and reforms instituted many things that went against the professional wisdoms in the pedagogical field at the time. Herein existed a conflict between the identity of teachers as good members of their profession and that of educational policy demanded by their school environment. This type of tension between a professional’s identity as a member of their profession and the conflicting demands of their environment is what inspired this research to inquire about such possible conflicts on the part of public professionals.

In particular, in an environment where co-production and other forms of citizen participation are increasingly demanded by the Dutch government do these conflicts exist and if so how are they negotiated by public professionals?

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1.2 Research Question

This study examines the possible weakening of the professional identity of public professionals by the expansion of citizen participation practices. Which leads to the research question of this study:

To what extent does citizen participation lead to a weakening of professional identity of public professionals working in Dutch municipalities?

Public professionals here are viewed broadly as those working in the public sector under a consistent professional title. Due to constraints in time and resources this research limits itself to those public professionals working in Dutch municipalities. Professional identity here is the self-perception of a public professionals in regards to how they view themselves as being a part of the profession connected to their professional title.

This question will be approached in a qualitative fashion to best address the documenting of self-perceptions that are complex and are best expressed through words and conversation in a set of semi-structured interviews. The questions asked during these interviews will be based on expectations derived from theories on professional identity as formulated by Wilensky(1964) and Brandsen and Honingh(2013). Then the results will be examined along the lines of assumptions about how they are constructed, break and how citizen participation is theorized to play into these dynamics.

1.3 Scientific and Societal Relevance

Scientifically this question can add value to the streams of literature on expertise in terms of professional identity and on the latent effects of citizen participation especially those involving co-production. Professional identity is a stream of literature that describes expertise as contained within professions that are demarcated as a social group perpetuated through individual self-perception as described by Wilensky(1964) and Brandsen and Honingh(2013). This research will then expand on this particular understanding of expertise and how this operates within governance.

The streams of literature on citizen participation and particularly co-production practices within citizen participation. These practices are fairly new and only recently have begun to grow and come with many questions on what the role of expertise should be when responsibility and power should be equally shared between citizens and expert (Steen & Tuurnas 2018).

These practices are scientifically studied largely as their own phenomenon, but if interactions between them are found this would provide valuable insights for these streams of literature. It can provide insight on the topic of professional identity and how this reacts to conflicting identity demands and provides insight in knock on effects of citizen participation.

Societally an answer to the research question can provide insight as to what the expected behaviour of public professionals will tend towards given certain social dynamics. Insight into what exactly a professional is or views themselves to be can be a valuable tool for organizations to gauge attitudes and

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7 behaviours that follow from it within their own organizations. Knowing in advance what knowledge professionals within one’s organization holds and how they are likely to react to pressures from the organizational environment provides valuable insight to change management.

Knowing when and under what circumstances a professional will maintain rigid adherence to one’s profession and its knowledge and behaviour base can be a factor in the decision to employ a professional for a certain task. If a job requires open ended solutions and given the circumstances a professional is likely to rigidly maintain professional standards then it could be worthwhile changing the circumstances that ensure rigidity or looking for a different person for the task. On the other hand ensuring professional standards throughout an open ended process might be restricting but can ensure the maintenance of valuable regulations or institutions. These factors could influence the success of co-production efforts and ensure a congruence between public professionals working in co-produced public projects.

On top of that it is prudent to know what types of latent effects our current trends in governance, namely wanting to promote co-production within citizen participation, will have on public professionals. If such activities push public professionals to adopt certain values, skillsets or behaviours then this is vital to know. Such knowledge could serve as a warning for undesirable developments or make desirable opportunities within governance known.

1.4 Chapter Overview

The next chapter will focus on different strands of theory; on what a professional identity is, how this identity is developed, what it means to break with this identity, different types of professional identity and what might predict breaking with professional identity. The theory chapter will then summarize the different strands of theory before formulating a number of expectations that will be used to test the sum of theoretical assumptions to answer the research question.

The third chapter will focus on laying out how the hypotheses can be tested, what this would look like in a real life setting and what methods will be used to observe and verify or falsify the different hypotheses.

The fourth chapter will contain the case data. This will with a short summary of the different municipal circumstances that could confound particular observations. Then the results of the interviews will be laid out using paraphrases and quotes along the different stands of theory and expectations.

The fifth chapter will focus on the analysis of the case data and how the observations interact with the various strains of theory used to answer the research question. Based on this interaction we can judge how the case observations interact with the theory and what these results mean for said theory. This analysis will serve as the basis for the final concluding chapter.

The sixth and final chapter will answer the research question insofar possible in light of the findings of the research. The hypotheses of chapter 2 that are operationalized in chapter 3 will be tested using the analysis of chapter 5. In light of the hypothesis testing the research question of the research

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8 will then be answered. This will be followed by analysing how these results might or might not impact assumptions within the theories used for this research and its practical implications. Finally a discussion will follow which comments on future avenues of research and general qualifications and or shortcoming of this research.

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Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework

2.1 Professional Identity

In understanding expertise in terms of profession it is important to define what is meant by ‘profession’ and by what social dynamics or ‘professionalization’ comes to be. Professions are demarcated as a social group with a shared knowledge, set of skills and ways of thinking rooted in common educational and professional community backgrounds (Wilensky 1964). Thus not everyone with a similar occupation qualifies to be considered a professional under the definition used in this research.

