professionalization as a branding activity: occupational identity and the dialectic of...

Professionalization as aBranding Activity: OccupationalIdentity and the Dialectic ofInclusivity-Exclusivitygwao_600 467..488

Karen Lee Ashcraft,* Sara Louise Muhr,Jens Rennstam and Katie Sullivan

The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversityproblem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explainsthe exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclu-sion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historicalinterdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a pathtowards contemporary inclusion. This article develops a third, dialectical,view, which theorizes the inclusivity-exclusivity relation as a contempo-rary crisis of representation managed through occupational branding. Theproposed stance mediates between the optimism of the absence view andthe scepticism of the presence view by placing historical formations inundetermined tension with contemporary exigencies. By analysing howspecific inclusivity-exclusivity tensions are confronted through strategicinterventions in the marketplace of occupational identity, the dialecticalview stands to generate novel possibilities for social change.

Keywords: professional, professionalization, occupational identity, branding,diversity exclusion, inclusion, gender, race

Most research on diversity in the professions identifies the exclusion ofOthers as the central problem, to be rectified through their inclusion

(Ahuja, 2002; Dick and Nadin, 2006). In contrast, an alternative diagnosisof the problem indicts historical inclusion, the original use of Others as afoil against whom elite professionals were developed (Davies, 1996). The

Address for correspondence: *University of Colorado Boulder, Communication, 270 UCB,Hellems 96, Department of Communication, Boulder, CO 80203, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

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Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 19 No. 5 September 2012doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2012.00600.x

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

difference between these views matters profoundly. The former seeks toenhance representation, presuming that the perks of professional status aresecure properties of the work itself. The latter upends this assumption, reveal-ing that the character and value of an occupation are known by the companyit keeps, not by its inherent merit (Ashcraft, forthcoming). Simply put, theformer view claims that we are damned if we fail to integrate Others, whereasthe latter holds that we are damned if we do, since successful inclusionundermines occupational worth. When the two views are placed alongsideone another, prospects for meaningful change in the professions appearbleak, whichever way you lean.

This article proposes a third view that intervenes in the division betweenthese diagnoses. After sketching the dominant and alternative views, wedevelop a framework that recasts the complex relation of inclusivity andexclusivity as an empirically observable tension and models the processwhereby this tension is managed. We call this process ‘occupational brand-ing’, by which we mean strategic work on the identity of work, aimed atbrand and value creation in response to situated dilemmas of inclusivity-exclusivity. We argue that a branding lens is especially productive because it(a) foregrounds collective identity work as a core professionalization activity,(b) acknowledges the common aim of such activity is to yield a habitualassociation between an occupation and a preferred distilled image and (c)recognizes how this activity stakes claims of value within an identityeconomy. Our proposal thus avoids both naive presentism and historicalpessimism by conceptualizing inclusivity and exclusivity in fraught yet unde-termined relation — a dialectic confronted in the context of particular occu-pational identity markets. To render our approach more tangible andheuristic, we provide illustrations from our own research. Ultimately, wedevelop this third theoretical stance in order to foster a novel stream ofempirical inquiry that can generate practical tactics for avoiding the pitfalls ofcurrent diagnoses.

The problem with the professions: exclusion or inclusion?

Drawing especially on the literature addressed to gender,1 organization andprofession, we begin with a brief review of two primary diagnoses of thediversity problem in the professions: (a) the dominant ‘absence’ view, whichdefines exclusion as a lack to be rectified through inclusion efforts and (b) analternative ‘presence’ view, which explains contemporary exclusion as a con-sequence of historical inclusion.

The dominant absence view: the diversity problem is exclusion

The absence perspective argues that inequality stems from excluding Others(for example, certain gender and race identities) from the professions (Dick

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and Nadin, 2006). Here, inclusion becomes the goal and measure of justice,pursued through affirmative action or other compulsory or cultural integra-tion efforts. Two large and well-known bodies of literature best illustrate thisview: (a) studies of women in male-dominated professions (for example, law,medicine) and (b) research on professional and managerial women (as abroader, hierarchical category). Both emphasize obstacles to entry and barri-ers to integration, as well as how these might be minimized or overcome,but the former highlights occupational — and the latter, organizational —challenges.

A key premise of the absence view is that women’s historical exclusionfrom elite occupations and hierarchical positions persists in the present day(Dreher, 2003). Around the globe, major discrepancies in gender composi-tion and compensation continue, despite policies and programmesdesigned to foster opportunity and equity (Sappleton and Takruri-Rizk,2008). These tenacious trends are explained in various ways by the absenceview — for example, as a function of glass ceilings that prevent womenfrom reaching executive positions (Morisson et al., 1987). As femininitiesand management are often perceived to conflict (Billing and Alvesson,2000), women still struggle in the upper echelons; meanwhile, men infemale-dominated work seem to ride a glass escalator into administrativeroles (Williams, 1992). Though women are increasingly present in middlemanagement they face numerous obstacles to the fuller integration of femi-ninities. Many of these are attributed to women’s competing domesticresponsibilities (Kugelberg, 2006; Thompson et al., 1999), such as the viewthat those who prioritize the labour of care appear to be ill-suited for man-agement, whereas those donning a breadwinner role risk being branded asneglectful mothers (Medved, 2009; Muhr, 2011). Even amid creative caresolutions that formally promote gender equity, latent biases in organiza-tional cultures and leadership norms can perpetuate the sense that womenare regrettably ill fitted for elite positions (Mescher et al., 2010; Tracy andRivera, 2010).

