410 / 736
The duty is serving another's interest.
The relationship
is private and confidential
resting on confidence and trust.
The ethos is integrity.
The success is the wisdom or accuracy of the
service rendered irrespective of the use to which
it is put by the recipient.
The responsibility is non-delegable ;
the scope
of the duty is the same whoever undertakes it.
The practitioner is wholly answerable for the
first act performed in the pursuit of a professional
career.
The quality is the best known to the profession.
The quality control is the standard set by the
profession.
Business on the other hand, is entreprenurial.
It creates and innovates ;
it exploits opportunity.
It generates a demand for its own products ;
marketing is its special characteristic.
Business training is progressive from job to job
through the line of promotion.
Business responsibility is delegable. Judgment
and discretion are allowed in accordance with
capacity and experience. Delegation of authority
measures accountability.
The objectives of a business enterprise deter
mine what it does and how it does it. Business
may regulate its quality. Car manufacturers may
produce luxury cars, prestige cars, comfortable
cars and, subject only to the requirements of
safety, purely functional but highly uncomfortable
cars. Some might argue that the foregoing con
trasts suffice to illustrate the inappropriateness of
trying to assess the contribution and reward of the
professions according to the practices of a market
economy.
There are, however, the terms " Productivity "
and
" Competition"
to be
considered. These
almost emotive terms conjure up notions of pro
gress and aggressive efficiency, thereby suggesting
that non-participation is a form of decadence.
" Productivity " may mean greater output for
less effort, or it may mean the creation of more
goods in greater variety in order to create an
urgency of wants. The first is achieved by the
substitution of machines for people. The second
is the counterpart of the first, a device to maintain
the level of employment and provide a source of
income ;
its by-product is inflation. The palliative
sought is price stability. Whilst the professions
124
would acknowledge the need for an orderly pro
gression of incomes in line with general economic
development, they do not participate directly in
the economic struggle ; their participation is purely
derivative.
The demand for their services is not susceptible
of any form of planned control; they render
service where they are needed. In the area of
" competition "—Professional practitioners com
pete on the basis of quality. The volume of work
which they build up is dependent upon the repu
tation they have gained in the rendering of past
services. Resources are not pooled, rewards are not
shared. Bargaining is regarded as detrimental to
confidence and trust; integrity should not be put
at risk. The professions accordingly forbid or
discourage undercutting of fixed or customary
charges and forbid touting or advertising for new
business.
The degree of knowledge and skill to be used
is determined by the task in hand. The attention
required for solution cannot vary. It is not variable
according to the reward.
Nevertheless, practitioners operate at different
levels of knowledge and skill, the general practi
tioner where general knowledge and skill
is
adequate, the specialist where particular know
ledge and skill is called for. This does not reduce
the quality of performance which remains at the
level of the best known. It relates to the concen
tration and intensive training of the man-power
equipment. There is no objection to the specialist
negotiating higher fees according to his profes
sional standing and the nature of the service to
be rendered.
The professional practitioner
looks
to high
quality demand as his main motivation, and
expects reward to be a reflection of this rather
than a source of it. I am not an economist, but
am I not right in thinking that unrestrained com
petition in business has led to insecurity, that the
old belief in economically perfect or atomistic
competition in which the discipline of the market
was regarded as supreme is now discarded, and
that in the business world reduction of risk
associated with future activity now substitutes for
the former objective of maximisation of profits ?
If this be so, are the professions to be subjected
to an outmoded economic concept or is insecurity
something to be welcomed for others ?