First, the job of the professional is required to be sufficiently ‘technical’. This means that the job of a professional requires systematic knowledge or doctrine acquired through extensive training. The systematic knowledge must enjoy a widespread societal consensus as to its effectiveness in application and that no notion exists that its doctrine can simply all be learned ‘on the job’ (Wilensky 1964; 138).

Second, and most importantly for the purpose of this research, the professional must adhere to ‘professional norms’. These are moral norms established within a profession itself; dictating that practitioners should adhere to a ‘service ideal’. A professional’s dedication to this service ideal entails that the devotion to the client precedes other considerations such as personal and commercial profits should these principles conflict (Wilensky 1964; 138, 140). This way of conducting oneself is adopted because it is believed to offer superior opportunity for service and it lends the professional an agent-principal relationship heavily skewed in favour of the professional due to their exclusive knowledge (Wilensky 1964; 140-141).

Professional norms establish themselves on the back of two overarching norms. First, “Do what you can to maintain professional standards of work.”. Which is to say a professional upholds and maintains the standards of the profession by honouring the competence of other professionals and keeping up and protecting its public image (Wilensky 1964; 141). Two, “Be aware of the limited competence of your own specialty within the profession, honour the claims of other specialties and be ready to refer clients to a more competent colleague.”. In other words, respect the competences of the professional communities over those not educated by it even if that refers to the professional him-or herself regarding specific subjects outside of their sub-education (Wilensky 1964; 141).

Importantly, for the professionalization to be successful it needs to have a socially recognized image where those outside of the profession perceive themselves to be unable to properly execute on the tasks required for the job within the profession. In this sense, those outside of the profession are at the mercy of the superior technical knowledge possessed by the professional. This technical prowess can in turn bleed over into the field of policy advise. Here policy makers are not in a position to assess or make policy without an indispensable professional who will uphold the technical knowledge base and professional norms of his or her profession (Wilensky 1964; 156-158).

Brandsen & Honigh(2013) propose four characteristics that all professionals share. While these characteristics overlap with Wilensky’s conception of professional identity they also incorporate

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10 additional elements. These additional elements help recognize what it is to be a professional and how such a state can be identified.

First, the professional possesses knowledge and expertise required to perform a specialized task. This knowledge and expertise consists of both tacit and systematic knowledge. Tacit knowledge encompasses the more practical knowhow mostly learned through apprenticeships with those with the same profession which translates in common professional skillsets. Systematic knowledge is the explicit knowledge learned through formalized education or training, such as university education, which translates into common professional knowledge (Brandsen and Honingh 2013; 877).

Second, the professional is a part of a closed professional community characterized by shared norms and values. This closed community is the institutionalization of a profession made manifest and exerts self-control on its members through the creation of shared symbols, social norms and practices. These shared elements become an essential part of the work of professional and deviation can be met with negative consequences such as the exclusion from this closed professional community (Brandsen and Honingh 2013; 877).

Third, the profession is perceived as legitimate in its exclusivity. That is to say; people outside of the profession perceive that professional knowledge and expertise is required for their specialized tasks. This also justifies the existence of and closed nature and exclusivity of the closed professional community (Brandsen and Honingh 2013; 877-878).

Four, the professional is through their profession granted a degree of autonomy. It is assumed that a professional’s task cannot be standardized in full and thus requires discretionary autonomy to enable individual discretion to execute on non-standard tasks. The professional community also seeks to strengthen and defend this autonomy so that community standards can be applied from outside of the organizational environment (Brandsen and Honingh 2013; 878).

2.2 Pure & Hybrid Professionals and the Public Sector

It is important to note the distinct context of the public sector and to make a judgement about what it means to be a public professional. While professionals such as lawyers, architects and those with recognized occupations exist within the public sector there are also literatures that posit the existence of ‘public professionals’. Which refers to employees working in the public sector as a specific type of professional as these employees acquire skills, knowledge and values through specialized education and training programmes unique to the public sector. The public sector can in this case become its own professional community with the ‘public professional’ being its own profession. However, this is quite unique as it breaks with many assumption of the classic or ‘pure professional’ (Aschhoff & Vogel 2019; 3-4, Noordegraaf 2007).

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11 Noordegraaf(2007) names different types of professionals that are characterized on a spectrum from more ‘pure’ forms of professionalism to more ‘hybrid’ forms of professionalism. These categories represent different strands of demarcation as to what it means to be a professional. Some of the distinctions made are especially relevant to the often ambiguous public sector context or relate to the organizational environment of professionals.

The ‘purified professional’ is the most ‘pure’ typology of professional that is made. This categorization relies on the assumption that professionalism as a distinct phenomenon can only exist within traditional occupational fields. These traditional fields possess the necessary institutionalized characteristics of a codified nature which is required to exert the control on professionals required to foster and maintain professionalism. Managerial occupations for example fall outside of this scope for example as they are assumed to lack the distinct strength and control afforded by traditional occupational fields towards professionalism. Mintzberg for example argues that, “Little of its practice has been reliably codified, let alone certified as to its effectiveness. So management can not be called a profession or taught as such” (Mintzberg 2004; 12). This stream of theory on professionalism would like to actively guard or reinstitute this ‘purified professionalism’ as a way to guard against managerialism and other forms of control to guard against ‘deprofessionalization tendencies’ (Noordegraaf 2007; 771-772).