In a similar vein, much research depicts the professions as historicallymasculine arenas that remain dominated by men and masculinities. Thecontinued circulation of manly professional images preserves perceptions thatcertain occupations are not ‘natural’ for women or racial Others (Czarniawskaand Sevón, 2008; Hall et al., 2007). Those who gain access to white masculineprofessions are often re-segregated into ‘softer’ (that is, feminized anddevalued) sides of the work (Crump et al., 2007). Moreover, perceivedgender differences in communication style can collide with masculinizedprofessional norms to cast women as weaker professionals even when theyare performing elite work (Czarniawska, 2008). Finally, when women orracial Others do achieve elite positions, their appointments tend to be morevulnerable than those of their male counterparts, and thus they are prone tothe high-profile failure known as a glass cliff (Ryan and Haslam, 2005).

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In sum, the absence view diagnoses the main diversity problem as theexclusion, omission and control of Others in professional work. Exclusion issaid to entail both material and symbolic boundaries — that is, barriers toOthered bodies as well as the norms, values, practices, aesthetics, and soforth, associated with them. The goal is to render such boundaries morepermeable, eventually erasing them altogether, by enhancing Others’ physi-cal and symbolic presence, thereby engendering institutional equity (Kosseket al., 2010; Pless and Maak, 2004). The absence view presumes that profes-sions are possessed of stable, innate value, independent of the people withwhom they are associated. Hence, the task is to advance Others in ‘obviously’valuable work positions until they reach a critical mass. However, chronicstruggles with interventions based in this view (for example, Ainsworth et al.,2009) suggest that they rarely translate into deep systemic change (Acker,2000; Eriksson-Zetterquist and Styhre, 2008) and can even re-marginalizeOthers (Kugelberg, 2006).

The alternative ‘presence’ view: the diversity problem is inclusion

Reversing the focus from exclusion to inclusion, a second view emerges fromthe awareness that the nature and value of work is linked to the peoplealigned with that work. As Phillips and Taylor (1980, pp. 85–6, originalemphasis) put it, skill is ‘saturated with sex’ and

the sex of those who do the work, rather than its content ... leads to itsidentification as skilled or unskilled.... Skill has been increasingly definedagainst women — skilled work is work that women don’t do.

Concurring that designations of value depend on who performs the task,Hearn (1982) finds that professional upgrades occurred in those rare caseswhen men took on ‘women’s work’ (for example, facilitating childbirth) enmasse and Witz (1992) reveals how sex composition shaped the successof early professionalization campaigns among medical specializations.Together, such work demonstrates that the gender of an occupation tends toaffect its professionalization possibilities.

Increasingly, scholars investigate not only who does the work (that is,which socially categorized physical bodies) but also the symbolism alignedwith it. Blue collar labour, for instance, is often aligned with raw, muscularmasculinities and hyper-hetero horseplay (Collinson, 1988; Gibson and Papa,2000). Against this imagery, white collar work seems a cultured pursuit thatreigns in bodily excess to perform sophisticated mental labour (Ashcraft andFlores, 2003). Such masculine coding also plays off the feminization of work,as many pink-collar jobs (for example, clerical support) are relegated tonon-professional or semi-professional status (Hearn, 1982). In particular, theprofessions are contrasted with the allegedly relational, intuitive and unspe-cialized — in a word, soft — texture of feminized work. Several analyses



show how, for example, physicians morphed into elite experts against nearbyfemale support staff (Davies, 1996; Hearn, 1982; Witz, 1992); accountantsdistinguished their work from that of feminized clerks and emasculatedbookkeepers (Kirkham and Loft, 1993) and airline pilots refashioned them-selves as professionals against the aviatrix and stewardesses (Ashcraft andMumby, 2004). Hinze (1999) exhibits the legacy of such formations in herstudy of medical specialty prestige: practitioners invoked gender symbolismto justify the complexity and worth of work, such that surgery associatedwith forceful hands and sizeable balls ranks above the softer selves requiredfor paediatrics and psychiatry.

This literature demonstrates that the construction of professions entails notonly aligning occupations with particular people, but also contrasting themwith lowly Others. Without encoding gender and race hierarchy into its veryprofile, an occupation tends not to become or remain a profession. It is in thissense that apparently excluded Others are already included in professionalidentity. Thus far, this diagnosis finds its fullest articulation in Davies’ (1996)call to refocus inquiry into gender and professions. The usual preoccupationwith women’s exclusion, she says, hides how women have long been silentpartners that enable professions in a dual sense: doing the adjunct labour thateases client interaction, while embodying precisely what professionals arenot. Davies thereby indicts professionalism as ‘a conceptual frame thatrequires, but denies it requires, the Other’ (Davies, 1996, p. 672) and as‘a specific historical and cultural construction of masculinity’ (Davies, 1996,p. 661).

