{"title":"OUP accepted manuscript","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joab020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joab020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682066","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/joab023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joab023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682124","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 explores how the green, sustainable city is built in situations of uncertainty though professional practical engagements of testing and trying, and how these are formed by moral investments in professional work. Following recent studies investigating professional work and moral agency, the article engages with Terence Halliday’s famous distinction between science-based and normative professions. Contrary to this argument, the article argues that the practice of engineers, the clearest example of the so-called ‘science-based’ profession, is fraught with moral questions and practices. By drawing on French pragmatic sociology, the article conceptualizes the different ways engineers and others work in situations of uncertainty as different modes of trying. In these modes, professionals rely on different moral principles and ideas for evaluating and judging the professional solutions. As such, the article contributes to the sociology of professions by suggesting a new analytical frame for analyzing moral work as fundamental to professional practice in situations of uncertainty. Empirically, the article builds on fieldwork observations and interviews with professionals from an ongoing research project on Danish climate adaptation in cities and urban rainwater management.
{"title":"Qualifying the green city: professional moral practices of trying urban rainwater forms","authors":"M. L. Meilvang","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores how the green, sustainable city is built in situations of uncertainty though professional practical engagements of testing and trying, and how these are formed by moral investments in professional work. Following recent studies investigating professional work and moral agency, the article engages with Terence Halliday’s famous distinction between science-based and normative professions. Contrary to this argument, the article argues that the practice of engineers, the clearest example of the so-called ‘science-based’ profession, is fraught with moral questions and practices. By drawing on French pragmatic sociology, the article conceptualizes the different ways engineers and others work in situations of uncertainty as different modes of trying. In these modes, professionals rely on different moral principles and ideas for evaluating and judging the professional solutions. As such, the article contributes to the sociology of professions by suggesting a new analytical frame for analyzing moral work as fundamental to professional practice in situations of uncertainty. Empirically, the article builds on fieldwork observations and interviews with professionals from an ongoing research project on Danish climate adaptation in cities and urban rainwater management.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43314621","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 paper, we highlight the networked context of the professions. In particular, we indicate that neo-classical professionals tend to work across organizational boundaries in project teams, often to meet the needs of clients and the wider society. However, little is known about the resources that professionals draw on to meet immediate, fast paced, client demands in project network organizations (PNOs). We pinpoint how knowledge resources, human, social and organizational capital enable professionals to produce outputs at a fast pace/tempo. Temporality emerged as an unexpected but key issue in our empirical research and we explore this further here. First, we put forward how professional work organization(s) has changed by focusing on the boundaries of organizations, and how this is often temporary and project-driven. Second, we use the specific lens of knowledge resources which are drawn upon to enable networked working and ask the question: which knowledge resources enable professionals to work at a fast pace within networks? Third, appreciative of the vast literature on temporary and networked organizations in professional work, our focus is beyond a single profession or organization, and hence, we build upon the prior research on PNOs. We do this by drawing on empirical data of a humanitarian aid project networked organization (HN) that upscales across its network at high speed, often within days, to generate funds for humanitarian disasters in order to save lives.