The ‘situated professional’ is a broadened view of what it means to be a professional where the professional is acted upon and incorporated within the organizational environment. The blurring of tasks where professionals are made to perform tasks that fall outside of the expertise of one’s own profession makes maintaining boundaries between one’s profession and organizational environment difficult. In turn this makes it difficult to strictly maintain professional autonomy. It also entails the integration of professionals through the development of skills specifically to answer the demand of the organizational environment, while simultaneously maintaining professional autonomy within one’s own field. The field of professionalism is broadened to include more experts on a certain field which includes more occupational fields such as managerial professionals (Noordegraaf 2007; 771-773).

The broadest view on what it means to be a professional is that of the ‘hybridized professional’. It also departs most radically from the classic occupational view of the professional. The view of the ‘hybridized professional’ is one that emphasizes the increasing complexity and interconnectivity of modern organizations that are ran complexly. This interconnectivity requires an interdisciplinary skillset rather than a focussed skillset within a single discipline. The expertise required to function as a professional is guided by the organizational environment and the societal environment and constantly subject to change and defined through practice rather than formalized theory. Professionalism is instead a tool to establish institutional legitimacy rather than occupational legitimacy and is about continually ‘becoming a professional’ rather than ‘being a professional’ (Noordegraaf 2007; 771, 773-775).

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2.3 Identity Development

Professional identities do not spontaneously come into existence but are instead formed through social processes. Isomorphism are one such phenomenon; it describes conditions in which people or groups of people come to resemble one another. Group identities have to function through forms of isomorphism in order to continually exist and maintain itself as a distinct social phenomenon. The development of professional identity refers to both its creation and maintenance simultaneously as only through continual isomorphism does it retain distinct characteristics. Normative isomorphism is the most important form of isomorphism for professional identity for it refers to the development of identity through standard educations and general ethics of professionalisms belonging to a particular profession (DiMaggio & Powell 1983; 150-154).

Relating to ‘the production of producers’ DiMaggio&Powell(1983) claim that professionalization exerts its tendencies towards homogenization both on the level of organization and on the professionals themselves that produced these results. Through common training and community pressure professionals are socially produced to be virtually indistinguishable. Through the professionals common formal education a similar cognitive base is realized and their similar growth through professional networks that span both internally and externally of the organization common ways of thinking are diffused. The professional thus possesses a position and disposition similar enough and strong enough to override incentives and demands of the organizational environment that would otherwise shape behaviour within organizations (DiMaggio & Powell 1983; 152-153)(Perrow 1974).

Professionals are filtered through a narrow field of education and a limited number of educating institutions. Organizations themselves further narrow the filtering of professionals as standardized professional competences become recognized skill-requirements for both the hiring for particular jobs and necessary conditions for advancement within the organization. Not only entry, but also progression becomes closely tied to the filtering based on common professional standards. In anticipation of this filter, even the educating institutions themselves become a part of the filtering by preparing professionals for their path of career advancement (DiMaggio & Powell 1983: 153-154)(Cicourel 1970; Williamson 1975).

2.4 Breaking with Professional Identity

There exists a tension where professionals as a distinct phenomenon experience dissonant pressures between the demands of the organizational environment and their professions. That is to say; a professional has learned and accepted a certain way of conducting themselves as a professional, but the organizational environment in which they operate incentivise different or even conflicting conduct. In this way a professional is confronted with two distinct social forces within themselves telling them to act in ways that are sometimes contradictory or exclusionary to the other (DiMaggio &Powell 1983).

The social forces exerted on professionals by their community must be able to weigh heavier on their success as a professional than the judgements of those outside of the profession. Were this not to

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13 be the case, the individual professional would be inculcated in ways of thinking of their environment rather than their profession and its ideational community. When the organizational environment starts to exert more pressing demands on the professional than their own professional standards, then the professional is at risk of losing the autonomy afford to him or her through their profession (DiMaggio &Powell 1983).

The impact of professional ethics on an institutional level is tied to their level of autonomy. Those professions that sees its members influenced more by the judgements of those outside of the profession than those within it run the risk of losing the internal community control that defines the profession. The profession as an institution will weaken and become less distinct in its uniform ways of thinking by indistinguishable if holds contested autonomy (Wilensky 1964; DiMaggio Powel 1983).

Furlong(2005) describes one such instance of breaking with professional identity with the ‘new professionalism’ in the United Kingdom where under Tony Blair’s New Labour the influencing of education came to be divorced form the educating of teachers as professionals. The prevailing image of the professional teacher under previous administration during the 1970’s meant that the profession entailed a high degree of autonomy justified by their unique expertise. This afforded to teachers the freedom not just to decide how to teach, but also what to teach and how to assess their pupils. The indispensability of the teacher profession in what was taught to future generations meant that the profession became the arena for political battles over curriculum for decades to come. This however would come to an end under New Labour’s policy on teacher education.

Under New Labour’s Green Paper the education of teachers was modernized under a vision which they called ‘new professionalism’. Teachers in the modern profession where required to accept accountability and partnership from within schools as well as its larger staff and others outside school including parents and business parties. Gone were the days of curriculum and pedagogical decisions being made without reference to outside parties (Furlong 2005;119-121).

This has resulted in the teacher occupation significantly shifting away from the classical individual professional formation. Mastery of classical vocational knowledge has come to be less critical, especially at the level of individual training of teachers. The state has become more dominant in the guidance of teacher career tracks as opposed to formalized professional expertise within profession education. Teacher development is now filtered more by schools as an institution than professional training institutions and filtering processes. Such happenings has led to some researchers to arguing of ‘de-professionalization’ as a phenomenon. New education policy no longer targets teacher education, for it is no longer the arena for that kind of policymaking for it has lost its relevance/dominance to that end (Furlong 2005;130-132)(Ogza 1995).

