Professionalization and market closure : the case of plumbing in India
Name
861187884-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
2.32 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
71528be4a9701d7585e6ba7292d0079d
Author(s)
Ranganathan, Aruna
Advisor(s)
Paul Osterman.
Alternative Title
Case of plumbing in India
Date Issued
2013
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
While professionalization has long been understood as a process of establishing market closure and monopoly control over work, this paper presents a case where professionalization erodes rather than establishes occupational closure. Using the case of plumbing in India, I demonstrate how the Indian Plumbing Association (IPA), a newly formed organization of internationally-trained plumbing contractors and consultants, is using the rhetoric and structures of professionalization to threaten pre-existing ethnicity-based closure enjoyed by traditional plumbers from the eastern state of Orissa. By employing a discourse of professionalism and by instituting codes, training and certification programs, professionalization in this case is hurting Orissan plumbers by changing the basis of plumbing knowledge and opening entry to outsiders. This paper concludes by suggesting that professionalization is a modern trope that does not necessarily imply monopoly benefits and higher job quality for all the members of a given occupational group.
Description
Thesis (S.M. in Management Research)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-31).
Subjects
Sloan School of Management.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
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