Reshaping health professions in the new marketplace

Professions are loose aggregations of practitioners and professional associations that are involved in dynamic and often conflictual relationships with buyers, regulators, teachers/researchers, substitutes, and suppliers. Professions manage their adaptation to environmental change through these linkages. Health professions in the past two decades have been challenged to show resilience and adaptability, particularly in their new, closer interdependence with buyer organizations. As organizations manage the production processes of professionals in new ways, professions are both reshaped and reshape the organizations with which they work. Those organizations that balance organizational and professional interests are likely to be more effective in the new marketplace.