By extension, her argument helps us see tacit racial inclusion as well. Similarto gender in this respect, analyses of race in the diversity literature emphasizeobstacles that face of Others in white-dominated professions (Ashcraft andAllen, 2003). Yet focus on their professional exclusion elides their concentra-tion in low-wage work deemed to be unskilled (Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993); andprofessions are born in contrast with this ‘menial’ work as well. As withwomen’s adjunct labour, the professions are dependent on the simultaneousperformance and rejection of these tasks. It follows that masculinity, whitenessand the apposite Others on which these are perched remain crucial to theaccomplishment of professional identity (Gates, 1988). Yet arguably, the preciseprofile of these Others is difficult to trace, as entangled hierarchies of difference(for example, stemming from intersections of race, gender, nation, sexualityand religion) become obscured in comparatively innocuous portrayals ofcivilized and primitive work (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007; Prasad, 2003).Specifically, professional refinement is achieved by way of contrast with boththe ‘intuitive’ character of feminized work and the ‘primal’ (that is, unculturedyet physically potent) disposition ascribed to much masculinized dirty work(Ashcraft and Flores, 2003). This logic extends Davies’ (1996) point aboutgender inclusion to recognize the subtle role of many intersecting differencesin the construction of the professions.



From this view, the diversity problem of the professions is not exclusion-as-absence but exclusion-as-presence, or tacit original inclusion. The patentexclusion of Others is not denied by the alternative diagnosis but, rather,reframed as evidence that Others are already woven into professional desig-nations, albeit negatively — as contrasting figures against which true profes-sionals become elite experts. Occupations, therefore, are judged, not on thegrounds of innate merit, but on claims about merit, which predictably rest onconstructions of proximate practitioners. It follows that integrating Otherswithout accounting for their historical inclusion is a self-defeating endeavour,more likely to induce professional decline than anything else. Contendingwith contemporary exclusion requires confronting historical inclusion.

Although this view provides a more sophisticated reading of the relationbetween exclusion and inclusion, it also leaves us in a rather hopeless situa-tion: the irony of integration comes into relief, yet few feasible alternativesemerge. In short, the presence perspective says little about how historicalinclusion is and can be managed in the present.

Toward a third dialectical perspective: the diversity problemis the complex relation between exclusivity and inclusivity

In neglecting history, the absence view promotes a dichotomous reading inwhich Others are either excluded from or included in occupations, albeit indegrees. Exclusion and inclusion appear to be separate, opposite conditions.The presence view, in contrast, underscores the relation between contempo-rary exclusion and historical inclusion. Despite its vital recognition that inclu-sivity and exclusivity are interdependent (that is, the abject Other remainspresent and denied), the historical sensitivity of the presence view alsobecomes its key limitation, in that it grants so much muscle to history that thepresent appears bound in contradiction. That is, the presence view offers arobust account of contemporary exclusion yet lacks a corresponding theoryof contemporary inclusion.

To restore symmetry, we develop a third view that highlights the relationbetween exclusion and inclusion (as the presence view wisely advocates)yet stays curious about its evolving manifestations. In this view, theinclusivity-exclusivity relation is a situated, ongoing and observable tensionwith which contemporary occupations grapple. Scholars keen to inform thediversification of professions can examine how this tension is experiencedand managed towards critical reflection on possibilities for better (that is,more just, more enabling) management (Craig and Tracy, 1995). Thissection outlines our model of that process by theorizing inclusivity-exclusivity as an empirical dialectic managed within a market of strategicidentity work.



Exclusivity-inclusivity as an empirical dialectic: historicallegacy meets contemporary exigency

To honour the historical legacy revealed by the presence view yet render it anopen empirical question, two key points must be addressed. Firstly, theinvisible presence of Others does not assume a universal form; it varies inaccord with the histories of specific occupational systems. Secondly, thosehistories collide with contemporary exigencies (for example, economic andpolitical pressures and windows of opportunity) and out of this complexinteraction grow the particular dilemmas of exclusivity-inclusivity faced byan occupation. On the basis of these points, we theorize the inclusivity-exclusivity relation both as (a) a broadly shared problematic among manyoccupations that claim distinctive professional knowledge and (b) a tense yetundetermined relation whose contours cannot be known in the abstract —hence, our call for empirical inquiry into how the tension is (and has been)managed in particular contexts.

Scholars of the professions have long argued that establishing exclusivity isa pivotal part of the professionalization process (Abbott, 1988; Freidson, 2001;Macdonald, 1995). Larson (1977), for example, argues that professions are notborn through a natural fit with a list of requisite features; rather, they aremade through professional projects designed to control a market of expertiseand thereby launch collective social mobility. Similarly, Abbott (1988) con-tends that professional knowledge becomes known as such through success-ful exclusivity claims, which establish ownership of work (for example, theauthorization to define tasks and knowledge, set standards and regulatepractice). Such claims are always made amid a system of occupations orinter-occupational relations. Hence, the primary professionalization mecha-nism is the jurisdiction contest in which stakeholders vie for control of workby advocating and disputing the nature of tasks and requisite expertise.Jurisdiction contests are essentially social construction matches that play outon many stages, from workplaces to legal arenas to the public domain. Pro-fessionalization is best understood not as ‘a simple collective action by acohesive group’ but, rather, as ‘a complex dynamic process with several levelsof action’ and ‘professional localities’ (Abbott, 1991, p. 380).

Successful exclusivity claims have many dimensions. They establish that aknowledge domain is the sole province of an occupation, but also that it isexclusive in other senses (that is, distinctive, valuable and reserved for thevery few and finest). As Larson (1977, p. 14) explains, professionalization is

inextricably bound to the person and the personality of the producer. Itfollows, therefore, that the producers themselves have to be produced iftheir products or commodities are to be given a distinctive form.

