The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor

A third general type of conflict is often studied in the literature on professional monopoly—the invasion of a settled jurisdiction by groups providing equivalent services at lower prices. Such invaders generally assault public jurisdiction, usually through an extensive advertising campaign. Attackers may be new to professional work or members of another established profession; they may also use special organizational forms that enable their price cutting. Price-cutting conflicts, like those arising from excessive and insufficient jurisdiction, are ubiquitou

When expansion reflects insufficient jurisdiction, it occurs first in the workplace and only later becomes established in public and legal eyes. Precisely the reverse happens with sudden quantitative expansion of a jurisdiction relative to professional output; there legal and perhaps public jurisdictions are secure, but workplace control comes to be shared with outsiders.

A second kind of conflict arises when current jurisdictions are insufficient to support the profession; potential output is expanding faster than jurisdiction. The profession is then looking for work. Expansion (of jurisdiction) may be undertaken either by improving current settlements or by moving into wholly new areas. An overstaffed profession can abolish a clientele settlement, for example, and serve all potential clients itself. (Medicine periodically does this in the area of primary health care.) This necessitates no change in the cultural structure of jurisdiction. A move into a qualitatively new area, by contrast, requires the cultural work to