Professional Identity and Social Work

Stephen A. Webb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138234420
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315306933
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Professional Development
• Index: Social Sciences

How are identities formed among social workers, many of whom perform complex, challenging and ambiguous public sector functions on a regular basis? Why does identity come to matter for professional social work? This book, the first of its kind in the field, examines professional identity in relation to social work by asking how practitioners think of themselves as a "social worker", a professional self-concept often entangled in a range of relations, beliefs, values and experiences.

Bringing together the perspectives of an internationally renowned group of specialists, the collection addresses a range of issues associated with professional identity construction and "being professional" in the context of a rapidly changing inter-professional environment. It introduces new concepts to social work, including materiality, enactment, performance, affect, entanglement, capital and worth, to consider the vexed issues surrounding matters of professional identity in social work.

This will be an essential guide to all those keen to debate the challenges and possibilities confronting contemporary social work through the lens of professional identity, whether they are students, educators, practitioners, researchers, managers, policy-makers or associated professionals. It will also appeal to those interested in social theory, organisational sociology and leadership as well as anyone working in related fields of health and education.

1
Matters of Professional identity and social work

Stephen A. Webb

Introduction

Stuart Hall famously asked in a 1996 essay “Who Needs Identity?” Well, quite a few of us do, it seems from a quick glance at the issues of our times. No matter whether it is a discussion of nationhood, race, religion, popular culture or sexuality, identity has become a mainstay in everyday conversations about who we say we are and believe ourselves to be (Jackson, 2010). Today, people even talk about “identity theft” as the crime of the new millennium (Hoar, 2001).

Broadly speaking, identity and identification are root constructs in social sciences (Albert, Ashforth, and Dutton, 2000: 13). What helps root these concepts so centrally? I can think of three main reasons. First, they are tremendously versatile. As Alvesson et al. wrote of identity, it “can be (and perhaps has been) applied to almost any phenomenon” (2008: 7). Indeed, this has led some to caution against applying the term indiscriminately and dropping it into accounts unreflectively (Ashforth, 2016: 361). Second, the concept of identity helps to bridge analyses between levels of social life such as the personal, the group, the team and the organisation. This makes it a powerful device for connecting recursive links and understanding dynamic networks of association. Third, identity is all about definition. How we define ourselves, what we value and the collective relation to something or someone else really does matter.

So is there a starting definition that can help us think our way carefully into considerations about professional identity? Leary and Tangney (2003) offer a textbook guide to the distinction between identity and identification. Identity refers to the central, distinctive and more or less enduring qualities of an actor, while identification refers to viewing those qualities as self-defining (2). Identification stems from the Greek word oikeion, meaning “belonging”, or “being part of”. It implies advocacy of and alignment of interest with the profession of social work. Leary and Tangney maintain that identity is a label, whereas identification refers to the classifying act itself. Thus identity is best construed as being both relational and contextual, while the act of identification is best viewed as inherently processual (2003: 3). As shown later this provides us with a standard, serviceable definition that can be built on and critically engaged with as we unpack matters of professional identity and social work.

Since Hall asked the question there has been a burgeoning literature on professional identity and social work, especially over the past 10 years. Within the field there has been an outpouring of interest and indeed speculation on matters of professional identity and identification. Some of the most compelling contributions over recent years have been made by authors gathered together in this volume. At the same time, within its short tangled history, the concept of professional identity has been subject to a searching critique. It appears to be more than a fad or even simply a productive line of research because it is a promising agenda for social work. This is because it offers a number of theoretical breakthroughs when drawing on the broader interdisciplinary social sciences. Perhaps, for social work, more so than other professions, it also gains significance in its pivotal relationship to a politics of location and worth (Hall, 1996; Stark, 2011). By politics, I mean both the various tensions for jurisdiction and territorial conflicts that are played out within and across professions and the difficult struggles that characterise the ongoing claims made for or against professional social work. At both individual and collective levels, activists, pressure groups and campaigners are mobilising around issues of identity. We have become accustomed to all kinds of “identity politics”. To give an immediate feel for this we need only to look at the UK magazine Community Care, which has successively launched the “Stand Up for Social Work” campaign since 2006 to raise the profile of social work and showcase its signature identity. Across the Twitter online network supporters and activists have conscientiously added the brightly coloured “Stand Up for Social Work” badge logo to their profile photographs. All but a tiny fraction of perspectives on professional identity focus on its positive consequences. The darker side is rarely discussed. At a populist level it is seen as a good thing and therefore more of it must be better (see Chapter 16 in this volume). Indeed, in some important corners social work is worried about giving up too precipitously the “identity” of the profession. In the UK this is especially true in relation to concerns about the so-called loss of identity in the face of health and social care integration. It is felt that having a strong professional identity is likely to buffer the impact of threats to social workers’ collective identity. In light of this, the ongoing generativity around matters of professional identity and the sustained concentration should not be that surprising.