{"title":"In a flash of time: knowledge resources that enable professional cross-boundary work","authors":"D. Cross, J. Swart","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper, we highlight the networked context of the professions. In particular, we indicate that neo-classical professionals tend to work across organizational boundaries in project teams, often to meet the needs of clients and the wider society. However, little is known about the resources that professionals draw on to meet immediate, fast paced, client demands in project network organizations (PNOs). We pinpoint how knowledge resources, human, social and organizational capital enable professionals to produce outputs at a fast pace/tempo. Temporality emerged as an unexpected but key issue in our empirical research and we explore this further here. First, we put forward how professional work organization(s) has changed by focusing on the boundaries of organizations, and how this is often temporary and project-driven. Second, we use the specific lens of knowledge resources which are drawn upon to enable networked working and ask the question: which knowledge resources enable professionals to work at a fast pace within networks? Third, appreciative of the vast literature on temporary and networked organizations in professional work, our focus is beyond a single profession or organization, and hence, we build upon the prior research on PNOs. We do this by drawing on empirical data of a humanitarian aid project networked organization (HN) that upscales across its network at high speed, often within days, to generate funds for humanitarian disasters in order to save lives.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46859706","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 enhances our understanding of institutional work, through a study of professional health commissioners in the English National Health Service. Using a case study of mental health policy implementation, commissioners are conceptualized as institutional agents involved in shaping the organizational field and its boundary. Health service commissioners face a series of challenges as institutional agents. Commissioning is a relatively new health profession. It lacks a strong professional association and has predominantly been externally professionalized. Commissioners have limited direct organizational strategic management control. In the case study, commissioners were charged with leading implementation of the policy, which required them to address fragmentation in the field. Using existing typologies as an analytical frame, activities by commissioners in the case study are identified and explored as different modes of institutional work. Commissioners created a new normative network and instigated specific processes to embed and routinize cross-organization working. They undertook boundary-spanning cognitive institutional work, creating new knowledge by commissioning education of school staff in the basics of children’s mental health. Their institutional work involved challenging existing working practices, both in the health field and in the contiguous education field. The article elucidates connections between different modes of institutional work and attends to boundary work by commissioners in parallel with institutional work in the field. It also outlines how a profession seemingly lacking many of the ingredients of institutional power might pursue its own professional project through institutional work. Findings have resonance in other geographical and policy areas and fields.
{"title":"‘Not one action but many’: institutional work by commissioners of children's mental health services in the English NHS","authors":"A. Passey","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article enhances our understanding of institutional work, through a study of professional health commissioners in the English National Health Service. Using a case study of mental health policy implementation, commissioners are conceptualized as institutional agents involved in shaping the organizational field and its boundary. Health service commissioners face a series of challenges as institutional agents. Commissioning is a relatively new health profession. It lacks a strong professional association and has predominantly been externally professionalized. Commissioners have limited direct organizational strategic management control. In the case study, commissioners were charged with leading implementation of the policy, which required them to address fragmentation in the field. Using existing typologies as an analytical frame, activities by commissioners in the case study are identified and explored as different modes of institutional work. Commissioners created a new normative network and instigated specific processes to embed and routinize cross-organization working. They undertook boundary-spanning cognitive institutional work, creating new knowledge by commissioning education of school staff in the basics of children’s mental health. Their institutional work involved challenging existing working practices, both in the health field and in the contiguous education field. The article elucidates connections between different modes of institutional work and attends to boundary work by commissioners in parallel with institutional work in the field. It also outlines how a profession seemingly lacking many of the ingredients of institutional power might pursue its own professional project through institutional work. Findings have resonance in other geographical and policy areas and fields.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61682118","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 study we argue that professionalism imposed from above can result in a type of fission, leading to the ambiguous emergence of new occupations. Our case focuses on the US’ federally mandated use of electronic health records and the increased use of medical scribes. Data include observations of 571 patient encounters across 48 scribe shifts, and 12 interviews with medical scribes and physicians in the ophthalmology and digestive health departments of a community hospital. We found substantial differences in scribes’ roles based on the pre-existing routines within each department, and that scribes developed agency in the interface between the electronic health record and the physicians’ work. Our study contributes to work on occupations as negotiated orders by drawing attention to external influences, the importance of considering differences across professional task routines, and the personal interactions between professional and technical workers.
