This article aims to gain a better understanding on micro processes of how frontline professionals use institutional logics in their day-to-day work. It contributes to the growing literature on the dynamics between institutions and the professional frontline. To further develop this field of study, a conceptual framework is presented that integrates institutional logics, vocabularies of practice, and narratives as central concepts. By adopting a composite narrative approach and identifying vocabularies of practice, the article interprets how frontline professionals make use of different logics to make sense of a new principle introduced in their professional field. Findings are based on a case study of professional patient collaboration in healthcare. The article composes five narratives that act as vehicles through which healthcare professionals use five logics: a medical professional logic, managerial logic, commercial logic, consultation logic, and patient-centeredness logic. It argues that frontline professionals use vocabularies of practice to assemble narratives that help them to navigate between a plurality of logics. It further shows that professionals move fluently from one narrative to another, critiquing the ideas of adherence to a dominant logic and conflict solving. The article finalizes with a discussion that advocates for a process studies perspective and a stronger focus on micro processes in research on professional performance in the context of institutional plurality.
{"title":"Logic fluidity: How frontline professionals use institutional logics in their day-to-day work","authors":"Eline M ten Dam, Maikel Waardenburg","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article aims to gain a better understanding on micro processes of how frontline professionals use institutional logics in their day-to-day work. It contributes to the growing literature on the dynamics between institutions and the professional frontline. To further develop this field of study, a conceptual framework is presented that integrates institutional logics, vocabularies of practice, and narratives as central concepts. By adopting a composite narrative approach and identifying vocabularies of practice, the article interprets how frontline professionals make use of different logics to make sense of a new principle introduced in their professional field. Findings are based on a case study of professional patient collaboration in healthcare. The article composes five narratives that act as vehicles through which healthcare professionals use five logics: a medical professional logic, managerial logic, commercial logic, consultation logic, and patient-centeredness logic. It argues that frontline professionals use vocabularies of practice to assemble narratives that help them to navigate between a plurality of logics. It further shows that professionals move fluently from one narrative to another, critiquing the ideas of adherence to a dominant logic and conflict solving. The article finalizes with a discussion that advocates for a process studies perspective and a stronger focus on micro processes in research on professional performance in the context of institutional plurality.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48911674","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 essay, four leading scholars provide critical commentary on an article entitled ‘Protective or Connective Professionalism? How Connected Professionals Can (Still) Act as Autonomous and Authoritative Experts’ (M Noordegraaf, 2020, Journal of Professions and Organization, 7/2) Of central concern to all four commentators is Noordegraaf’s use of ideal types as a heuristic device to make his case and capture historical change over time While some question the usefulness of ideal types, others question Noordegraaf’s use of them The commentators raise additional concerns, especially the limited attention to variations across professions, geographic regions, and limited attention to social–historical contexts
{"title":"Connective professionalism: Towards (yet another) ideal type","authors":"T. Adams, S. Clegg, Gil Eyal, M. Reed, M. Saks","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa013","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, four leading scholars provide critical commentary on an article entitled ‘Protective or Connective Professionalism? How Connected Professionals Can (Still) Act as Autonomous and Authoritative Experts’ (M Noordegraaf, 2020, Journal of Professions and Organization, 7/2) Of central concern to all four commentators is Noordegraaf’s use of ideal types as a heuristic device to make his case and capture historical change over time While some question the usefulness of ideal types, others question Noordegraaf’s use of them The commentators raise additional concerns, especially the limited attention to variations across professions, geographic regions, and limited attention to social–historical contexts","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"7 1","pages":"224-233"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46211812","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}
Traditionally, professionals such as medical doctors, lawyers, and academics are protected. They work within well-defined jurisdictions, belong to specialized segments, have been granted autonomy, and have discretionary spaces. In this way, they can be socialized, trained, and supervised, case-related considerations and decisions can be substantive (instead of commercial), and decisions can be taken independently. Ideally, these decisions are authoritative and accepted, both by clients as well as society (stakeholders) who trust professional services. This ideal-typical but also ‘ideal’ imagery always had its flaws; nowadays, shortcomings are increasingly clear. ‘Protective professionalism’ is becoming outdated. Due to heterogeneity and fragmentation within professional fields, the interweaving of professional fields, and dependencies of professional actions on outside worlds, professionals can no longer isolate themselves from others and outsiders. At first sight, this leads to a ‘decline’, ‘withering away’, or ‘hollowing out’ of professionalism. Or it leads to attempts to ‘reinstall’, ‘reinvent’, or ‘return to’ professional values and spaces. In this article, we avoid such ‘all or nothing’ perspectives on changing professionalism and explore the ‘reconfiguration’ of professionalism. Professional identities and actions can be adapted and might become ‘hybrid’, ‘organized’, and ‘connected’. Professional and organizational logics might be interrelated; professionals might see organizational (or organizing) duties as belonging to their work; and professional fields might open up to outside worlds. We particularly explore connective professionalism, arguing that we need more fundamental reflections and redefinitions of what professionalism means and what professionals are. We focus on the question of how professional action can be related to others and outsiders and remain ‘knowledgeable’, ‘autonomous’, and ‘authoritative’ at the same time. This can no longer be a matter of expertise, autonomy, and authority as fixed and closed entities. These crucial dimensions of professional action become relational and processual. They have to be enacted on a continuous basis, backed by mechanisms that make professionalism knowledgeable, independent, and authoritative in the eyes of others.
