Despite these developments, and despite the scale of interventions, there has not been the development of a clearly identifiable field of professional practice. Indeed, many of the key informants who were interviewed in our study responded to our initial contact with the statement 'it all depends on what you mean by (employment-oriented) local economic development'. That is, the very parameters of the problem to be studied were ill-defined. Many of those who had long experience in the field indicated that previous attempts to deal with the problem had had very limited effect. Some respondents referred to the field as 'young'; however, this must be questionable given the long timescale, indicated above, over which the issues have been significant in public policy. Indeed, activities relating to problems of unemployment have a longer history, dating back to the nineteenth century. It might be argued that the field is one which is 'pre-paradigmatic', whereby the nature of the problem itself lacks a clear, coherent and agreed formulation. Alternatively, we might consider whether 'the problem' is itself 'essentially contested', such that its definition depends upon conflicts between different valued goals.
In his study of professions, Andrew Abbott A. Abbott (1988) The System of the Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, Chicago, University of Chicago Press argues that we can best understand how these come into being and develop (and in some cases decline and disappear) in terms of the link created between a particular occupational grouping and the nature of work undertaken, within a system or ecology of professions. He uses the term jurisdiction to denote the link between a profession and the tasks which constitute the work undertaken. The work itself relates to 'human problems' (individual and/or social), and comprises three essential tasks, which he terms 'diagnosis', 'inference', 'treatment'; the first and third term are borrowed from the medical world. Abbott points out that the 'human problems' about which a profession claims to have relevant expertise may have 'subjective' or 'cultural' as well as 'objective' features. Such 'subjective'/ 'cultural' features are subject to interpretation, the possibility of being defined or construed in different ways. As such, there is the likelihood of contestation over their interpretation. The development of a profession depends upon the extent to which it is able to gain acceptance of its definition of the problem, of the appropriateness of its diagnosis and efficacy of its treatment. Inference is the link between diagnosis and prescription of treatment, based on a body of accumulated knowledge.
Using this approach, it is clear from our study that the 'human problem' of unemployment at the local level has not been the subject of a successful jurisdictional claim by any one occupational grouping. However, there are many individuals ('agents') and many organisations ('agencies') engaged in work concerned with the problem area. Moreover, there many organisations and individuals providing education and training for those so engaged; in many cases this includes assessment and certification. To date, there is one organisation seeking to be the professional institute (the Institution of Economic Development) for the field, although its membership numbers are still fairly small. There is also current work being undertaken to develop occupational standards for the field, linked with the more general programme for developing 'competence-based' vocational qualifications. There is, then, no lack of attempts to define what constitutes the nature of appropriate practice in this area.