What Counts as Good Work?
Isaac M. T. Mwase, Ph.D.

The question I pose in this review essay animates the Good Works Project whose principal investigators are Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon. "What constitutes good work?" is a question that is best answered from as many vantage points as possible. What sort of answers might be offered where the question asked with different foci in mind? Asia? Africa? The poor? The underrepresented? Those on the loosing side of history? The principal investigators for the Good Works Project seek to define good work with their focus primarily on the US. They are interested in concerns that are common in professions as diverse as law medicine, theater, higher education, philanthropy, and more. How are professionals to engage in work that is both expert and socially responsible in the face of formidable odds occasioned by relentless market forces? Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet ( 2001) lays the groundwork for what should become a global project. It is an in-depth examination of two key professions vital in our quest to understand ourselves and the world we live in: genetics and journalism. 
Good work finds definition primarily from the vantage point of US professionals and those within their particular frame of reference. This approach has merit in that it allows for a readily manageable research project and distinct results. The value of such results cannot be overstated. To acknowledge however the complexities of the world that faces professionals stateside and the world over, good work has to be defined not only with reference to dizzying market forces. It is also now the case that transnationalization and globalization of corporations and the professionals who run them are realities that must be factored into the definition of good work.
I will proceed now to show the value of Good Work definitions for professionals in the US. Simultaneously I want to suggest how a deliberate and concerted attempt to keep in view the rest of the world, including views from the margins and from the underside, globalizes, expands, and enriches what we may regard as good work. There are three moves that commend themselves. The first I will be able to accomplish. I will assess the definition of good work offered by Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, and Damon. This ought to be followed by an evaluation of the profiles of good work that emerged from research in the two fields of genetics and journalism. I will not delve into such an evaluation. For the last move I engage in what I will call a diagnostics of alignment. Good work is the product of domains that enjoy a high degree of alignment. I seek to raise some concerns about how alignment finds expression in genetics and journalism.
Good Work Defined
"good work-work of expert quality that benefits the broader society." (xi)

"good work"-work that is both excellent in quality and socially responsible. . ." (xi)
"People who do good work, in our sense of the term, are clearly skilled in one or more professional realms. [T]hey are thoughtful about their responsibilities and the implications about their work. At best, they are concerned to act in a responsible fashion with respect toward their personal goals; their family, friends, peers and colleagues; their mission or sense of calling; the institutions with which they are affiliated; and, lastly, the wider world-people they do not know, those who will come afterwards, and, in the grandest sense, to the planet or to God." (3)
The definition of good work offered by GCD is comprehensive and adequate. I want to contend that the implications of globalization are not cast in as sharp a relief as made necessary by present world conditions. In all fairness to GCD, they do acknowledge "the seemingly inexorable trends toward globalization, mobility, and interdependence (47)." These trends now define our world and consequently to focus only on the US, though very useful, is inadequate.  Professionals in the US and elsewhere, however, will find valuable the emic and etic perspectives explored in connection with journalism and genetics. It is worthwhile to adumbrate the profile of good work with respect to these two professions.

What counts as good work in genetics and journalism? The principal investigators in the GWP do provide criteria for determining when we can say a particular geneticist, journalist, or any other professional is doing good work: "By evaluating the performance in terms of the domain's values, by comparing it to other practitioners' standards, and by assessing the amount of joy it brings to the worker (37)." Missing from these criteria is the societal dimension included in the earlier definitions. It seems to me that if there is any place where the wider society's interests have to be represented, it is in those domains that have much to do with shaping the bodies and minds of current humanity. GCD do acknowledge along with the professionals under their gaze the need for a wider debate about what should count as superlative work in genetics and journalism. What one of their respondents spoke for colleagues in journalism applies to other domains:
We really need to have a furious debate in this country about how we are going to do the news. What we are going to do it for, who we are going to do it for, how we are going to do it. Everything is sort of careened along in this licentious, laissez-fair manner, and we have ended up with a news business which serves its public poorly. (50)
I'm inclined to rephrase the last line. We have ended with a cadre of professionals that serves the world community poorly. The culprit for such a sad state is what I want to characterize as a professionalism of narrow self-interest. There are hints of this kind of professionalism in the profiles from genetics and journalism in Good Work. If professionals are to engage is work of an excellent quality and act in socially responsible ways, advancing the common good, not just for Americans, they have to be intentional in the effort to define good work locally and globally. I am desirous to play up and amplify the role of an intentionally inclusive collective. What GCD state as a matter of principle, I want to argue for as a matter of survival for the rest of the world community, one mired in vicious cycles of poverty. It is indeed the case that "Our hope clearly lies in our best individual and collective efforts, imperfect as these might be (52)."
The Diagnostics of Alignment
This is the place to appreciate and critique the model of alignment offered in Good Work. Even though I have already deployed terms and concepts that make up the model, it will help my argument from hereon to refresh our memories about these terms. We do well first to invoke in the following chart the summary offered in Good Work of the components of a professional realm (26):
Individual Practitioners	Persons who elect to enter a professional realm, secure training, and pursue their own personal and professional goals.
Domain	Knowledge, skills, practices, rules, and values captured in various codes. A culture consists of numerous domains. Domains have ethical dimensions.
Field	The roles that individuals practice when working with symbols of the domain; fields also include institutions. A society consists of numerous fields. Three major roles: elite gatekeepers, expert practitioners, apprentices and students.
Other Stakeholders		1.   Corporate shareholders and executives.
2. General public-consumers and citizens.
In order to determine whether genetics and journalism are well aligned or not GCD employ emic and etic perspectives. Emic perspectives are those views that become evident from the descriptions and experiences related by leading practitioners in a field. An etic perspective is the assessment offered by a trained observer who is outside of the domain. Methodologically this makes good sense. For a definition of good work, however, in domains whose fields impact everyone on earth, the methodology lacks a crucial factor: the view of the distant or marginalized stakeholder.
What is disconcerting about the method used to define good work stems from my sense that alignment may be a function of a common frame of reference. Elite gatekeepers, expert practitioners, apprentices and students in genetics and journalism all are products of a particular selection process. It would not come as a surprise that those within a common frame of reference might judge their own work or that of their colleagues as good. It is perfectly conceivable that those from different frames of reference may demur from such judgments.
I want to briefly illustrate how the view from what I will call the distanced stakeholder may radically alter what those in a common frame of reference might regard as good work. I will use journalism as the prism for such an exercise because recent events provide telling examples.
The Distanced Stakeholder and Journalism
Prior to September 11 2001 very few in Western media-as for the public, it did not have a prayer-had any clue about Al Jazeerah. Even media wonks seemed to be caught by surprise by the intensity of feeling against the United States evident in significant segments of the Moslem world. What could explain this lack of knowledge about a notable segment of a sub-group that comprises a vital 1/6th of earth's population? 
Any judgment about good work in American journalism that is going to garner a credibility that extends beyond countries of the North Atlantic sector ought to take into account the views of those in the rest of the world with a vested interest in the products of this journalism. What comes through in Good Work as good work in journalism might not be judged as such were the views from non-western countries taken into consideration. The views of journalists who serve outside the orbit of the kind of interests unwittingly propagated by western media become valuable. The kind of coverage by an Al Jazeerah may present a counterpoint for assessing what counts as good work in journalism.
The point I have sought to make is that the perspective of the outsider is valuable in assessing good work in any domain in light of the shrinking of the globe due to interconnected economies. Good Work is an important milestone in helping the professional world figure out that work which is going to be of expert quality and beneficial to the broader society, including struggling countries in the developing world!



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