The case presented by Furlong(2005) presents a state of affairs where a profession sees the profession ended as an institution able to leverage expertise to have professional autonomy and an indispensable role in policymaking and standard setting. The knowledge system and the professional

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14 norms that were once so relevant to the development of individual teacher’s careers now have to content with other influences; the state, the school as an institution and even parents. Advancement within a career track is no longer filtered primarily by the profession as an institution. The once pivotal teacher education is no longer the arena for policymaking with regards to the reforming of teachers or curriculum (Wilensky 1964; Furlong 2005).

2.5 What predicts breaking with or remaining rigid to professional identity?

As previously mentioned, this research was inspired by a research paper on schoolteachers in the United States reacting to the No Child Left Behind(NCLB) policies described by Buchanan(2015). In which she presented a case of American schoolteachers that had to negotiate the demands of NCLB and their own learned pedagogical knowledge. In many cases these teachers worked towards the demands within their own organization of adhering to NCLB even in cases where it blatantly went against what they had been taught in the teaching profession. However, in other observed instances an active resistance to the new policy occurred were teachers retained a more strict adherence to their professionally learned expertise. What then explained this discrepancy?

Buchanan(2015) conceived of professional agency following the definition of Ahearn(2001). In this definition individuals are viewed as agents that can act upon a limited set of options shaped by larger force relations. More simply put, an agent has been taught a limited set of actions and responses through their preceding experiences and education. Their responses boil down to choosing between the alternatives that they are aware of or have been trained to execute on. Social institutions, such as one’s profession, organizational environment or other social groups will be largely responsible for the alternatives individuals are having to weigh against each other. However, strong tension can occur when alternatives do not simply differ but actively contradict one another.

It is in the tension between institutional demands on individual action where an individual becomes an agent by mediation of disparate institutional demands. In Buchanan’s findings two types of professional agency were identified; stepping up or pushing back. Stepping up here meant active adherence to organizational demands, whereas pushing back meant using one’s professional agency to reject, delay or subvert organizational demands (Buchanan 2015; 709-710).

What explains these different expressions of professional agency is a ‘mission fit’ or a ‘lack of fit’. Stepping up and working to answer the demands of the organizational environment is characterized by a ‘mission fit’ where the goals of the organization aligned with a previously established professional identity. When the two institutions, the profession and the organization, are able to exist side by side there is little tension to resolve and identities will not have to be significantly negotiated on part of the individual (Buchanan 2015; 710).

Resistance or pushing back on the other hand was characterized by a ‘lack of fit’ between the philosophies the teachers had built up previously and the new institutional demands of schools. Teachers would reject, negotiate and reconfigure particular school policies of NCLB they did not agree with

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15 stemming from professional knowledge. This however required a strong front of professionals within the organizations that enjoy professional autonomy is required to be able to ‘push back’ and assert their professional identity that are in conflict with organizational demands (Buchanan 2015; 710-712)(Pease-Alvarez 2011).

Summarized, breaking with or remaining a rigid adherent to one’s professional identity is best explained by ‘mission fit’ or ‘lack of fit’ and the presence or absence of ‘professional autonomy’. If individual professionals experience a ‘mission fit’ between demands of a previously cultivated professional identity and institutional demands then there is no real conflict to be mediated as the professional can adhere to both sets of demands without contradiction.

If however individual professionals experience a ‘lack of fit’ between sets of demands the situation becomes more complicated. A ‘lack of fit’ means that a professional will have to negotiate contradicting sets of demands from professional identity and the organizational environment. What happens next is determined by their degree of ‘professional autonomy’ as the options to express professional agency are predetermined by the presence or absence of ‘professional autonomy’ within the organization. If ‘professional autonomy’ is not established then professionals will have to either conform to the demands within the organization, face the consequences of dissent within the organization or leave.

If it ‘professional autonomy’ is present then ‘pushing back’ against organizational demands will be the outcome of a ‘lack of fit’. In this scenario professionals have both to motivation and means to remain rigid in their professional identity in the face of pressure on this identity. Professionals are predicted to remain rigid adherents to their professional identity in defiance of the demands of the organizational environment to act or think otherwise.

2.6 Citizen participation as a pressure on professional identity

Current waves of co-production and citizen participation in particular attempt to change the relationship between citizens and private parties with public professionals and this research is interested in the tension this causes. Here we will explore the assumptions on which this tension is based.

The current trend in governance tends towards an increased offloading of government responsibilities. While the government remains involved in some fashion it is usually a more distant one of facilitation or frame setting rather than executing on the task itself. The Dutch Railways is an example of this done through privatization where in principle it acts like a business but it is beholden to a Dutch government ministry as its sole stakeholder. While the government remains involved its position and the position of public professionals in this relationship has drastically changed and became more hands off. Citizen participation, especially when it takes the form of co-production efforts, is used to similar ends but on a micro scale and thus requires individual public professionals to fulfil a new role far different from that of a classic civil servant (Tuurnas 2016).

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16 Citizen participation is increasingly used for similar ends of offloading in an effort to reduce cost in order to overcome a lack of time and resources on the part of governments (Yang and Callahan 2007). Thus this shift is promoted both by the political and organizational environment. However this change requires an attitude change on the part of public professionals to adapt to their new roles. In this adopting or rejecting of a new role it is possible for public professionals to either help or hinder this new wave in citizen participation (Tuunas 2016).

