The computer profession with other more traditional professions.

Despite the undisputed success of professionalism, many debates and questions remain unanswered going back as far as Flexner 1915, this has been centred around how professions should be defined, which occupation should be called professionals, and by what institutional criteria. There is no single, integrating characteristic of all professions and it is impossible to derive a clear theoretical category, there has and is many characteristics and personal views to attempt to define professionalism.

One of the most widely discussed issues is “which occupation should be called professionals?” this question leads to challenge at a theoretical level of thought; this is done by looking at different approaches to definitions.

One way of defining a profession is to adopt an idealist approach, such an approach described by Hayle and John (1995) as the “Criterion approach” leads to a set of defining characteristics against which the conduct of a professional can be measured, this ap...