{"title":"Protective or connective professionalism? How connected professionals can (still) act as autonomous and authoritative experts","authors":"M. Noordegraaf","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa011","url":null,"abstract":"Traditionally, professionals such as medical doctors, lawyers, and academics are protected. They work within well-defined jurisdictions, belong to specialized segments, have been granted autonomy, and have discretionary spaces. In this way, they can be socialized, trained, and supervised, case-related considerations and decisions can be substantive (instead of commercial), and decisions can be taken independently. Ideally, these decisions are authoritative and accepted, both by clients as well as society (stakeholders) who trust professional services. This ideal-typical but also ‘ideal’ imagery always had its flaws; nowadays, shortcomings are increasingly clear. ‘Protective professionalism’ is becoming outdated. Due to heterogeneity and fragmentation within professional fields, the interweaving of professional fields, and dependencies of professional actions on outside worlds, professionals can no longer isolate themselves from others and outsiders. At first sight, this leads to a ‘decline’, ‘withering away’, or ‘hollowing out’ of professionalism. Or it leads to attempts to ‘reinstall’, ‘reinvent’, or ‘return to’ professional values and spaces. In this article, we avoid such ‘all or nothing’ perspectives on changing professionalism and explore the ‘reconfiguration’ of professionalism. Professional identities and actions can be adapted and might become ‘hybrid’, ‘organized’, and ‘connected’. Professional and organizational logics might be interrelated; professionals might see organizational (or organizing) duties as belonging to their work; and professional fields might open up to outside worlds. We particularly explore connective professionalism, arguing that we need more fundamental reflections and redefinitions of what professionalism means and what professionals are. We focus on the question of how professional action can be related to others and outsiders and remain ‘knowledgeable’, ‘autonomous’, and ‘authoritative’ at the same time. This can no longer be a matter of expertise, autonomy, and authority as fixed and closed entities. These crucial dimensions of professional action become relational and processual. They have to be enacted on a continuous basis, backed by mechanisms that make professionalism knowledgeable, independent, and authoritative in the eyes of others.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49134778","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}
A plethora of studies have documented the changing nature of professional work and the organizations in which it takes place. Among the most documented trends are the emergence of managerial–professional hybrid workers and professional (re)stratification. Although the links between these two trends have been noted, their interconnections have not been fully explored. This article analyzes data from a mixed-methods study of professional engineers in Ontario, Canada, to explore the extent to which they experience conflicting logics, hybridity, resistance, and restratification. Findings indicate that many engineers could be classified as hybrid, as they see managerial roles as an extension of engineering. At the same time, many others see managers as oppositional to engineers, with different priorities. On the whole, there is evidence of restratification as the work experiences, professional attitudes, and responses to conflicting logics (hybridity or resistance) vary between managers and employees. This restratification has the potential to undermine professional unity.