Expertise however can complicate the adoption of this new role. Professionals are defined by their possession of legitimate exclusive knowledge that the average citizen participant does not possess. Expertise can thus both be a barrier to entry for citizens to be able to participate and function as a separator between professionals and those who are not (Brandsen & Honingh 2013). This view poses a challenge for the new dynamic between citizens and public professionals proposed by the political and organizational environment.

Moynihan and Thomas (2013, 790) point at the challenge that professionals see themselves mainly as service providers or experts, while they “would do better to view themselves as the lead partners in service development and delivery, where effectiveness requires that the public also contribute”. However, the professional identity of public professionals simply does not have a tendency to become these lead partners as their self-perception as experts stands in the way of this shift which leads to internal conflict.

Fledderus (2015), for example, argues that professionals will cede power to citizens only when they trust users to be able to take over tasks. This is supported by Yang (2005), who finds that professionals’ attitude towards citizen participation is influenced by their trust in citizens. Trust in the citizenry and their ability is thus a central concern, but this belief conflicts with the professional identity defined by the self-perception of expert and service providers possessing exclusive knowledge and skills on the part of public professionals.

Thus we arrive at the expectation of a conflict existing that needs to be negotiated between the current trends in citizen participation and professional identity of public professionals. How can public professionals trust citizens to take over responsibilities when expertise of the public professional is a barrier to entry? On the other hand, if expertise is no longer a barrier to entry what will become of the legitimacy of the expertise of public professionals with an ever more dispersed view of legitimate knowledge (Steen & Tuurnas 2018, 88)?

2.7 Summary

Professionalism is a phenomenon where a social group adheres to a specific technical knowledge set and professional norms. This system perpetuates itself by being the premier set of demands that a professional belonging to the social group of a profession has to answer to. Answering professional identity demands takes precedence over those of the organizational environment by being the primary deciding factor to the entry and advancement within the organizational environment. Professionals are

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17 afforded autonomy by the socially recognized exclusive authority they have on the field they are trained in. Professional autonomy thus plays an important role in the perpetuating professionalism as it allows for the playing field within organizations where the premier set of demands professionals have to answer to are based of their respective professions thus enforcing itself.

This process of self-replication and self-enforcement can however be interrupted if the demands of the organizational environment start to compete with or outweigh those of the profession. If the primary decider of success becomes the set of demands levied by the organization environment rather than the demands of professional norms then professionals will either leave the organizational environment or weaken in their professional identity. Once the demands of the organizational demands become just as or more critical to the entry and advancement within the organization then professional identity will have to be negotiated with or replaced by a professionals identity as being a part of said organization.

To really weaken professional identity within professionals they must be faced with dissonant demands between their professional identity and organizational environmental demands. If the success of a professional is decided by a set of demands that require said professionals to not adhere to or go against professional norms or technical knowledge then professional identity will be weakened. As such, professionals will no longer be able to leverage the exclusivity of their profession and the professional autonomy it affords professionals.

The weakening or retention of professional identity is not a prescriptive judgement. That is to say, for the purpose of this research one outcome is not seen as more or less desirable than the other. However, it does mean that ‘the professional’ will change over time and in the case of a weakening identity that what it means to be a professional will change or become an anachronism depending on one’s view.

Professionalism is a self-perpetuating system of social conditioning where people in a profession are through their environment primarily beholden to judgement from within their own profession. A weakening of the professional identity thus entails that the self-perpetuation has weakened or has in some way been circumvented. Professionals are thus no longer similarly inducted into the uniformity of technical knowledge and professional norms within their profession. Insofar as this has real-world consequences it entails that individual professionals are no longer as interchangeable as they are no longer similarly produced by a self-perpetuating social system. Thus professionals can in the face of a weakening professional identity no longer be expected to behave, act, think, believe and possess similar skillsets as those within their own profession making it more similar to a vocation.

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2.8 Expectations

‘Mission fit’ means there is no tension between professional identity on the part of public professionals and the demands of citizen participation on the part of the organizational environment. This is a state where no identity tension should exist. When these two different elements competing for the identity of professional identity are in agreement then neither intrudes on the other and needs no negotiation on the part of the public professional.

E1: “If the professional norms of public servants are characterized by a ‘mission fit’ with the act of citizen participation, then the professional identity of public servants need not be negotiated with the practice of citizen participation as there is no tension between the two.”

Conversely, when there is a ‘lack of fit’ between the professional identity of public professionals and citizen participation on part of the organizational environment a tension between the two does exist. A public professional has been inculcated within the identity of their own profession and the theory expects them to defend it if they are able. The ability to defend one’s identity is defined by their own agency as afforded to them by said identity; this ability is defined as ‘professional autonomy’. Thus, if public professionals are both willing and able to defend their own professional identity they will do so and not let their professional identity be weakened by citizen participation for public professionals will ‘push back’ against the practice.

E2: “If the professional norms of public servants are characterized by a ‘lack of fit’ with the act of citizen participation and they possess ‘professional autonomy’, then the professional identity of public servants will not be weakened and citizen participation will meet resistance from public professionals.”

However, if this same tension exists, but public professionals lack ‘professional autonomy’ then they are in no position to secure their own professional identity. When tension between professional identity and citizen participation needs to be negotiated and public professionals are unable to favour their own professional identity then resolution will be found in favour of citizen participation at the expense of one’s professional identity. This leads to the expectation that if public professionals experience a ‘lack of fit’ with citizen participation and are lacking in ‘professional autonomy’ then they will break with their professional identity in favour of citizen participation.

