What Is a Profession

It is often stated that engineers are members of a learned profession, and a number of authors have tried to characterize the attributes of a profession. Many of these use Greenwood s 1957 five attributes of a profession as a starting point (Greenwood, 1957)  

The tug-of-war between professionalism and public service on the one hand and serving the interests of large-scale business interests has shaped the social history of engineering in important ways (Layton, 1990), and it is likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. As one examines different codes of ethics, we will see different emphases depending on whether a particular professional society is weighted toward a business or a professional model of engineering practice. 

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