{"title":"Professional employees and professional managers: conflicting logics, hybridity, and restratification","authors":"T. Adams","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 A plethora of studies have documented the changing nature of professional work and the organizations in which it takes place. Among the most documented trends are the emergence of managerial–professional hybrid workers and professional (re)stratification. Although the links between these two trends have been noted, their interconnections have not been fully explored. This article analyzes data from a mixed-methods study of professional engineers in Ontario, Canada, to explore the extent to which they experience conflicting logics, hybridity, resistance, and restratification. Findings indicate that many engineers could be classified as hybrid, as they see managerial roles as an extension of engineering. At the same time, many others see managers as oppositional to engineers, with different priorities. On the whole, there is evidence of restratification as the work experiences, professional attitudes, and responses to conflicting logics (hybridity or resistance) vary between managers and employees. This restratification has the potential to undermine professional unity.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"7 1","pages":"101-115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44492257","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}
Interprofessional demarcation is one of the key themes in the study of the professions. This study aims to understand the symbolic resources activated when an elite profession faces challenges to its task jurisdiction from a new, emerging profession. I attempt to answer the following question: ‘How are status symbols used to maintain jurisdictional boundaries between professions?’ I analyzed ethnographic material concerning one of the most elite and ancient professions: Scottish advocates—known as barristers outside Scotland. I found that when faced with competition from other professions, advocates engaged in differentiation through the use of status symbols such as professional dress in and out of court, ceremonies, and everyday rituals. I observed two concurrent processes of differentiation: the maintenance of stability of status symbols and the maintenance of mobility of status symbols, that is, the ongoing cycle of imitation and avoidance, which happens on the boundary of two competing professions. Building on the Simmel effect (1890), I argue that imitation and distinctiveness preserve professional differentiation, and that managing the stability of some symbols and the mobility of others allow elite professionals to maintain their superior status.
{"title":"Symbolic demarcation: the role of status symbols in preserving interprofessional boundaries","authors":"Sabina Siebert","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Interprofessional demarcation is one of the key themes in the study of the professions. This study aims to understand the symbolic resources activated when an elite profession faces challenges to its task jurisdiction from a new, emerging profession. I attempt to answer the following question: ‘How are status symbols used to maintain jurisdictional boundaries between professions?’ I analyzed ethnographic material concerning one of the most elite and ancient professions: Scottish advocates—known as barristers outside Scotland. I found that when faced with competition from other professions, advocates engaged in differentiation through the use of status symbols such as professional dress in and out of court, ceremonies, and everyday rituals. I observed two concurrent processes of differentiation: the maintenance of stability of status symbols and the maintenance of mobility of status symbols, that is, the ongoing cycle of imitation and avoidance, which happens on the boundary of two competing professions. Building on the Simmel effect (1890), I argue that imitation and distinctiveness preserve professional differentiation, and that managing the stability of some symbols and the mobility of others allow elite professionals to maintain their superior status.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47169907","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}
Professionals need to develop increasingly innovative solutions to complex problems, which are often cocreated through client–professional collaborations, but this demand creates a theoretical and practical tension. On the one hand, professionals need to establish long-standing relationships with clients so they can deeply understand their client’s business and develop more effective solutions. On the other hand, such strong relationships can breed similar perspectives that undermine their ability to develop more innovative ideas. To resolve this conflict, we introduce a new contextual condition to the literature that is fundamentally associated with innovation in organizations—the stakes of an innovation project—and develop theory explaining how it creates conditions under which familiarity either enhances or undermines innovation in teams. Using a mixed-method approach to study an innovation contest held in the legal industry, we found that under lower-stakes conditions, collaboration in new teams was positively associated with innovation and produced significantly more innovative outcomes than collaboration in long-standing teams. But under higher-stakes conditions, these effects reversed. When exploring the mechanisms underlying our results, we found that familiarity was valuable for innovation under higher-stakes conditions primarily because teams with shared perspectives took greater risks on more innovative ideas during the selection stage of the innovation process.