E3: “If the professional norms of public servants are characterized by a ‘lack of fit’ with the act of citizen participation and they lack ‘professional autonomy, then a professional will break with their professional identity.”

Public professionals do not derive their ideas of professionalism and their professionalism from the same source. More ‘pure’ type professionals are closer to the classic conception of the professional that derives his expertise and ensuing identity from a mostly exclusive knowledge community called a profession. These public professionals have been cultivated within the subculture of their own profession

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19 and their professional identity is thus a far more pronounced part of the whole of their sum of identities. More ‘hybrid’ type professionals are more defined by cultivation of professionalism and any ensuing self-identity as defined by continual practice within an organizational environment. Thus, there is the expectation that more ‘pure’ type professional possess a more distinct identity they will attempt to maintain in the face of citizen participation whereas more ‘hybrid’ type professionals more likely to interpret citizen participation as a legitimate part of professionalism.

E4: “Public professionals that skew more towards ‘pure’ professional on the pure-hybrid professional spectrum are more likely to remain rigid in their professional identity during citizen participation than more ‘hybrid’ professionals”.

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Chapter 3: Research Methods

3.1 Overall Approach

This research will take a qualitative research approach in order to answer the research question; To what extent does citizen participation lead to a weakening of professional identity of public professionals working in Dutch municipalities?

Qualitative data provides the most rich insights into the opinions, thoughts and feelings of respondents, which is what the research needs to uncover to understand the professional identities of public professionals in relation to citizen participation. Professional identity being a facet of a person’s multiple identities is a complex and dynamic subject and thus lends itself poorly to closed survey methods or simple multiple choice questionnaires. Instead this research will focus on a smaller number of respondents within a number of municipalities. To better understand the suspected relationship between professional identity and citizen participation respondents need to be able to freely and dynamically disclose their thoughts and experiences on the subject.

The research question is interested in the specifics of a relation and the ‘why’ of this supposed relationship and this makes qualitative data the best method of research. This does however mean that any results of the research apply to specific cases and while they shed light on certain dynamics they do not give insight into the scale of such dynamics. Quantitative research avenues becomes a more interesting avenue for data gathering if the dynamics are established and the scope of the effect or its latent consequences become measurable as a result.

The chosen method of qualitative data gathering will be that of semi-structured interviews in order to empirically verify the professional identities of public professionals and how this could be affected by citizen participation. Interviews in which interviewees feel free to express their thoughts, feelings and experiences on these topics as accurately and honestly as possible are the best way to make this empirically known. While personal and social desirability biases will certainly apply these can be minimized through offering options of anonymization and other protections of kinds of non-disclosure.

The interviews will then be transcribed and be cross-compared with the previously established theoretical concepts and expectations from the theory chapter. The exact methods of case selection and operationalization of theoretical concepts will be elaborated on further. This chapter will then conclude with a discussion on the validity and reliability of the research results which makes clear the possibilities and limitations offered by the data to answer the research question.

3.2 Case Selection

Ultimately the primary case data will be the qualitative data that describe the state of the professional identity of public professionals working in Dutch municipalities. In order to have a sample that is representative enough to answer the research question with some certainty it is important to reach out to public professionals operating in different municipalities. It is also a requirement to have some

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21 diversity in the types of professions taken into account as it ensures that the research is detecting features of public professionals rather than features of any particular profession.

However, to ensure a basis for comparison public professionals working on the same subject have been selected to make comparison between professionals possible. As such departments of ‘spatial planning’ has been chosen as the pool of professionals from which interviewees have been drawn. The particular department type was chosen not based on its subject matter, but rather that it requires citizen participation practices and involves a breadth of different professions in order to operate. Exploratory talks with Vincent Lommerse, a policy officer working in the municipality of Hillegom, had explained to me that this would be one of the better departments because it encompassed multiple professions that encountered citizen participation in their work. He had also warned that ‘financial departments’ for example would make a poor choice as it faced largely inwards with minimal outward facing interactions and would result in a homogenously educated pool of professionals that largely don’t engage in citizen participation.

The cases used are the different municipalities ‘spatial planning’ departments. These municipalities were reached out to by way of publically available contact forms, publically available e-mail contacts and use of personal contacts of the researcher.

Over the course of the research 6 municipalities were reached out to, 4 of which responded and 3 of which were open to interviews. These three municipalities open to interviews were Katwijk, Leiden and Den Haag(The Hague). 4 interviews were conducted with public professionals of Katwijk, 1 interview was conducted with a public professional of Leiden and 3 interviews were conducted with public professionals of Den Haag. The option to be anonymized was offered to all interviewees, but all public professionals interviewed consented to be appear in the research with their real names.

A short summary of each interviewee and their relevant position and job title will follow. The 4 interviewees of Katwijk were; Frank van den Berg the Teamleader of Spatial Planning, Michel Leunis a city planner, Hilde van den Heuvel the Teamleader of Permits and Teamleader of Supervision and Arjen Eendebak a lawyer working in charge of granting permits.

The interviewee of Leiden was Lars Engelbertink the policy officer of urban development and city planner.

The 3 interviewees of Den Haag were; Arthur Hagen an advisor of city management specialized in sewage, water and soil remediation, Arjen Massing a senior project leader and an advisor on sustainability and participation and Tina Ehrima a senior advisor on citizen participation.

3.3 Operationalization of definitions

The dependent variable, that is the professional identity of public professionals in Dutch municipalities, must be made detectable. Professional identity within this research is defined as either a rigidity of

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22 professional identity or a weakening to either some or a strong extent. The state of professional identity is necessary to judge if citizen participation affects it, but it is not sufficient.