{"title":"Professional fission in medical routines: medical scribes and physicians in two US hospital departments","authors":"Ann L. Bryan, J. Lammers","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa023","url":null,"abstract":"In this study we argue that professionalism imposed from above can result in a type of fission, leading to the ambiguous emergence of new occupations. Our case focuses on the US’ federally mandated use of electronic health records and the increased use of medical scribes. Data include observations of 571 patient encounters across 48 scribe shifts, and 12 interviews with medical scribes and physicians in the ophthalmology and digestive health departments of a community hospital. We found substantial differences in scribes’ roles based on the pre-existing routines within each department, and that scribes developed agency in the interface between the electronic health record and the physicians’ work. Our study contributes to work on occupations as negotiated orders by drawing attention to external influences, the importance of considering differences across professional task routines, and the personal interactions between professional and technical workers.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41938286","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}
J. van Schothorst-van Roekel, A. M. Weggelaar-Jansen, A. D. de Bont, I. Wallenburg
Scholars describe organizing professionalism as ‘the intertwinement of professional and organizational logics in one professional role’. Organizing professionalism bridges the gap between the often-described conflicting relationship between professionals and managers. However, the ways in which professionals shape this organizing role in daily practice, and how it impacts on their relationship with managers has gained little attention. This ethnographic study reveals how nurses shape and differentiate themselves in organizing roles. We show that developing a new nurse organizing role is a balancing act as it involves resolving various tensions concerning professional authority, task prioritization, alignment of both intra- and interprofessional interests, and internal versus external requirements. Managers play an important yet ambiguous role in this development process as they both cooperate with nurses in aligning organizational and nursing professional aims, and sometimes hamper the development of an independent organizing nursing role due to conflicting organizational concerns.
{"title":"The balancing act of organizing professionals and managers: An ethnographic account of nursing role development and unfolding nurse-manager relationships","authors":"J. van Schothorst-van Roekel, A. M. Weggelaar-Jansen, A. D. de Bont, I. Wallenburg","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars describe organizing professionalism as ‘the intertwinement of professional and organizational logics in one professional role’. Organizing professionalism bridges the gap between the often-described conflicting relationship between professionals and managers. However, the ways in which professionals shape this organizing role in daily practice, and how it impacts on their relationship with managers has gained little attention. This ethnographic study reveals how nurses shape and differentiate themselves in organizing roles. We show that developing a new nurse organizing role is a balancing act as it involves resolving various tensions concerning professional authority, task prioritization, alignment of both intra- and interprofessional interests, and internal versus external requirements. Managers play an important yet ambiguous role in this development process as they both cooperate with nurses in aligning organizational and nursing professional aims, and sometimes hamper the development of an independent organizing nursing role due to conflicting organizational concerns.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45650177","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}
Officials in welfare state bureaucracies face the challenge of negotiating their role identities in the context of changeable organizational priorities and managerial styles. Previous studies have found that the professional values may mediate top-down demands and enable the preservation of professional autonomy also under public management reforms. But how do street-level bureaucrats who lack a common professional or occupational training respond to shifting organizational demands? Based on comparative ethnography, the present article investigates how caseworkers’ role identities are conceived and practised in two of the largest state bureaucracies in Sweden, the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and the Public Employment Service (PES). The article identifies two radically different agency cultures, resulting in rather opposite caseworker role identities. These role identities affect how front-line staff respond to organizational demands, either by focusing externally on client-related outcomes (PES) or internally on organizational output (SIA). The analysis suggests that agency culture may shape caseworker responses to governance in patterned ways, also in the absence of joint professional training or strong occupational communities.
