The objective of this paper is to interpret the results of a case study that investigated professionalization of lecturers in the Faculty of Economy & Management (FEM) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The faculty hosts 13,000 students and 500 lecturers spread over a variety of departments, including commercial economy, international business, finance and HRM. FEM’s aim is to become the best business school in the Netherlands by 2012. The results will be compared with the intended developments in European higher education, such as the Bologna process (internationalizing curricula, international exchange of lecturers) and the convergence of higher education and the knowledge economy.

The guiding problem is: How did the process of professionalization of lecturers in FEM proceed during the academic year 2009-2010?

The research questions are:

1)         Which types of professionalization activities are carried out by the lecturers?

2)         How and why did they choose these activities?

3)         What are the main differences between the professionalization process in FEM and developments in European higher education?

4)         How can we explain the empirical results from a theoretical (sociological) framework?

The paper begins by describing the most important societal developments that make up the context in which professionalization of lecturers in higher education becomes urgent. These include: the increasing importance of the knowledge economy and international competition (globalization), the transfer of knowledge and expertise between actors in the economy (companies) and higher education; and shortages within the labour market due to demographic developments.

We then introduce three dilemmas that confront lecturers, management, HRM-officials and educational specialists when they are dealing with the direction of professionalization of lecturers.

1)         Local focus vs. international focus. Universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands can direct their education and research towards the local and regional contexts in which they are embedded. Alternatively, they can focus on the increasing globalization of society in which the borders between cities and regions are blurred.

2)         Self-steering professionals vs. hierarchically steered professionals. Lecturers have a strong sense of professional autonomy and like to decide for themselves in which direction they develop. At the same time, educational organizations have to deal with changing economic demands, resulting in the HRM-process being directed towards guiding lecturers in their professionalization activities.

3)         Lifetime lecturers vs. flexible careers. Educators have a strong identification with their profession, which expresses itself in a lifetime commitment or – from an HRM-perspective – a dead end job. Alternatively, their personal development and career could become more dynamic if they hold professional positions outside the educational sphere. 

In the next section we will discuss the main results of the empirical research. The focus of this paper, however, will be on the theoretical explanation of the results. Two kinds of theories will be discussed (pros and cons):

1)         Theories of juridicalization and ‘protocollization’ of professions in modern society (key terms: accountability, control, transparency)

2)         Theories of reflexive modernization of professions in modern society (Giddens, Beck, Luhmann; key terms: self-steering, contingency, continuous [self-] evaluation, personal development and identity)

We will challenge the participants to join in and come up with better alternatives.

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