The possible relationship between citizen participation and one’s professional identity needs to be established within the semi-structured interviews. Citizen participation itself will also receive attention in the interviews directly. The pressures brought on by the independent variable themselves are also important to inquire on during the interviews to confirm the pressures on public professionals brought on by citizen participation.

Inquiring on the pressures of citizen participation and the state of public professional’s professional identity is however not enough. The particular relation between the two need to be established to prove it exists and if it is there what its nature happens to be.

The independent variable needs to be characterized in terms of the identity pressure it applies to public professionals. Within the interviews it is important to inquire on how the individual professional view citizen demands as an instrument in governance. Is it simply a tool for gauging citizen attitude or is it more of a client-customer relation or something else altogether? The nature of citizen participation as viewed by individual public professionals gives indication to what pressures if any they experience from citizen demands.

On the part of the dependent variable it needs to be established as a retention of or a weakening of professional identity. To make this empirically verifiable it is first required to gauge what the professional identity is that the individual public professional has been imparted with by their profession. In order to know if professional identity has changed in some way it must be known what elements could have changed within public professionals.

The relation between the independent and dependent variable can be verified by looking at the possible conflicts between citizen demands and the behaviour required to retain professional identity. Negotiation in favour of the pressures of professional identity would indicate that citizen participation did not weaken professional identity. If however, the public professional is willing to go against established knowledge of the professionals to meet citizen demands then a causal relation exists between citizen participation and a weakening of professional identity.

There also remains the possibility that citizen demands and established knowledge within a profession are in agreement. Simply asking if the professional in question would pick one over the other remains a dicey subject as it becomes a hypothetical rather than empirical question. If it can be established that citizen demands in part guide behaviour and policy on the part of public professional then it already presents a weakening of professional identity according to theory, be it a slight weakening. The weakening comes from the loss of exclusivity in pressures on public professionals, however the professional still acts in accordance to the technical knowledge and professional norms as pressured through his or her profession.

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23 Then there is the matter of professional autonomy. This is an important assumption of the cycle of professionalism perpetuating itself. The autonomy afforded to professionals due to their socially recognized legitimate knowledge ensures that it is the professional identity being the remains the premier pressure a public professional has to adhere to. The central question or theoretical assumption that citizen participation causes professional identity to weaken rests on the assumption that it intrudes on the subject monopoly afforded by professional autonomy.

If professional autonomy is positively identified then the line of reasoning presented in the theory chapter applies as expected. On the other hand, if professional autonomy is not identified then this presents a problem for the central theory about professional identity. It presents a case in which professional identity either does not exist or has already weakened, at least in terms of the definitions used in this research. Were this to be the case then questions pertaining to public professionals’ identities can still yield interesting results, but it would be effects on self-identity alone that are observed rather than professional identity as a social phenomenon as presented by the theory. Alternatively it can mean that professional autonomy is not as essential to the existence of professional identity as the theory argues.

To test the theoretical expectations it must be made clear under what circumstances the research considers a public professional to be breaking with their identity and alternatively what rigidity in one’s professional identity would look like. The difficulty in truly establishing this is in situations where professional identity and demands of an organizational simply do not conflict. When there is no opposition to either demands of professional identity and citizen participation upon a public professional then it can be hard to pinpoint which identity is the leading cause for their behaviour, since both identities demand the same or non-excluding behaviours.

Which identity leads is most apparent when their multiple identities provide a public professional with conflicting demands. When it is not possible to adhere to multiple identities simultaneously they need to be negotiated. Adherence to one identity over the other or the blending of demands becomes more easily assignable. Here it is possible to observe priorities within individual public professional’s multiple identities even if these exist solely within their own mind.

To break with an identity means that in the case of identity A that when identity A and identity B conflict then identity B is executed on excluding the execution of identity A. In simpler terms, breaking with identity means that one adheres to the demands of a different identity in conflict with one’s previous identity. Rigidity is thus the converse. In the case of conflicting identities then for the purpose of this research a public professional is considered to be rigid within the identity they adhere to and breaking with the one they are not executing on.

Mission fit or a lack thereof pertains to how well institutional demands square with notions of appropriate behaviour or procedure in one’s profession. Public professionals experience a ‘mission fit’

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24 when demands of a previously cultivated professional identity and institutional demands coincide or at least do not conflict. A ‘lack of fit’ conversely suggests an inner conflict between a public professional’s previously established professional identity and institutional demands.

For the purpose of this research the practice of citizen participation is what we’re interested in. As such a ‘mission fit’ or a ‘lack of fit’ is a judgement about whether ‘mission fit’ or a ‘lack of fit’ exist within individual public professionals as it pertains to the practice of citizen participation. To say that ‘mission fit’ exists means that a public professional sees citizen participation within their profession as an appropriate and useful practice. To say that a ‘lack of fit’ exists means that public professionals view citizen participation as counter to appropriate practice within their own profession.

Citizen participation however is an umbrella term that describes a host of practices and the questions about citizen participation that sparked this research is more of a trend in citizen participation. It aims to change the dynamic between public professionals and citizens and other private stakeholders during citizen participation. Primarily, ‘mission fit’ would describe a willingness to adapt government practice based on citizen input and a willingness to share or cede control with citizens and private stakeholders for the public interest.