Put simply, professional projects entail depicting practitioners, not only theirexpertise, as precious goods. This claim is enriched by the presence view,



which reveals an ingredient missing from the usual exclusivity recipe: thatthe elite character of professionals and their knowledge is produced againstabject Others. This ingredient brings new meaning to Abbott’s focus oninter-occupational relations. Chiefly, professional knowledge is born and bredon the backs of nearby ‘lowly’ workers; and precisely because it is not inde-pendent from the people (dis)associated with it, constructions of professionalknowledge are far from stable. Indeed, knowledge exclusivity tends tocrumble when the foundations of inclusion-exclusion on which it is builtbegin to disintegrate, as when Others infiltrate a profession (Davies, 1996).

But the scene faced by today’s seekers of professional status is even morecomplex. For one thing, the so-called knowledge economy has entailed anexplosion of exclusivity claims, resulting in both knowledge inflation and thegrowing demystification of grandiosity (Alvesson, 2001). Successful exclusiv-ity claims thus require ever more elaborate political acrobatics. Moreover, it isdifficult to claim professional expertise through the exclusion of Others whenyou are simultaneously held accountable to include those very Others. Pres-sure for professions to showcase diverse practitioners and serve diversestakeholders emanates from, among other sources, scholarship (for example,that reviewed above), public policy (for example, equal opportunity, affirma-tive action) and popular support (for example, demands for social responsi-bility). In the contemporary western milieu, then, effective exclusivity claimsmust manage opposing threats: (a) erosion arising from the sheer prolifera-tion of such claims and (b) charges of foul play arising from demands formember inclusivity. In short, achieving professional exclusivity means per-suading cultural audiences that ‘our knowledge is exclusive’ while ‘our com-munity is inclusive’. This is no easy task, for as the presence view reminds us,these are historically opposed claims. We therefore contend that the presentmoment induces a crisis of representation for those in search of professionalexclusivity. However, rather than downplay history (as in the absenceapproach) or presume the present to be debilitated by contradiction (as in thepresence approach), we situate the crisis as an open empirical question: howdo occupational stakeholders encounter and manage the contemporary dia-lectic of inclusivity-exclusivity?

Exclusivity-inclusivity and the market of strategic identitywork: the why and how of branding

The contemporary dialectic of inclusivity-exclusivity involves a crisis of rep-resentation in that it necessitates creative strategic identity constructions. Forthis reason, a branding lens is critical to our proposed view. We argue,specifically, that the dual threat identified above (that is, the concurrent pro-liferation of knowledge work and workers) presents a symbolic problem ofmaterial magnitude. Moreover, coping with this problem requires what is



best seen as occupational branding, which we define as strategic occupationalidentity work aimed at brand and value creation in response to situateddilemmas of inclusivity-exclusivity. This definition keeps matters of differ-ence (for example, gender, race) at the front and centre by treating theexclusivity-inclusivity dialectic as a motivating problem arising from a situ-ated history. Thereby, it cautions against the presumption that certain aspectsof difference are invariably most relevant. Instead, it is the researcher’s task totrace how specific difference formations and tensions become pressing in agiven occupational system. Here, we explain how a branding lens facilitatesthis task by exposing three pivotal yet understudied features of profession-alization amid the contemporary crisis of representation: strategic collectiveidentity work is (a) a core professionalizing activity (b) aimed at producing anoccupational brand that co-ordinates control over work and (c) that stakesclaims of value, not merely claims of character. We elaborate each of thesefeatures in turn.

Professionalization as strategic occupational identity work

Amid the flurry of interest in organizational identity and image as well as incorporate branding, little has been said among organization scholars aboutthe identity of occupations. Management scholars have begun to considerindividual occupational identities (for example, Pratt et al., 2006), but theircollective character remains elusive. To some extent, a collective occupationalidentity can be seen as akin to the extant construct of organizational identity,as both capture attempts to construct who ‘we’ are. But the former alsodeparts from the latter, as Ashcraft (2007, forthcoming) shows in a recentconception of occupational identity as a social construction process andoutcome that answers the entwined questions; ‘what is this line of work?’ and‘who does it?’ Durable answers to these questions (for example, ‘engineeringis complex, technical, masculine work requiring highly specialized knowl-edge’) evolve in multiple sites among multiple stakeholders. This conceptionshares Abbott’s (1988) interest in dispersed professional jurisdiction contests,as well as Larson’s (1977) interest in the political act of producing the profes-sional, but advances both by (a) placing strategic collective identity work atthe heart of contemporary professionalization and (b) incorporating vitalinsights from the presence view (that is, that the character of work is knownby the company it keeps and that knowledge exclusivity is typically claimedagainst nearby Others).

In recognition of multiple sites and stakeholders of occupational identity,we conceive of the possible agents invested in collective identity work quitebroadly. Occupational branding is not simply devised and imposed by occu-pational associations or practitioners upon passive consumers. Becauseso-called consumers (for example, employers, clients, regulatory agencies,publics, even museum curators or filmmakers who depict occupations) are



active as well, and because occupational artefacts (for example, uniforms andmachines) can also be said to constitute collective identity (Bechky, 2003;Rennstam, 2007), the concerted collective identity work of occupationalbranding is best approached as a relation entwining people, institutions,objects and practices (Holt, 2003).

Our approach thus brings an explicit identity lens to professionalization. Ittraces how knowledge exclusivity is won through persuasive constructions ofwork, the knowledge it requires and who should logically exercise it (Ashcraft,forthcoming). It examines how such collective identity work, performed bymultiple constituents across many sites, enables institutional forms that havelong preoccupied scholars of the professions (for example, professionalmonopolies, credentialling and regulating practices, increased salaries andmarket demand. Just as managing meaning can activate competitive advantagefor organizations (Smircich and Morgan, 1982), so it can create tangible benefitfor occupations, boosting their relative position in an inter-occupationalmarket. In this light, it is no wonder that we have seen a surge of professionalexclusivity claims amid our knowledge economy.