{"title":"High-stakes innovation: When collaboration in teams enhances (or undermines) innovation in professional service firms","authors":"Johnathan R. Cromwell, H. Gardner","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joz017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joz017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Professionals need to develop increasingly innovative solutions to complex problems, which are often cocreated through client–professional collaborations, but this demand creates a theoretical and practical tension. On the one hand, professionals need to establish long-standing relationships with clients so they can deeply understand their client’s business and develop more effective solutions. On the other hand, such strong relationships can breed similar perspectives that undermine their ability to develop more innovative ideas. To resolve this conflict, we introduce a new contextual condition to the literature that is fundamentally associated with innovation in organizations—the stakes of an innovation project—and develop theory explaining how it creates conditions under which familiarity either enhances or undermines innovation in teams. Using a mixed-method approach to study an innovation contest held in the legal industry, we found that under lower-stakes conditions, collaboration in new teams was positively associated with innovation and produced significantly more innovative outcomes than collaboration in long-standing teams. But under higher-stakes conditions, these effects reversed. When exploring the mechanisms underlying our results, we found that familiarity was valuable for innovation under higher-stakes conditions primarily because teams with shared perspectives took greater risks on more innovative ideas during the selection stage of the innovation process.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"7 1","pages":"2-26"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joz017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42076684","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}
Legal services markets and their professions are transforming, through market liberalisation, regulatory disruption and a broader set of societal shifts. This paper argues that the nature and scale of these changes requires a re-evaluation of the role that rigid jurisdictional boundaries play within the system of the legal professions. Legal Professionalism developed on the basis of strong control over its professional boundaries. Recent discussion of the contemporary legal services market has focused on the competitive threat that new entrants bring to these established boundaries. This paper argues that such a focus underplays the nature of the disruption across boundaries of expert knowledge. It focuses on legal services as an exemplar site of regulatory disruption to professional boundaries and draws on the analysis of two key sites (ABS and Wealth Management) to ask what is the nature of connected claims of expertise and what drivers for connectivity do they indicate? Through this analysis of connected professional claims within legal services, this paper focusses attention on a new approach to professional work that is becoming more important. In doing so, it advances the research agenda on professions and organisations, not just within legal services in England and Wales, but for other professional sectors and other jurisdictions.
{"title":"Law’s boundaries: Connections in contemporary legal professionalism","authors":"A. Francis","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa003","url":null,"abstract":"Legal services markets and their professions are transforming, through market liberalisation, regulatory disruption and a broader set of societal shifts. This paper argues that the nature and scale of these changes requires a re-evaluation of the role that rigid jurisdictional boundaries play within the system of the legal professions. Legal Professionalism developed on the basis of strong control over its professional boundaries. Recent discussion of the contemporary legal services market has focused on the competitive threat that new entrants bring to these established boundaries. This paper argues that such a focus underplays the nature of the disruption across boundaries of expert knowledge. It focuses on legal services as an exemplar site of regulatory disruption to professional boundaries and draws on the analysis of two key sites (ABS and Wealth Management) to ask what is the nature of connected claims of expertise and what drivers for connectivity do they indicate? Through this analysis of connected professional claims within legal services, this paper focusses attention on a new approach to professional work that is becoming more important. In doing so, it advances the research agenda on professions and organisations, not just within legal services in England and Wales, but for other professional sectors and other jurisdictions.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"7 1","pages":"70-86"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43822487","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 the production of corporate legal elite through a systematic analysis of the profiles of the first three cohorts of partners in nine elite corporate law firms in Beijing. We argue that the social production of the Chinese corporate legal elite is primarily an outcome of domestic social factors rather than international factors. It is characterized by local elite recruitment from elite universities and endogenous elite circulation within the Red Circle firms. International credentials and work experience come only secondary to education and work experience in elite Chinese law schools and law firms for achieving elite status in the profession. Yet, international experience plays a role in promoting gender equality in elite professional service firms. This article contributes to the study of globalization and elite production in professional service firms by investigating how local and global forces manifest themselves in elite production in a major emerging market.
