Abstract This study examines how institutional multiplicity shapes nonprofit organizations’ mission-oriented actions by using the institutional logics perspective. We test how different institutional logics (professional, market, state, and community logics) independently and collectively affect mission-oriented actions of nonprofit organizations, focusing on the two focal subsectors: human service organizations and art and culture organizations. Using a panel dataset of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations between 2000 and 2010, we find that multiple institutional logics jointly as well as independently affect nonprofits’ mission-oriented actions and this relationship varies between the two subsectors. The findings offer empirical evidence of how multiple logics co-exist and how the dynamics among multiple logics may shape nonprofits’ actions across different subsectors.
{"title":"What drives organizational missions in the nonprofit sector? An institutional logic dependence perspective","authors":"Hyunseok Hwang, Young-joo Lee","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joad002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examines how institutional multiplicity shapes nonprofit organizations’ mission-oriented actions by using the institutional logics perspective. We test how different institutional logics (professional, market, state, and community logics) independently and collectively affect mission-oriented actions of nonprofit organizations, focusing on the two focal subsectors: human service organizations and art and culture organizations. Using a panel dataset of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations between 2000 and 2010, we find that multiple institutional logics jointly as well as independently affect nonprofits’ mission-oriented actions and this relationship varies between the two subsectors. The findings offer empirical evidence of how multiple logics co-exist and how the dynamics among multiple logics may shape nonprofits’ actions across different subsectors.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135146565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent developments in digital technologies have challenged the ways in which service firms create, deliver, and capture value. Although research and practice suggest business model innovation as an effective response to digitalization, many firms are not willing to make radical changes in the architecture of the firm’s activities. In this study, we take an in-depth look at which factors influence the firm’s capability for technology-driven business model innovation in the legal industry context. As our empirical context, we have chosen the legal industry, notorious for its risk aversion and for practices that inhibit innovation, but where the focus on digitalization is increasing due to external pressures. We interviewed nine law firms in Norway, representing together the largest share of the country’s legal services market, four of them being traditional law firms and the rest being newly established yet large digital New Law organizations. We find that profitability acts both as an inhibitor of business model innovation for established firms and as a driver for New Law firms. However, the relatively high job satisfaction of Norwegian lawyers in comparison to their US-based counterparts dampens the pull of technological opportunities on business model innovation by making human capital more difficult to acquire by new entrants. Barring an unexpected profitability crisis, digitalization of the Norwegian law sector will not disrupt traditional law firms’ business models. However, New Law firms are accumulating the competences required to compete with the incumbents.
{"title":"Digitalization and law: innovating around the boundaries","authors":"B. Callegari, R. S. Rai","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recent developments in digital technologies have challenged the ways in which service firms create, deliver, and capture value. Although research and practice suggest business model innovation as an effective response to digitalization, many firms are not willing to make radical changes in the architecture of the firm’s activities. In this study, we take an in-depth look at which factors influence the firm’s capability for technology-driven business model innovation in the legal industry context. As our empirical context, we have chosen the legal industry, notorious for its risk aversion and for practices that inhibit innovation, but where the focus on digitalization is increasing due to external pressures. We interviewed nine law firms in Norway, representing together the largest share of the country’s legal services market, four of them being traditional law firms and the rest being newly established yet large digital New Law organizations. We find that profitability acts both as an inhibitor of business model innovation for established firms and as a driver for New Law firms. However, the relatively high job satisfaction of Norwegian lawyers in comparison to their US-based counterparts dampens the pull of technological opportunities on business model innovation by making human capital more difficult to acquire by new entrants. Barring an unexpected profitability crisis, digitalization of the Norwegian law sector will not disrupt traditional law firms’ business models. However, New Law firms are accumulating the competences required to compete with the incumbents.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47327326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research has documented how the decline in professional self-regulation in the UK and Australia was led by policy-makers in response to regulatory failures. In Canada, professional self-regulation is currently in decline as well, and while policy-makers have driven some change it is also the case that self-regulating professions have begun to transform themselves from within: altering their structure, make-up, and processes to enhance fairness, public input, and accountability, while reducing professional control. Why would they do so? This paper draws on the concept of institutional isomorphism to understand why professional regulators would invoke changes that, on the surface, might seem to counteract their own interests. Analysing data from 46 interviews with leaders in healthcare profession regulation, this paper examines how coercive, mimetic, and normative processes drive regulatory reform in a changing regulatory field.
{"title":"Drivers of regulatory reform in Canadian health professions: Institutional isomorphism in a shifting social context","authors":"T. Adams","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Research has documented how the decline in professional self-regulation in the UK and Australia was led by policy-makers in response to regulatory failures. In Canada, professional self-regulation is currently in decline as well, and while policy-makers have driven some change it is also the case that self-regulating professions have begun to transform themselves from within: altering their structure, make-up, and processes to enhance fairness, public input, and accountability, while reducing professional control. Why would they do so? This paper draws on the concept of institutional isomorphism to understand why professional regulators would invoke changes that, on the surface, might seem to counteract their own interests. Analysing data from 46 interviews with leaders in healthcare profession regulation, this paper examines how coercive, mimetic, and normative processes drive regulatory reform in a changing regulatory field.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45820952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Historically, self-regulation has provided some professions with power and market control. Currently, however, governments have scrutinized this approach, and priorities have shifted toward other mandates. This study examines the case of paramedics in Ontario, Canada, where self-regulation is still the dominant regulatory model for the healthcare professions but not for paramedics. Instead, paramedics in Ontario are co-regulated by government and physician-directed groups, with paramedics subordinate to both. This paper, which draws on interviews with paramedic industry leaders analyzed through the lens of institutional work, examines perspectives on the relevance of self-regulation to the paramedic professionalization project. Participants had varying views on the importance of self-regulation in obtaining professional status, with some rejecting its role in professionalization and others embracing regulatory reform. Because paramedics disagree on what being a profession means, the collective professionalization project has stalled. This research has implications for understanding the impact of intraprofessional relationships and conflict on professionalization projects.