This emphasis on strategic identity work on collective occupational iden-tity is a first sense in which today’s knowledge exclusivity claims — as theyconfront the crisis of representation described earlier — can be usefullyframed as a branding endeavour. We suggest that the central empirical ques-tions about this feature of professionalization are those of exigency and agent.Researchers can ask: what specific contours of the exclusivity-inclusivitydialectic distinguish a given occupational context, and what are the majorresulting dilemmas (historical and contemporary exigencies)? What actorsare engaging those tensions (agents)? On its own, however, strategic identitywork is not necessarily tantamount to branding. Two additional features ofour framework sharpen the link to branding per se.

The production, coproduction and reproduction ofoccupational brands

The overriding goal of strategic occupational identity work is the creation ofan occupational brand, or a habitual, taken-for-granted association between aline of work and a condensed image. Occupational brands are highly distilledessences aimed at abridging or standing in for the complexity of occupationalidentity. The uniform of commercial airline pilots, for example, was designedto convey at a glance that pilots are technical professionals with officer statuswho deserve our trust, respect and compliance (Hopkins, 1998). In this way,occupational brands are meant to evoke a knee jerk response — a reflex,rather than reflexive, reaction — among multiple stakeholders. This concep-tion of occupational brand coheres with the recent recognition that mostoccupations have a public image (that is, abstractions of their fundamental



content, value and likely practitioners) and that various stakeholders consumeand act upon this image (Ashcraft, forthcoming).

Our conception also intersects with recent developments in the brandingliterature, especially the notion of brand as an object of knowledge (Lury,2004; Lury and Moor, 2010). Objects of knowledge are perpetually unfin-ished; problematic rather than predetermined. Accordingly, Lury (2004) treatsbrand as a fluid object ‘that calls upon us to relate to it; to interact with it’ (pp.129–31). Far from fixed trademarks, brands are continually under construc-tion, beckoning stakeholders to imbue them with meaning. Their pliablecharacter invites intervention, or as Lury (2004, p. 47) explains, ‘Brands are aname for cutting into and making manageable an increasingly dynamic pro-duction process’. Simultaneously, through interaction with stakeholders,brands assume ‘objectivity’, a readily recognizable form or stable essence. Asa mobile object of knowledge, brands facilitate the temporal and spatialmovement of meaning among stakeholders.

We thus see the occupational brand as a portable and temporarily durableobject of knowledge (re)produced through diffused stakeholder interaction,thereby organizing the meaning of work across space and time. Lury (2004)advocates conceptualizing the brand as an interface, rather than as a shieldblocking input. While the latter metaphor is more familiar, the former bettercaptures how brands become co-ordinating objects through which multipleagents (for example, people, institutions and artefacts) meet and are medi-ated. As an interface, the brand ‘remakes itself with each new reading evenwhile the history of previous readings never disappears completely’ (Hatchand Rubin, 2006, p. 45).

And yet both the presence and absence views harbour a shield metaphor,as they imply that persuasive activity has been (in historical professionaliza-tion campaigns, for example) and can be (in contemporary diversificationcampaigns) imposed on mostly passive consumers. From this view, the occu-pation and its delegates are presumed to do the heavy lifting of brand pro-duction. Whereas a shield metaphor may suffice in the historical casesanchoring the presence perspective, it cannot well capture how the contem-porary dialectic of inclusivity-exclusivity plays out. Consider, for example,the proliferation of occupations claiming professional status, the touted frag-mentation and de-professionalization of even traditional professions, com-peting demands for knowledge exclusivity and member inclusivity, and themany locales and constituents embroiled in these demands. Under suchconditions the interface metaphor of the brand helps us see how occupationalbranding ‘involves not simply exclusion but also inclusion, not simply theproduction of sameness or identity but also the production of difference,sensation and intensity’ (Lury, 2004, p. 10).

In sum, we conceive of the occupational brand as a dynamic object ofknowledge that facilitates control over work through interface among stake-holders across place and time. This conception invites our attention to the



ways in which (a) historical webs of exclusivity-inclusivity get distilled intoan occupational essence; (b) the essence travels with relative ease, force andstability; and (c) the essence nonetheless remains malleable as agents engagewith it. This second feature of contemporary professionalization — that stra-tegic collective occupational identity work seeks the co-creation andre-creation of occupational brand — highlights questions of content, form andprocess. Researchers can ask: what is the specific character of an occupationalbrand (its content and form), as well as its evolution over time and space (itsprocess)? Next, we elaborate a final feature hinted by the discussion thusfar: investment in an occupational image, or the utility of branding for‘transforming values into value’ (Aronczyk and Powers, 2010, p. 9, originalemphasis).

Occupational branding as value creation

A third feature of the strategic identity work entailed in occupational brand-ing is its overt interest in the production (or destruction) of value. As Larson(1977) makes abundantly clear, knowledge exclusivity claims are politicalassertions of occupational worth. Similarly, the so-called business case fordiversity associated with the absence view maintains that inclusive member-ship creates value beyond itself (for example, begets innovation that improvesthe bottom line). As both examples suggest, claims of value include economic(for example, deserved salary or promised profit) as well as non-economic(for example, autonomy, praise for social responsibility and designation as‘complex’ work) measures of worth.