The present book, the first of its kind in social work, examines professional identity – its nature, development and application – in social work through a social science lens. Indeed, throughout the book you will witness the way various authors draw on this rich interdisciplinary field to make sense of professional identity. The book demonstrates the significance of professional identity because of its links to a wide range of experiences, contexts, values and institutional locations that otherwise would not be associated in social work.

It has been indicated that identity has been subject to a searching critique in the social sciences. This is partly because there are so many diverse perspectives that have invoked it. It is also because of both the indiscriminate usage of the concept and its populist appeal. Once we dip into issues of professional identity in social work we soon discover they have been vexed by conceptual ambiguity, lack of consensus about core attributes and problems in identifying what counts in the constitution of identity. Studies have tended to focus on social workers’ professional identity formation; the framing of key tensions around social workers’ professional identity; issues which convey narrative representations of social workers in talking about their role, values and work; and the educational context in which professional identity is formed in preparation for front-line practice (Webb, 2016). All this makes it a kind of laboratory, then, for thinking about matters of professional identity.

I have deliberately chosen to underline the significance of “matter” in thinking about professional identity. Hence the chapter title “matters of professional identity and social work”. The brilliant feminist physicist Karen Barad (2003), in ‘Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’, asked how matter came to be important, which led to an astonishing uptake of discussion in sociological circles. John Law (2004) took up her insights with great alacrity. He starts by putting a hyphen into Barad’s opening play of words. “The world is an ongoing open process of matter-ing” (2003: 817). For Law, this concept of matter-ing leads to three crucial insights about the social world. First, the merging of two worlds: “the kingdom of facts, and the kingdom of values” (2004: 2). This is a move from what Bruno Latour (2004) calls “matters of fact” to “matters of concern”. In the process, scientific facts, for example, become value-laden controversies. Fracking is a great example of this at work. Another example is the weapons of mass destruction justification used by the Bush administration for the war on Iraq. The UK government net migration targets is a more recent example of attempts to use scientific evidence to mask deeper matters of concern. Facts and values – natures and cultures – are enacted together; they transport and are all mixed up. Second, Law says it indexes the move from stability, things in themselves, to things in process. Third, as a part of this, it indexes a move to enactment (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Barad, Law reminds us, insists that worlds are being done, enacted into being, instance by instance (see Summerson Carr, 2010 for a discussion of expertise as enactment). Identity comes to resemble something like a series of concrete interactive episodes involving practitioners invested with specific goals, skills and linguistic capacities. Mattering becomes the frame through which social workers communicate their professional identity. So what does matter-ing mean if we bring it closer to social work and the focus of this book? The answer is: quite a lot. What is matter-ing about professional identity in social work? What is being made material, made relevant for social work? What is the business of social work all about when professional identity becomes a concern? How are “contributions” made to social work from other social sciences or professional fields, contributions that matter? Can we understand controversies and scandals involving social work, other professions and the public as fighting over matters of fact, and over the policies that might follow from those facts? And how does what matters get moved about when thinking about changing professional identity? As a side note for now: We will see how this concentration on “mattering” provides a very helpful corrective to those perspectives on professional identity which have a tendency to overemphasise the discursive, interactional and personal. Realities rather than opinions are being made. Reality is being done in professional (and other) practices of valuation (Law, 2004: 6).

There is no clear-cut acceptance of what is meant by professional identity. The muddled situation is further complicated by the fact that several competing theoretical perspectives are deployed to make sense of professional identity. For instance, at a practical level the extent to which front-line workers have to fulfil a narrow set of socially coded values, regulated by a professional body, as part of identity maintenance has been a troublesome and much debated matter for social work. Clearly, issues of professional identity in social work are contestable. A mix of competing rationalities and values are invoked in attempts to locate the specificities of front-line practice, at an individual and collective level, which generate debate about professional identity and social work.