{"title":"Street-level bureaucrats under new managerialism: a comparative study of agency cultures and caseworker role identities in two welfare state bureaucracies","authors":"Kerstin Jacobsson, Ylva Wallinder, Ida Seing","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Officials in welfare state bureaucracies face the challenge of negotiating their role identities in the context of changeable organizational priorities and managerial styles. Previous studies have found that the professional values may mediate top-down demands and enable the preservation of professional autonomy also under public management reforms. But how do street-level bureaucrats who lack a common professional or occupational training respond to shifting organizational demands? Based on comparative ethnography, the present article investigates how caseworkers’ role identities are conceived and practised in two of the largest state bureaucracies in Sweden, the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and the Public Employment Service (PES). The article identifies two radically different agency cultures, resulting in rather opposite caseworker role identities. These role identities affect how front-line staff respond to organizational demands, either by focusing externally on client-related outcomes (PES) or internally on organizational output (SIA). The analysis suggests that agency culture may shape caseworker responses to governance in patterned ways, also in the absence of joint professional training or strong occupational communities.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45989333","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 employed in professional organizations make sense of the disruption of their work. Based on a qualitative study of an Australian intellectual property (IP) law firm, we shed light on the ways in which the discursive practices of professionals may undermine change in professional organizations. We identify three defensive strategies of IP professionals (denial, regression, and projection) resulting from the inability to resolve conflicts between market-based pressures and their entrenched understandings of professional work. In doing so, we show how professionals can become ‘stuck’ in defensive responses that may further marginalize the role of professional organizations in society. These findings call into question overly deterministic, radical accounts of organizational change that do not take into account the contextual embeddedness of professional organizations.
{"title":"Stuck in defensive professionalism: Undermining organizational change in an intellectual property law firm","authors":"H. Heizmann, E. Mastio, S. Ahuja","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa009","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how professionals employed in professional organizations make sense of the disruption of their work. Based on a qualitative study of an Australian intellectual property (IP) law firm, we shed light on the ways in which the discursive practices of professionals may undermine change in professional organizations. We identify three defensive strategies of IP professionals (denial, regression, and projection) resulting from the inability to resolve conflicts between market-based pressures and their entrenched understandings of professional work. In doing so, we show how professionals can become ‘stuck’ in defensive responses that may further marginalize the role of professional organizations in society. These findings call into question overly deterministic, radical accounts of organizational change that do not take into account the contextual embeddedness of professional organizations.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47762471","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 study, we analyse the rhetorical strategies of legitimation used by professionals when their conduct is exposed as wrong. Focusing on banking as a professional field and the conduct of bankers during the 2007–8 global financial crisis we ask two questions: what rhetorical strategies did senior bankers use to justify their actions and defend the legitimacy of their profession in the face of widespread public disapproval of banking practices? How did bankers use their professional field to legitimize their behaviour? To answer these questions, we analyse the justificatory rhetoric used by UK banking executives during the Treasury Select Committee hearings following the crisis. Drawing on our analysis we developed a typology of rhetorical strategies of legitimation used by the bankers, based in part on the concept of neutralization techniques. We argue that bankers, with some exceptions, drew largely on intra-field rhetoric, deeply embedded in institutionalized practices, to justify their behaviour and legitimize their profession. The lack of more convincing inter-field rhetoric only accentuated the mismatch between the moral universe of the bank executive and that of the traditional citizen, voter, and taxpayer.
{"title":"Rhetorical strategies of legitimation in the professional field of banking","authors":"Sabina Siebert, G. Martin, G. Simpson","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa010","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we analyse the rhetorical strategies of legitimation used by professionals when their conduct is exposed as wrong. Focusing on banking as a professional field and the conduct of bankers during the 2007–8 global financial crisis we ask two questions: what rhetorical strategies did senior bankers use to justify their actions and defend the legitimacy of their profession in the face of widespread public disapproval of banking practices? How did bankers use their professional field to legitimize their behaviour? To answer these questions, we analyse the justificatory rhetoric used by UK banking executives during the Treasury Select Committee hearings following the crisis. Drawing on our analysis we developed a typology of rhetorical strategies of legitimation used by the bankers, based in part on the concept of neutralization techniques. We argue that bankers, with some exceptions, drew largely on intra-field rhetoric, deeply embedded in institutionalized practices, to justify their behaviour and legitimize their profession. The lack of more convincing inter-field rhetoric only accentuated the mismatch between the moral universe of the bank executive and that of the traditional citizen, voter, and taxpayer.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44076406","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}