UK professional associations and continuing professional development: a new direction?

Recent organizational changes, including delayering of large companies and contracting out of certain functions, have resulted in substantialjob losses. The traditional ‘job for life’ ethos has all but vanished, along with many opportunities for promotion. In view of this, most professionals today are especially keen to keep themselves up to date on recent developments in their particular profession, to guarantee, at least to some degree, their continuing employability in the field, if not in a particular organization. In this environment, continuing professional development (CPD) becomes an important and lifelong activity to build up a portfolio of skills relevant to today's needs and flexible enough to adapt to tomorrow's. The aim of this study is to describe and analyse how professional bodies have started to repond to these changes and in particular how they are changing their CPD policies.