Profession, Code and Ethics: Toward a Morally Useful Theory of Today's Professions: Toward a Morally Useful Theory of Today's Professions (Routledge Revivals)

This title was first published in 2002. This work offers a systematic analysis of professions, emphasizing not special knowledge but special obligations. Presenting a theory of professions which explains the moral authority of professional codes, it presents a combination of systematic theory with detailed consideration of specific questions of professional ethics. Three "professions" are chosen for comparison - lawyering, engineering and policing. Both lawyering and engineering are examined as professions in being. The author explores what police have to do to turn their honest occupation into a profession like law or engineering, arguing that what the police lack is not education (as sociologists would propose) but a set of standards beyond that which law, market and morality demand, to which they are willing to commit themselves .