Likewise, recent developments in the branding literature acknowledgethat value has many potential forms. While brand value claims are oftenquantitative, they increasingly bring qualitative measures to the table (Lury,2004). As intangible assets (for example, relational networks) gain importancein the contemporary economy, new vocabularies and measures of brandvalue become relevant (Lury and Moor, 2010). As Lury (2004, p. 6) explains, abrand is

an object that opens up how it is that the economy is organized, and doesso in ways which introduce qualitative intensivity into the extensive butlimited rationality of a conventional market economy of price.

Arguably, the emphasis on quality is intensified when occupations and otherless commercial or non-commercial collectives (for example, those withoutformal shareholders, such as public institutions) become the object ofvaluation.

As conceptualized here, then, the occupational brand underscores theimport of value claims to managing the contemporary dialectic of inclusivity-exclusivity. A branding lens calls upon scholars to investigate strategic occu-pational identity work not only with an interest in the collective character it



activates but also with an eye for the professed worth of that character.Occupational branding is not merely a matter of establishing a line of work asknowledge-intensive and indispensable; the province of an exclusive few: itis also a matter of claiming that knowledge practitioners, the work theyperform, the organizations for which they do it, the clients they serve and theoutcomes they yield deserve high valuation. Valuation may take quantitativeand qualitative forms or even blend them creatively (Lury and Moor, 2010), aswhen quantity becomes a sign of quality (for example, when a high salaryinvoked to ‘prove’ high-calibre professionalism) (see Hopkins, 1998).

This third feature of contemporary professionalization — that strategiccollective occupational identity work (re)creates the occupational brand for thesake of value production — sensitizes us to the ways in which stakeholdersrespond to historical webs of exclusion-inclusion by reworking, through theproduction or destruction of the occupational brand; the value configurationson which such webs are suspended. Our perspective thus honours andextends Larson’s (1977) insight about the politics of producing professionals asprecious goods, specifically, by situating occupational stakeholders not onlywithin an inter-occupational system, as Abbott (1988) does, but more preciselywithin an inter-occupational identity market, wherein competition over col-lective identity constructions is a struggle over resources, broadly conceived.In sum, this final feature identifies stakeholder investments in strategic iden-tity work while allowing for a wide range of possible and interacting symbolicand material forms of value. As such, this feature emphasizes questions ofworth. Researchers can ask: what value claims and configurations are gener-ated, revised or destroyed in the occupational branding process?

In sum, the dialectical view we advocate begins by recasting the inclusivity-exclusivity relation as an open, empirical question, asking: how dooccupational stakeholders encounter and manage the dialectic of inclusivity-exclusivity? We argue that contemporary manifestations of that dialecticpresent situated crises of representation, which are managed through brandingactivity. Here, we have explicated three key features of occupational branding,suggesting central concerns and supporting questions for each:

1. The notion that it involves strategic occupational identity work highlightsconcerns regarding exigency and agent: what specific contours of theexclusivity-inclusivity dialectic distinguish a given occupational context,what are the major resulting dilemmas and what actors are engaged inthose tensions?

2. The notion that it is aimed at brand production calls out issues of content,form and process: what is the specific character of an occupational brandand how does it evolve over time and space?

3. The notion that it is aimed towards value creation accentuates questions ofworth, whether qualitative or quantitative: what value claims and configu-rations are generated, revised, or destroyed in occupational branding?



Occupational branding made tangible:empirical illustrations

To illustrate how the dialectical view can be empirically developed, weprovide brief examples drawn from our own ongoing research. Our hope isthat these projects will stimulate further innovations in the study of occupa-tional branding, while bringing into relief the nature and promise of a brand-ing lens on exclusion and inclusion in professional work.

Branding to maintain or achieve professional standing: from airlinepilots to massage therapy

Our first two cases examine the relation between difference and profession-alization in strikingly different occupational contexts: commercial airlinepilots and massage therapists. In the USA, airline pilots have long enjoyedpalpable material benefit from their occupational brand legacy: that of theprofessional pilot and his elite technical knowledge (Hopkins, 1998). At least30 years of legal, social, and institutional pressures toward commercial pilotdiversification (consistent with the absence perspective) have led to littlechange in their gender and race profiles. The second perspective wouldexplain such resilience as an outcome of tacit historical inclusion. Namely, thepilot’s potent blend of occupational imagery — the high-ranking officer, thescientifically trained professional and the virile, dependable father — wasstrategically created in collaboration between the airline pilot union andairlines, first against the white, upper-middle class ‘ladyflier’ figure of the1920s and 1930s, then against the increasingly sexualized white stewardessand, eventually, against the exoticized flight attendant as well as the male,working-class ground personnel associated with Other race, ethnic, and/ornational origins (for example, see Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004; Mills, 1998).

This classic instance of professional exclusivity through practitionerclosure has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Combining archival,interview and participant observation methods, Ashcraft (2005, 2007) demon-strates how demands for pilot diversification collide with institutional safetyimperatives that erode the airline captains’ once-omnipotent autonomy andauthority, redefining their role as an empowering manager who integratesinput from the crew. These turns induce a double threat of feminization andracialization (that is, pressures from changes in pilot characteristics and fromorganizational forms that demystify the pilot’s knowledge). Yet in venuesranging from airline promotional material to interactional performances inflight, the airline captain appears to be undergoing rebranding: from theall-knowing, authoritative father to the benevolent, potentially fallible parent.This research shows how airline pilots creatively navigate this shift through arange of (especially gendered) techniques and that their performances



involve a wide range of agents, including the federal regulatory agency,airlines, pilot unions, passengers and even the pilot uniform (which, virtuallyunchanged over decades, carries the historical brand forward). Such strategicoccupational identity work clearly endeavours to preserve professional brandvalue (that is, exclusivity and its quantitative and qualitative benefits) while‘softening’ the brand to make it compatible with social responsibility (that is,inclusivity).

