ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a definition of the term profession. According to a Danish open encyclopaedia, the word profession is used for ‘a profession whose practitioners have a background in a specific formal education that gives them academic authority and status’. The word professionalisation is widely used in today’s society, referring to the way organisations and employees are being urged to work more efficiently and ‘professionally’. In professionalisation processes, the individual employee is expected to develop personal behaviour in accordance with the organisation’s goals and values. From a managerial point of view, professionalisation can be seen as a way of managing trained professionals through the development of new norms and values that hold the efficiency of the organisation over that of the autonomy of the profession. Employees referred to the fact that working holistically and strategically with sustainable Facilities Management requires knowledge and an understanding of a sustainability that extends beyond ‘energy efficiency’.
