Collaboration and innovation within professions: the case of the UK construction industry

This paper offers some observations upon the nature of profession, both generally and specifically within the UK construction industry, with the intention of highlighting the potential contradiction between the aim of raising expertise through the creation of professional associations and the concept of a profession, and, the theme of this conference, that this encourages collaboration and innovation between occupational experts. The UK construction industry has a reputation for failing in many areas of commercial management (see for example Emmerson 1962, Ball 1988, Latham 1994, Egan 2002) and the professions are often seen as part of the problem. Not only is there a belief amongst individual professionals that their associations are a part of the problem, but the literature of the sociology of the professions points to an interesting theme that fleshes out a framework that might prove useful to understanding this.