In contrast to airline pilots, massage therapists struggle with a brandlegacy that historically blocks their access to professionalization: a pervasivedistilled image as sexual labourers treading fine lines of morality in massageparlours (Oerton, 2004). Sullivan (2007) employs participant observation andin-depth interviews to examine how massage therapy associations and indi-vidual therapists seek to gain legitimacy and shed a tainted image by enhanc-ing their material and symbolic inclusion in the exclusive profession ofmedicine, especially through carefully constructed branding campaignsmobilized through traditional institutional activities such as lobbying, build-ing networks with medical professionals and constructing clinical educationmandates. Such efforts are aimed at the destruction of an old brand and theproduction of a new distilled image that desexualizes and thereby revaluesmassage as legitimate medical knowledge.

Exclusivity-inclusivity tensions persist, however, as massage has achievedat best nominal inclusion in the clinical and masculinized arena of medicineand is often incorporated — if at all — as a lesser add-on tangential to the coreof medical work. Occupational branding thus continues as stakeholdersstruggle with the double bind of simultaneous brand destruction (that is,shedding sexuality) and production (that is, achieving medicalization).Simply put, the old brand prohibits their status as viable partners in themedical enterprise, yet their achievement of that clinical partnership (that is,the success of the new desired image) is crucial to erasing the old brand.Together, the first two cases vividly illustrate the always incomplete project ofprofessionalization evident in ongoing pressures to maintain, update, reject,revise and devise condensed images of occupational essence.

Rebranding relations of value between professional knowledge andpractitioners: from police work to board rooms

Our third and fourth cases highlight the construction of professional knowl-edge in relation to associated practitioners. Rennstam’s in-progress study of alocal Swedish police force examines how they contend with an image threatstemming from public perceptions of an exclusivity-inclusivity tension. Likemany police organizations, the Swedish police have drawn public critique asa male-dominated profession that excludes women and femininities, andthey have actively worked to combat this image. Typically, their solutionshave emphasized the inclusion of more women, as advocated by the absence



view. Though numbers have accordingly increased, women officers often endup in administrative and other support positions, as predicted by the pres-ence view.

Recently, however, local efforts to rebrand the gender of police work haveshifted from ethical value claims (that is, ‘we hire women because it is right’),which fail to challenge tacit historical inclusion, to knowledge value claims(that is, ‘we hire women because they possess useful knowledge’). Forexample, women officers are depicted as adding value to the management ofdomestic violence because their presence can bring the kind of empathicknowledge and skill that can effectively calm, comfort and debrief victims.Similarly, the police pair with the broadest competence base is increasinglyportrayed as that of one man and one woman. The potential for new quali-tative value claims thus becomes observable: knowledge ostensibly cultivatedin the cumulative cultural experience of living as a woman, rather thansimply the number of women, becomes the value. Of course, conflictingpotentials lurk in this example. As much as the shift in branding strategymay signal a progressive revision (for example, the de-gendering andre-gendering) of police knowledge, it may also reinscribe a familiar divisionand hierarchy of labour, where the mythical predispositions of womenbecome the basis for essentializing and restricting their contributions to sec-ondary status, as in the case of so-called feminine leadership (Calás andSmircich, 1993) — a point explored further in our final empirical illustration.

As the absence view underscores, women have long been excluded fromthe ranks of corporate executives and boards. The presence view reveals howsuch exclusion stems from their inclusion in support roles (for example, thegendered pairing of executive with that of the executive assistant, whichmimics conventional husband-wife imagery [see Pringle, 1989]). As Calásand Smircich (1993) argue, top management is increasingly aligned with akind of military warrior masculinity against middle management’s increasingaffinity with so-called feminine leadership. Women’s exclusion from theupper echelons thus stems not only from the concentration of women inmanagerial support work, but also from the rising construction of masculineexecutive knowledge against the foil of a feminized middle management.

As with the police, most efforts to enhance inclusion stress increasing thenumber of women in executive positions, for example, through affirmativeaction, which can induce further marginalization (Kugelberg, 2006). Oneresult is that many women brand their personal image against so-calledfeminine competencies, despite the growing value claim (evidenced in thepolice case, for instance) that such knowledge is women’s distinctive contri-bution (Muhr, 2011). In ongoing in-depth interviews with top managers in 37large public and private Danish organizations, Muhr finds an ironic corollarywith these frantic attempts to de-feminize: many male managers expressgreater comfort than their female counterparts with competencies usuallydeemed feminine, while also depicting these skills as being compatible with



masculinity. Here again appears some potential for rebranding executiveknowledge to include and revalue skills once feminized and diminished. Wemight read this as particularly progressive if the broadened competency basebecomes de-gendered or gender-flexible, if valuations of once-gendered skillsbegin to equalize and if this applies regardless of what sexed bodies execu-tives may inhabit. As in the police case, of course, there is also the potentialfor familiar regressive outcomes, such as masculine co-optation and the sub-sequent revaluation of knowledge once aligned with femininity (Hearn,1982).