{"title":"At odds: How intraprofessional conflict and stratification has stalled the Ontario paramedic professionalization project","authors":"M. Brydges, J. Dunn, G. Agarwal, W. Tavares","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Historically, self-regulation has provided some professions with power and market control. Currently, however, governments have scrutinized this approach, and priorities have shifted toward other mandates. This study examines the case of paramedics in Ontario, Canada, where self-regulation is still the dominant regulatory model for the healthcare professions but not for paramedics. Instead, paramedics in Ontario are co-regulated by government and physician-directed groups, with paramedics subordinate to both. This paper, which draws on interviews with paramedic industry leaders analyzed through the lens of institutional work, examines perspectives on the relevance of self-regulation to the paramedic professionalization project. Participants had varying views on the importance of self-regulation in obtaining professional status, with some rejecting its role in professionalization and others embracing regulatory reform. Because paramedics disagree on what being a profession means, the collective professionalization project has stalled. This research has implications for understanding the impact of intraprofessional relationships and conflict on professionalization projects.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46554847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corrigendum to: Professional flows: Lateral moves of law firm partners in Hong Kong, 1994–2018","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46211856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we reconstruct a Dutch case in which policymakers, experts, and professional organizations proposed to amend a law so as to differentiate between different kinds of nurses and the work they do. In doing so, they specifically sought to support and reposition higher educated nurses. The amendment was met with fierce opposition from within the nursing community, however, and was eventually withdrawn. Drawing on interviews with key actors in the debate and an analysis of policy documents and social media platforms, we reconstruct what happened and how. Our reconstruction is informed by institutional theory, the sociology of professions, and a body of literature that examines populism in its increasingly diverse modes of existence. By combining these bodies of literature, we have sought to expand on an analytical repertoire aimed at capturing the dynamics between individual professionals and their institutional environments. Our approach specifically allowed us to foreground a populist action frame through which opposition was organized and to discuss the destructive and generative potential it has had for future aspirations in the professionalization and (re)organization of nursing work.
{"title":"The rise of the partisan nurse and the challenge of moving beyond an impasse in the (re)organization of Dutch nursing work","authors":"Felder M, Kuijper S, Lalleman P, et al.","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac002","url":null,"abstract":"<span><div>Abstract</div>In this article, we reconstruct a Dutch case in which policymakers, experts, and professional organizations proposed to amend a law so as to differentiate between different kinds of nurses and the work they do. In doing so, they specifically sought to support and reposition higher educated nurses. The amendment was met with fierce opposition from within the nursing community, however, and was eventually withdrawn. Drawing on interviews with key actors in the debate and an analysis of policy documents and social media platforms, we reconstruct what happened and how. Our reconstruction is informed by institutional theory, the sociology of professions, and a body of literature that examines populism in its increasingly diverse modes of existence. By combining these bodies of literature, we have sought to expand on an analytical repertoire aimed at capturing the dynamics between individual professionals and their institutional environments. Our approach specifically allowed us to foreground a populist action frame through which opposition was organized and to discuss the destructive and generative potential it has had for future aspirations in the professionalization and (re)organization of nursing work.</span>","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138513130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines how professionals leading the digitalization of professional service firms construct their views on new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the influence of such technologies on their future. This understudied question is important because such early-stage envisioning can significantly affect the later processes and outcomes of digitalization. A qualitative study was conducted, using interview and archival data, on a Big Four audit firm in Japan during the period 2017–9, when its taskforce considered applying AI to its core audit service. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, the findings expand our knowledge of prospective sensemaking by introducing a distinct mode of viewing the future that accepts the future as ever-changing as a means of coping with high uncertainty. Second, this study demonstrates the understudied link between institutions and sensemaking by showing how professionals’ embeddedness in their professional institution sets the focus of their sensemaking on the elements that support the institution. Third, these insights add to our knowledge of digitalization and professions by suggesting the potential high variability of professionals’ strategies regarding digitalization due to their continuous updating of their view of the future, as well as the inherent antinomy of digitalization for established professions due to their advantaged but constrained position regarding digitalization.
{"title":"Accepting the future as ever-changing: professionals’ sensemaking about artificial intelligence","authors":"Goto M.","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joab022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joab022","url":null,"abstract":"<span><div>Abstract</div>This article examines how professionals leading the digitalization of professional service firms construct their views on new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the influence of such technologies on their future. This understudied question is important because such early-stage envisioning can significantly affect the later processes and outcomes of digitalization. A qualitative study was conducted, using interview and archival data, on a Big Four audit firm in Japan during the period 2017–9, when its taskforce considered applying AI to its core audit service. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, the findings expand our knowledge of prospective sensemaking by introducing a distinct mode of viewing the future that accepts the future as ever-changing as a means of coping with high uncertainty. Second, this study demonstrates the understudied link between institutions and sensemaking by showing how professionals’ embeddedness in their professional institution sets the focus of their sensemaking on the elements that support the institution. Third, these insights add to our knowledge of digitalization and professions by suggesting the potential high variability of professionals’ strategies regarding digitalization due to their continuous updating of their view of the future, as well as the inherent antinomy of digitalization for established professions due to their advantaged but constrained position regarding digitalization.</span>","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138513131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"OUP accepted manuscript","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"OUP accepted manuscript","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"OUP accepted manuscript","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joac004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joac004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}