Abstract
This article assumes that a profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way (a discipline) beyond what law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require. Our question is whether the concept of profession (so defined) may have a far wider range than the term, so that, for example, pointing out that a certain language lacks a word for “profession” in our sense, is not enough to show that those who speak the language also lack the concept. We believe the survey of 71 Chinese reported here begins to answer that question. This article has four parts. The first describes who was interviewed, how, when, and so on. The second describes some important features of the survey’s questions, explaining how the questions track the concept of profession. The third part reports and interprets the results relevant to our question. The forth defends a tentative answer to the question with which we began—arguing the survey supports the claim that China has a profession of engineering. This article should serve as a “proof of concept”, that is, a model for similar studies around the world both of engineering and of other occupations thought to be professions.
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Notes
One anonymous reviewer for this journal objected that “pride” is too subjective a notion to be evidence for the existence of a profession, and suggested knowledge and skill as better evidence. We agree that (for engineers) knowledge and skill (the discipline of engineering) is evidence of one aspect of profession. We deny that having the relevant knowledge and skill is sufficient for membership in the engineering profession. Indeed, we assert that certain states of mind (such as pride or a sense of shared responsibility) are necessary for membership in any profession, however subjective such states of mind are). The definition adopted here requires that engineers be organized in a certain way, that is, “openly”, requiring them to claim (profess) membership. Expressions of pride in their work as engineers is an instance of claiming membership in the profession. That pride is “subjective” is just the consequence of seeking to understand profession as professionals understand it, as having an internal aspect as well as an external one.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Matthew Keefer for reading an early draft to check our methodology, suggesting a few improvements, and catching several typos, and to one anonymous reviewer for this journal for lots of small suggestions leading to many small improvements.
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Davis, M., Zhang, H. Proving that China has a Profession of Engineering: A Case Study in Operationalizing a Concept Across a Cultural Divide. Sci Eng Ethics 23, 1581–1596 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9846-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9846-2