Professional capacity - positive coping by professionals in the public domain

For a long time, the debate on public professionals was dominated by the perspective of ‘professionals under pressure'. Red tape, rules, regulations and control, coming from governments, policy-makers, inspectorates, executives managers constrain professional work and autonomies, whereas all of these actors stress the importance of autonomy. This can be described as the ’discomfort of autonomy’. Autonomy has become paradoxical. In order to enlarge freedoms and leeway in professional practices, and reduce strict top-down governance, the focus on governing by targets and outputs has grown so large, that it has started to reduce professional freedom and leeway. This has led to many insights on either demotivated professionals who are dissatisfied, or on manipulative professionals who game the system. In this paper, we shift focus. Despite pressures and burdens, we see capable professionals in daily practice; instead of underscoring the fact that professionals are defenseless victims or active manipulators, we focus on how professionals cope in more positive ways. We focus on professional capacity.
We define professional capacity as: “the ability to cope with complex contexts, in such a way that professional are able to render high-quality services, in committed and viable ways”. In order to act, certain resources are necessary, which are either already available, or can be created. We assume, based on Self-Determination Theory and the Job Demands- Resources model that autonomy, experience and networks will activate a motivational process, which leads to more professional capacity. Additionally, the right capabilities, i.e. proper commitment, attitude, and motivation will enable professionals to contribute in a meaningful matter and strengthen their professional capacity.
We take active attitudes and behaviors of professionals into account, using insights from positive coping literature. We focus on pro-active behavior, in which professionals take action over their situation. Research coming from positive organizational psychology, although understudied, shows that active employee outcomes improve conditions for both workers and organizations. By using survey and interview data, we show the nature of professional capacity in (Dutch) primary education and we sketch implications for research and practice.