Let’s kick things off with some basic assumptions. At a practitioner level, professional identity – or how social workers think of themselves as social workers – is often defined as their self-concept based on attributes, beliefs and experiences (Ibarra, 1999; Schein, 1978). Here the focus is very much on the individual practitioner rather than the profession as a group collective. Despite a growing interest in matters of professional identity in social work, researchers know relatively little about how identities are formed among practitioners who carry out the complex, challenging and often ambiguous front-line functions (Baxter, 2011). The aim of this book is to examine the formative aspects of professional identity as it relates to social work. This will facilitate greater theoretical clarity and map possible alternatives to afford a better understanding of the field of social work. The book focuses on the significance of professional socialisation, workplace culture, boundary maintenance, jurisdiction disputes and inter-professional tensions with health, education and the police (Abbott, 1988). The book highlights the importance of beliefs as well as attachment and sense of belonging for the study of professional identity (Rothausen et al., 2015). Professional identification is often associated with increased personal accomplishment. The importance of identity formation as mainly social and relational in nature is attenuated. Here it is concerned with narratives of recognition, trust and organisational culture within hierarchal settings.

From these different perspectives we see the notion of professional identity as a complex one, and a cursory examination of the literature reveals that there is a great deal of contestability. Moreover, as will be seen, professional identity is not a stable entity: it is an ongoing process of accommodation and customisation shaped by contextual workplace factors. In this respect, identity formation is viewed as more interactive and more problematic than the relatively straightforward adoption of the role of “professional social worker”. Given the increasing importance of professionals in all types of organizations (Wallace, 1995), and given the centrality of identity in how practitioners make sense of and “enact” their workplace environments (see Weick et al., 2005), addressing issues of professional identity in this book is most timely. In the section which follows attention is drawn to the contestable nature of professional identity and the way this impacts on its various characterisations in social work.

Professional identity: background to a contestable concept

The literature on professional identity has consistently revealed its contestable and changing nature. This is in part due to the rapid changes that occur in organisational, workplace and professional life. As Dent points out in Chapter 2 (this volume) it is also related to wider matters of economic and political change, such as austerity and technology. Professional identity does not come ready-made. Many researchers think it is continually fashioned in temporary situations. We need consider this in terms of re-localization as practitioners get a grasp on the dynamics of professional identity. For example, what is the likely impact of agile working and hot desking in social work organisations? As Dent and Whitehead explain:

Being professional becomes more than a means by which the individual navigates the increasingly choppy waters of organizational life. Being professional suggests a context of meaning and values, whereby the lawyer, judge, human resource manager, banker and so on is experientially located through the particular narratives and discourses which accrue with and around that identity position.

(2002: 5)

The fact that individuals occupy multiple subject positions and shift, manoeuvre and negotiate within and across these adds to the complexity of thinking about professional identity. This leads Dent and Whitehead to conclude that “Identity is neither stable, nor a final achievement” (2002: 11).

The literature on identity and identification in organizational settings (Ashforth et al., 2008) suggests two core phenomena are at work in identity formation and maintenance: sense of belonging and attachment. This formulation is reflected in the institutional logics conception of identity discussed in the final chapter of this volume (also see Friedland, 2012; Thornton et al., 2012; Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Ashforth and Mael’s (1989) classic study summarises professional identity as consisting of three main factors: (i) distinctiveness; (ii) prestige; and (iii) the salience of out-groups. Distinctiveness refers to a profession’s values and practices in relation to other comparable groups (teachers, nurses or occupational therapists); prestige, regarded by many as the hallmark of professional identity, is the second factor with an emphasis on status, reputation and credentials. The third antecedent factor, which again highlights the significance of relational factors, is identified as salience of the out-group, whereby awareness of the out-group – those who do not belong – reinforces an awareness of one’s in-group (1989: 21).

As Payne notes

The identity of the profession of social work has often seemed unclear and contested, and social workers in the UK have felt their identity to be bound up in specific roles provided for in legislation, rather than in broader conceptions of their potential role.

(2006: 138)

There are plenty of examples of an increased uptake of the significance of professional identity for social work in statements across the international stage (Levy, Shlomo, and Itzhaky, 2014; Wiles, 2013). Most striking of all, perhaps, is the Scottish Changing Lives: Report of the 21st Century Social Work Review (Asquith, Clark, and Waterhouse, 2006), which makes explicit reference to the significance of professional identity. In 2004 the Scottish Executive commissioned an independent review of social work. Changing Lives, the Review Report, is described as the basis for “the biggest overhaul of social work in Scotland for 40 years” (Asquith et al., 2006: 3). The Report reflects the problems that beset social work and focuses particularly on issues of professional identity. It states “There is an urgent need for social work to clarify its professional identity in order to establish clear roles for individual social workers” (2006: 8.4: 39).

The Report goes further in identifying the core values and moral commitment in the make-up of social work’s professional identity. The skills that social workers possess are underpinned by this shared set of values:

The professional identity of social work need not be inextricably linked to specific organisational structures. Rather, prof...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Matters of professional identity and social work
• Part I Key concepts and perspectives
• Part II Location, context and workplace culture
• Part III Professional education, socialisation and readiness for practice
• Index