The Negotiation and Re-Negotiation of Occupational Control: a Study of Retail Pharmacy in New Zealand, 1930-1990

New Zealand pharmacists established a great deal of control over their  work, and the conditions under which it was performed in the late 19th  and early 20th century. They successfully excluded other suppliers and  gained statutory mechanisms to ensure professional unity. After the  second world war many aspects of this control became problematic. This  thesis examines the impact of new technology which eroded the need for  pharmacists' craft skills. It suggests that pharmacists used this new  technology as an opportunity to argue that abstract knowledge was needed  for dispensing work. One result was the establishment of full-time  tertiary education for pharmacists in the 1960s. This upset the  traditional organisation of pharmacy careers, because apprentices were  no longer available, and because, it is argued, it also led to an  increase in the number of women entering retail pharmacy. In the 1980s  state support for professional self-regulation, for restrictions on  pharmacy ownership, and the state's open-ended commitment to fund  pharmaceuticals were increasingly under review. This thesis examines the  nature of these challenges to pharmacists' control over their  occupation and its market, and pharmacists' responses to them. It argues  that the introduction of a more clinical model of pharmacy practice is  one important way in which pharmacists are attempting to maintain and  up-grade their position.

The thesis draws on the sociology of professions and explores a variety  of themes related to professions, state intervention, gender and the  relationships between profession and business. It is based primarily on  historical research, interviews with pharmacists, analysis of  submissions to the Pharmacy Bill 1989, and other documentary sources.