Scapegoats For A Profession

Scapegoating is projected here as an occurrence in justice systems of modern democracies. Daniel documents several disciplinary cases brought against successful professionals in law and medicine in order to do this, arguing that they are examples of community scapegoating by these professions.

Responsibility and professionalism are increasingly issues of concern for professional associations, employers and educators alike. When bad things happen, professionals are often held personally accountable for complex situations. Professional Responsibility and Professionalism advances our approaches to professional responsibility from individual-centred, virtue-based prescriptions towards understanding and responding effectively to the multifaceted challenges encountered today by professionals working in dynamic complexity. The author applies a sociomaterial examination to specific examples drawn from different professional contexts of practice. She examines important implications for what professional responsibility and accountability might mean individually and collectively, and what it might be becoming when demands increasingly conflict, and when we accept that capacities for action are performed into existence in emergent and precarious webs of both human and non-human forces. The chapters explore some of the most prominent questions in professional responsibility, including: What does professional responsibility, and accountability, mean in the escalating complexities and conflicts confronting today’s professionals? How does professional responsibility become developed and enacted, and through what social and material entanglements? How should responsibility be determined in multi-agency and interprofessional practice? What happens when professional decisions are delegated to software algorithms and diagnostic instruments? How are new governing regimes of professional work, such as innovation imperatives, excessive audit and logics of blame and scapegoating, reconfiguring responsibility? How can professionals respond simultaneously to individuals in need, the obligations of their profession, the demands of their employer and an anxious society? A major concern addressed by each chapter, and the book as a whole, is educating professionals in and for responsibility. Specific dilemmas and strategies are offered for educators in universities, workplaces and professional development contexts who seek new approaches to helping professionals learn to critically understand and practise responsibility today. This book will appeal to a wide audience of education researchers and post-graduate students studying professional practice, professionalism and education across a wide range of disciplines. Health professionals, professionals working in private practices, such as law, architecture and engineering, newer professions such as social work and policing, and educational professionals at all levels will find stories and strategies reflecting key issues of their practice in this detailed exploration of professional responsibility and accountability.

This book synthesises several decades of research to extend beyond the limitations of a traditional functionalist model, offering a twenty-first century theory of professions and professionalism for a new generation engaging in theorising and research. It asserts nine innovative arguments, drawing on major theorists such as Johnson, Freidson, Larson, Weber, Foucault and Bourdieu to achieve a global framing of professions. Concepts of bundling and unbundling are used to explain changes happening to professions as they cease to be exclusive containers that fully control particular forms of knowledge. Examining how professions are changing today reveals the ways in which expectations around expertise and goodness have altered for all stakeholders: consumers, regulators, corporations and professions themselves. Unbundled professions morph into new forms of professional work, under new conditions, technologies and social arrangements Professionals and policy-makers interested in shaping the future of professions must recognise the potential impacts from an increasingly globalised, digitalised and managerialised world, and this book will be a key addition for scholars and practitioners alike.

Gay Christian author and activist Chris Glaser proposes that coming out--as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered--has biblical precedence and sacramental dimensions.

Scapegoats are a universal phenomenon, appearing in all societies at all times in groups large and small, in public and private organizations. Hardly a week passes without some media reference to someone or something being made a scapegoat. Tom Douglas examines the process of scapegoating from the perspectives of victims and perpetrators, tracing its development from earliest times as rite of atonement to the modern forms of the avoidance of blame and the victimisation of innocents. The differences and similarities between the ancient and modern forms are examined to reveal that despite the modern logical explanations of behaviour, the mystical element in the form of superstition is still evident. Directly responding to the Diploma in Social Work's call for texts on anti-discriminatory practice Scapegoats should become essential reading for all social workers in training and practice. Will also be a invaluable resource for all professionals engaging in groupwork and group workers in training.

"[Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal." -- John Yoder, Religion and Literature.

This book offers a radical reassessment of organizational forces for change and barriers encountered by the `challenging women' - senior women managers faced with the task of transforming their organizations. Much has been written about women at work, the `glass ceiling' and discriminatory employment practices. This study is seminal in the linkage it makes between gender, innovation and organizational transformation. The book highlights the implications of this for all types of organizations and women managers everywhere.

Scapegoating is the identification—then blaming and punishing—of individuals for problems that rightly belong to the larger organization. Dyckman and Cutler offer a survival guide for people affected by workplace scapegoating. They show us the social and psychological roots of scapegoating and explain how the individual and system act together to enable this human drama. This book shows how both individuals and the workplace system contribute to scapegoating. This book follows the career of the scapegoat and presents ways that the pattern can be interrupted. Strategies to help remove the bull's-eye include understanding how to recognize scapegoating and break behavioral patterns that make one an attractive target. Also provided is information for workers and managers who wish to develop cooperative means of dealing with individual differences, creating a work environment that is more humane and efficient. People who feel victimized by work-related scapegoating will find this book of great interest, as will professionals working in human resources or employee assistance programs. It will help managers who have problem employees and want to improve workflow, reduce turnover, and reduce workers' comp claims. This clear and concise compendium of examples, tips, and strategies will also appeal to mediators, shop stewards, union officials, psychotherapists, and occupational medicine specialists.