ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a processual approach to professional control. This approach is agency-oriented, in the sense of focusing on the ability of professionals to shape the organizations and environments in which they act. The chapter applies the structural and processual approaches to the explanation of union activity among professionals—an increasingly prominent response to bureaucratic employment. According to proletarianization theorists, bureaucratization undermines the physicians' traditional prerogatives, including control over the organization and practice of professional work. Three main components of control figure prominently in structural analyses of the professions: economic control, strategic control, and operational control. The chapter examines data on union activity among Israeli physicians in order to assess whether one or more of the structural theories provides a more convincing explanation of professional unionism than does the processual approach. This post hoc empirical application does not formally test opposing theories. Instead, it illustrates the explanatory strengths and weaknesses of these alternative approaches and suggests issues for further research.