Whereas the first two cases illustrate the importance of occupational brand-ing to the ongoing professionalization process, the latter two cases confrontthe rebranding of professional knowledge at the level of the organization-public interface (for example, Swedish police) and in organizational as well asindividual efforts to diversify executive work (for example, in Danish firmsand managers). All four cases exhibit how inclusivity-exclusivity tensions aredeeply embedded in inter-occupational systems, stemming from brand his-tories that collide with present identity markets to engender situated crises ofrepresentation and creative claims about gender, knowledge and value. Theyalso show how multiple agents — ranging from individual practitioners andassociations thereof to employers to media to uniforms — serve in the pro-duction of brand and value claims. Particularly noteworthy for organizationscholars, and a promising issue for further research, is the varying role thatprivate and public organizations may play in the occupational brandingprocess. In our cases, formal professional associations — ranging from thepowerful and tightly coupled (airline pilots) to the comparatively weak andloosely coupled (massage) — devote considerable and sustained energy toexplicit branding campaigns. Yet arguably, even these distinctions (that is,between pilots’ and therapists’ respective levels of formal organization andinfluence) reflect brand histories. The public police organization instigatedthe branding of police knowledge in response to a crisis as a vital reaction topreserve public trust rather than an ongoing priority. In contrast with the firstthree cases, the branding of top management knowledge proceeds in a moreindividual, informal and diffuse fashion, wherein organizations are not somuch active agents in occupational branding as they are enablers of an occu-pation (that is, marked by a shared elite hierarchal level), institutional supportfor executive claims to lofty collective status (that is, hierarchies make suchclaims tangible) and institutional bases for emergent networks among execu-tives (that is, one’s ticket into an elite club). The diversity of qualitative claimsof worth in our cases is also noteworthy, from the pursuit of public legitimacy(for example, benevolent airline captains, sanitized massage therapists andtrustworthy police) to revising and reshuffling the worth of core occupationalcompetencies (for example, medical rather than sexual massage, gender-ambiguous police and executive knowledge). Most crucially, all four casessuggest how the excessive optimism of the absence view and the excessive



pessimism of the presence view can be mitigated and productively redirectedthrough the third, dialectical view — a lens at once historically conscious andruthlessly curious about the ways in which dilemmas of exclusivity andinclusivity unfold in any given case.

Conclusion

It can be argued that whenever women occupy a place in the public worldthat is predicated on the exclusion/inclusion problematic, on the centraldenial of the significance of the Other that is involved in binary genderedthought, that place will be a profoundly uneasy one, inexplicable andirresolvable unless the exclusion/inclusion problematic is more firmly and morefully understood (Davies, 1996, pp. 672–3, emphasis added).

This article heeds Davies’ call to centre the problematic relation of exclusionand inclusion in research on the professions. Our reconsideration of both theabsence and presence views revealed a need for a third perspective — onethat avows the sobering force of history while pursuing an equally robustmodel of possibilities for contemporary inclusion. We developed such a viewby reframing the relation of exclusion and inclusion as an open, empiricalquestion to be answered by observing how historical formations collide withcontemporary exigencies in particular occupational systems. Specifically, wetheorized the tense relation of inclusivity-exclusivity as a contemporary crisisof representation managed through occupational branding, or strategic col-lective occupational identity work aimed at the creation of habitual brandassociations designed to incur multiple forms of value. As shown in our briefempirical examples, a branding lens stands to bring to the surface new linksbetween symbolism and materiality by situating identity work in an inter-occupational economy, or an occupational identity marketplace. Simulta-neously, our model foregrounds matters of difference. Given the currentemphasis on gender in the literature on diversity in the professions — whichis also clearly reflected in our own arguments and examples — it is incum-bent on scholars (including ourselves) to actively hone theoretical capacitiesand analytical sensitivities to better capture complex intersections (forexample, race, ethnicity, nation, class, sexuality, religion, ability and age) thatdefine particular identity markets. Indeed, by framing inclusivity-exclusivitydilemmas as situated — that is, by asking researchers to trace the localcontours of difference in particular occupational contexts — the dialecticalview proposed here not merely allows us to do so but insists that we do.

As should be evident, we have not articulated the third stance merely forthe sake of theorizing. In developing a fresh direction for empirical inquiry,our ultimate aim is a practical one: to stimulate creative, feasible interventiontactics that pursue social change in historically responsible and contextually



nuanced ways. We seek to enhance understanding of how dilemmas ofinclusivity-exclusivity are currently managed in the service of generatingbetter (that is, more just and enabling) possibilities for management (Craigand Tracy, 1995). That is, we mean to follow the question: how are tensions ofinclusivity-exclusivity managed through occupational branding? With thequestion: what are the logics and consequences of current branding recipesand how might these be revised towards more progressive interventions? Itis in this way that we merge both the hopeful, active spirit of the dominantabsence view with the warranted scepticism of the presence view, whileattending to the complex webs of constraint and opportunity that defineoccupational realities.

Note

1. We recognize that our analysis, like the larger literature in work and organizationstudies, emphasizes gender over race. We see this as a critical limitation of bothour critique and the available scholarship to which to it responds. Throughout, wenonetheless reference race repeatedly — not as a pretence that we have adequatelyaddressed it but as a constant reminder and placeholder for the pivotal role thatmatters of race, ethnicity, nation and their intersection play in the proposedresearch agenda.

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