ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the role of the medical profession in the enterprise context in which doctors work in the public and private sector – with a particular focus on the United States and Britain, albeit with brief wider international referents in the modern world. It looks at a macro level prevalence of altruistic professional values in medicine in each of the societies, such that the self-interests of professional groups are subordinated to wider public interest. The chapter examines whether professional claims to serve collective interests are simply an ideological smokescreen to mask group self-interests in enhancing income, status and power. It provides an interlinked neo-institutionalist approach to explore broader entrepreneurial forces that have shaped the activities of medical profession in the wider health care division of labour in the Anglo-American context and beyond. Reference to macro theories of the professions leads us to recall that such perspectives were first and most fully developed in the United States and Britain.
