Van Maanen, J. and S. Barley (1984). "Occupational Communities: Culture and control in organizations." Research in Organizational Behavior, 6: 287-365.

The authors define an occupational community as a group of people who consider themselves to be engaged in the same sort of work, whose identity is drawn from their work; who share with one another a set of values, norms, and perspectives that apply but extend beyond work related matters, and whose social relationships meld work and leisure. p. 287

These occupational communities create and sustain telatively unique work cultures consisting of, among other things, task rituals, standards for proper and improper behavior, work codes surrounding relatively routine practices, and compelling accounts attesting to the logic and value of these rituals, standards, and codes. They suggest that the quest for occupational self-control provides the special motive for the development of occupational communities.

State support, an elaborate and advancing theoretical and procedural base to inform and mystify practice, and a relatively unorganized market in dire need of an occupational communities talens lend structural support to a communitie's quest for control. p. 287 The professions are best seen as occupational communities when their specialties are separated.