3.4 Formulation of interview questions

The professional identities of individual public professionals are ultimately the focus of this research. Thus it is the identity of public professionals that should be observed and the best way to assess this would be through the use of qualitative analysis. Quantitative measures would entail the use of measurable indicators and how an individual feels towards the adherence to one’s professional norms and technical knowledge let themselves be ill captured by simple observable behaviours. Narrowing down on relatively simple behaviour tests would be not work because simple behaviours let themselves be explained by a whole range of motivations of which adherence to identity presents would be but one explanation. Quantitative measures of semi-structured interviews of individual public professionals on the other hand present the opportunity of a more full exploration of the identity of an individual professional.

Within the interviews with public professionals a couple of elements need to be empirically verified; professional identity, professional autonomy, mission fit or a lack of fit and rigidity or breaking with professional identity. The respective behaviours that would be guided by either professional identity or an effect of citizen participation needs to be made clear.

Inquiry into the pressures of professional identity is required to judge if the individual public professional remains a strong adherent to it. During the interview the public professional will be asked questions such as “Pertaining to issues discussed during citizen participation, what would others within your own profession see as appropriate treatment/behaviour/approach of said issue?” and “Did you try to convey or convince the participants of the correctness of the standard professional approach towards

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25 the given issue?”. These questions establish the pressures that a public professional’s professional identity exerts on their behaviour and how strongly they conform to it.

The verification of pressures of citizen participation is required to judge if there are competing pressures between citizen demands and what is seen as the appropriate thing to do within one’s profession. Thus it is necessary to inquire as to what exactly the pressures of citizen participation on the identity of public professionals are. Questions such as “What place do you believe that citizen participation has in municipal government?” and “What specifically did you take away from instances of citizen participation and did you if at all work to incorporate into policy, procedure or direct action?” need to be answered. This can give a clearer picture of the pressures citizen participation can exert on public professionals or if this is at all the case.

The interviews will also assess the presence or absence of professional autonomy through different questions regarding the socially recognized legitimacy, skill-and or knowledge requirements to assess quality of work and to what extent public professionals enjoy autonomy within their bounded field. Socially recognized legitimacy will be assessed through questions such as “How would you say the average person looks at your profession?”. Skill-and knowledge requirements through questions such as “To what extend would a person within your organization be able to perform your tasks without additional training or teaching?”. General autonomy will be assessed through questions such as “To what extent does your profession afford you the discretion to perform tasks or do work that would be difficult to assess by your superiors?”.

Following this is a judgement about how the relationship between the two is negotiated within the public professional. To answer the research question first it needs to be assessed if the pressures of professional identity and citizen participation are at all in conflict. If there is no conflict then an additional question like ‘Would you say that you adhered primarily to either your professional knowledge or citizen request in your practice as a public professional?’. Pertaining the analytical elements of the interview questions it is important to ask those questions that unearth how public professionals mediate inner conflict between pressures between professional identity and citizen demand. To establish whether or not citizen participation leads to a weakening of professional identity it needs to be judged if professionals’ behaviour is guided by citizen pressures rather than or in spite of conformity to one’s professional identity.

3.5 Reliability

When it comes to the reliability of the results of this research the methods used present flaws. The nature of interviews do a lot to distort the reliability of results as they are based on unique human interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. As such, no two interviews will be exactly the same, much less when a highly personal matter like self-identity is concerned. If the interviewer or the interviewee is swapped with a different person then their interaction can differ greatly based on biases in

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26 interpersonal interactions. The nature of interviews then makes the gathering of reliable data on the internal self-identifications of individual public professionals challenging.

A consistent list of interview questions can remedy these problems to an extent. So long as the interview questions remain short, to the point and narrow in on particular variables of the research then the open ended nature of interpersonal interaction can at least be bounded. This makes sure that if the same organization where to be inquired on again the results will be the same or at least similar if asked shortly after the interview.

That last point illustrates a reliability problem though. Identity is a continual process as are organizations and the cultures, ideas or context contained within them can change over time. This means that any data gathered will have a shelf life, especially if organizational contexts change rapidly or organizations experience high turnover.

3.6 Internal Validity

In terms of internal validity the research methods strengthen this by using a most similar systems design to safeguard this. By flattening out the differences between respondents doing roughly the same work within spatial planning and requiring similar skillsets and professions one can be reasonably sure that different results are not confounded by differences in profession and field of work alone. Similarly, by observing multiple municipalities of different sizes and incorporating interview questions on how experiences might differ amongst different municipalities confounding variables can be filtered out of the data.

Additionally the semi-structured nature of the interviews having set questions or at least discuss the same topics that will always be covered ensures that even if conversations wildly diverge the same questions will always be answered. The risk of dynamic interviews simply leading to different conversations or certain topics not being covered and leading to an false assumption about supposed causal relations can thus be avoided.

However there are concerns about the internal validity that are not or could not be remedied within this research. One such concerns is the relatively small sample size entailed by the limited time and resources of a master thesis. Personal identity is multifaceted and complex and does not only consist of one’s professional identity and can be confounded by other identities that would influence one’s attitude in a professional capacity. Had the sample size been larger then these shortcomings could have been avoided. The small number of cases/municipalities approached is similarly small and within the same province of the Netherlands. While they differ in population size and other characteristics which can alleviate confounding elements of municipalities themselves to some extent with a number under ten these concerns cannot be eliminated. The danger of having a non-representative sampling of cases remains. The situation of municipalities relatively close together makes repeat data gathering

Professional Identity and Citizen Participation: Shrinking Professionalism and Hybrid Professionals