Challenges Facing Iran’s Professional Urban Development Organizations from the View of Professionals; Case Study: Construction Engineering Organization

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Urban Development Department, Eshragh Institute of Higher Education, Bojnourd, Iran.

2 Associate Professor of Urban Development Department, Faculty of Urban Development, College of Fine Arts, Tehran, Iran (Corresponding Author).

10.22034/aaud.2019.160196.1752

Abstract

Professional organizations, despite their significance and position in strengthening professional status, are still ignored in urban development literature. In the meantime, they encounter numerous serious challenges and barriers to the realization of the multiple roles they are entrusted with, as with the passage of around three decades since the experience of professional urban development organizations, no clear perspective has been envisaged for them. Thus, this present research used a critical approach to investigate the challenges facing these organizations, and to present a picture of their current situation and future vision by focusing on the Construction Engineering Organization as one of the most active organizations in urban development. For this, critical discourse analysis was used to identify these challenges. Using snowball sampling, a purposive sampling technique, a total of 20 informants from among the professional and managerial members of the organization was selected. Research data were gathered via discursive interviews. As a result, the analyses led to the identification of three groups of challenges, including external factors, internal factors, and intra-group factors. Here, external factors which refer to the absence of a context for the role-play of these organizations contributed most, as this was followed by a more diverse range of intra-group factors that indicated urban developers’ criticisms of their professional society. The last group includes internal factors which mainly involve intra-organizational relations. A total of these challenges suggested a difficult path lying ahead of the professional urban development society.

Keywords


Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The system of professions: An essay on the expert division of labor. Chicago: Chicago UP. 
Bickenbach, Jerome E., and Sue Hendler. 2017. The moral mandate of the ‘profession’of planning. In Values and planning, 162-177. Routledge. 
Birch, Eugenie L., and Christopher Silver. 2009. One hundred years of city planning’s enduring and evolving connections. Journal of the American Planning Association 75, no. 2 : 113-122. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233257773_One_Hundred_Years_of_City_Planning’s_Enduring_and_Evolving_Connections
Beauregard, Robert A. 1983. Planners as workers: a Marxist perspective. In professionals and urban form, edited by J. Blau, M. LaGory and J.Pipkin. Albany, NY: sunny press.
Barr, Donald A. 1972. The professional urban planner. Journal of the American Planning Association 38, no. 3: 155-159. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944367208977599
Campbell, Heather, and Robert Marshall.2005. Professionalism and planning in Britain. Town Planning Review 76, no. 2: 191-215. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250276890_Professionalism_and_planning_in_Britain
Carr-Saunders, Alexander Morris, and Paul Alexander Wilson. 1933. Professions (The). Oxford: Clarenden Press.
Dalton, Linda C. 1986. Why the rational paradigm persists—The resistance of professional education and practice to alternative forms of planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research 5, no. 3: 147-153. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0739456X8600500302
Evetts, Julia. 2014. The concept of professionalism: Professional work, professional practice and learning. In International handbook of research in professional and practice-based learning, 29-56. Dordrecht: Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8902-8_2
Evetts, Julia. 2011. A new professionalism? Challenges and opportunities. Current sociology 59, no. 4: 406-422. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392111402585?journalCode=csia
Elliott, Philip. 1973. The sociology of the professions. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Freidson, Eliot. 1973. The professions and their prospects. 2nd ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications Inc.
Greenwood, Edward. 1996. The elements of professionalization, In Professionalization, edited by H. Vollmer and D. Mills. NewJersey: Prentice-Hall.
Gleye, Paul H. 2015. City planning versus urban planning: Resolving a profession’s bifurcated heritage. Journal of planning literature 30, no. 1: 3-17. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0885412214554088
Kvale, Steinar, and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. sage.
Marshall, N. G. 2000. Into the Third Millennium: Neocorporatism, the State and the Urban Planning Profession. Doctoral dissertation, UNSW Sydney.
McClelland, Charles E. 1990. Escape from freedom? Reflections on German professionalization. In the formation of professions: Knowledge, state and strategy, edited by M. Burrage, R. Torstendahl, 97-113. London: Sage.
Mohammadpour, A. (2013). Qualitative research method; Anti-method 2. Second edition. Tehran: Publications of Jaame Shenasan.
Myers, Dowell, and Tridib Banerjee. 2005. Toward greater heights for planning: Reconciling the differences between profession, practice, and academic field. Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 2: 121-129. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944360508976687
Murphy, Enda, and Linda Fox-Rogers. 2015. Perceptions of the common good in planning. Cities 42: 231-241. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264275114001383
Pemberton, J. Michael. 1994. The professional association: Some basics. Records Management Quarterly 28, no.1: 50-55.
Richards, Sue. 1990. Conspiracy against the laity?. Taylor & Francis.
Sanyal, Bishwapriya. 2017. Planning’s three challenges. In the Profession of City Planning, 312-334. Routledge.
Sarrafi, M., J. Tavakolnia,  and M. Chamani Moghadam. (2013). The position of the planner in Iran's urban planning process. Quarterly Journal of Urban Studies 12(1): 19-32.
Shafiei, M. (2014). The theory of communicative action (lifeworld and system) and social and political criticism. Journal of Political Science 2(1): 150-165.
Stoltz-Urban, Carin, and Krishna K. Govender. 2014. The Role of Professional Associations in the South African Education and Training System. Journal of Social Sciences 41, no. 2 : 201-208. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321223953_The_Role_of_Professional_Associations_in_the_South_African_Education_and_Training_System
Teitz, Michael B. 1996. American planning in the 1990s: Evolution, debate and challenge. Urban Studies 33, no. 4-5: 649-671. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00420989650011771
Wildavsky, Aaron. 1973. If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing. Policy sciences 4(2): 127-153. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4531522
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. Methods of critical discourse analysis 2: 1-33.