{"title":"Inside the ‘Red Circle’: the production of China’s corporate legal elite","authors":"Jing Zhu, Yang Zhao, Sida Liu","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the production of corporate legal elite through a systematic analysis of the profiles of the first three cohorts of partners in nine elite corporate law firms in Beijing. We argue that the social production of the Chinese corporate legal elite is primarily an outcome of domestic social factors rather than international factors. It is characterized by local elite recruitment from elite universities and endogenous elite circulation within the Red Circle firms. International credentials and work experience come only secondary to education and work experience in elite Chinese law schools and law firms for achieving elite status in the profession. Yet, international experience plays a role in promoting gender equality in elite professional service firms. This article contributes to the study of globalization and elite production in professional service firms by investigating how local and global forces manifest themselves in elite production in a major emerging market.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"7 1","pages":"87-100"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49508056","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}
What will happen to law firms and the legal profession when the use of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes prevalent in legal services? We address this question by considering three related levels of analysis: tasks, business models, and organizations. First, we review AI’s technical capabilities in relation to tasks, to identify contexts where it is likely to replace or augment humans. AI is capable of doing some, but not all, legal tasks better than lawyers and is augmented by multidisciplinary human inputs. Second, we identify new business models for creating value in legal services by applying AI. These differ from law firms’ traditional legal advisory business model, because they require technological (non-human) assets and multidisciplinary human inputs. Third, we analyze the organizational structure that complements the old and new business models: the professional partnership (P2) is well-adapted to delivering the legal advisory business model, but the centralized management, access to outside capital, and employee incentives offered by the corporate form appear better to complement the new AI-enabled business models. Some law firms are experimenting with pursuing new and old business models in parallel. However, differences in complements create conflicts when business models are combined. These conflicts are partially externalized via contracting and segregated and realigned via vertical integration. Our analysis suggests that law firm experimentation with aligning different business models to distinct organizational entities, along with ethical concerns, will affect the extent to which the legal profession will become ‘hybrid professionals’.
{"title":"Correction to: AI-enabled business models in legal services: from traditional law firms to next-generation law companies?","authors":"J. Armour, M. Sako","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3418810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3418810","url":null,"abstract":"What will happen to law firms and the legal profession when the use of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes prevalent in legal services? We address this question by considering three related levels of analysis: tasks, business models, and organizations. First, we review AI’s technical capabilities in relation to tasks, to identify contexts where it is likely to replace or augment humans. AI is capable of doing some, but not all, legal tasks better than lawyers and is augmented by multidisciplinary human inputs. Second, we identify new business models for creating value in legal services by applying AI. These differ from law firms’ traditional legal advisory business model, because they require technological (non-human) assets and multidisciplinary human inputs. Third, we analyze the organizational structure that complements the old and new business models: the professional partnership (P2) is well-adapted to delivering the legal advisory business model, but the centralized management, access to outside capital, and employee incentives offered by the corporate form appear better to complement the new AI-enabled business models. Some law firms are experimenting with pursuing new and old business models in parallel. However, differences in complements create conflicts when business models are combined. These conflicts are partially externalized via contracting and segregated and realigned via vertical integration. Our analysis suggests that law firm experimentation with aligning different business models to distinct organizational entities, along with ethical concerns, will affect the extent to which the legal profession will become ‘hybrid professionals’.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2139/SSRN.3418810","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45302699","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}
The colonization of adjacent professional fields has been considered as crucial to understanding the success and influence of large accounting firms, such as the Big 4. Yet, given the complexities of managing different professional groups, remarkably little is known about the internal dynamics behind large multidisciplinary accounting firms’ external responses to institutional pressures. In this article, we show how exogenous coercive pressure, such as regulation (in this case Dutch accountancy regulations), not only affect the day-to-day work of accountants, but also that of non-accountants such as tax advisors. From the perception of the tax advisors who confront regulations which are not “theirs”, we show how their internal responses evolve and tread a fine line between contestation and collaboration with their colleague accountants/auditors. Using a boundary work perspective, we examine this shift in responses and explain how tensions between professional groups may be reduced. Overall, our study not only furthers our insights into the internal dynamics behind PSFs’ (Professional Service Firms’) external responses, but also sheds light on why professional groups stay on board despite unfavorable internal conditions.
{"title":"Between contestation and collaboration: The internal dynamics of multidisciplinary accounting firm responses to institutional pressures","authors":"Y. Taminiau, Stefan Heusinkveld","doi":"10.1093/jpo/joaa021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaa021","url":null,"abstract":"The colonization of adjacent professional fields has been considered as crucial to understanding the success and influence of large accounting firms, such as the Big 4. Yet, given the complexities of managing different professional groups, remarkably little is known about the internal dynamics behind large multidisciplinary accounting firms’ external responses to institutional pressures. In this article, we show how exogenous coercive pressure, such as regulation (in this case Dutch accountancy regulations), not only affect the day-to-day work of accountants, but also that of non-accountants such as tax advisors. From the perception of the tax advisors who confront regulations which are not “theirs”, we show how their internal responses evolve and tread a fine line between contestation and collaboration with their colleague accountants/auditors. Using a boundary work perspective, we examine this shift in responses and explain how tensions between professional groups may be reduced. Overall, our study not only furthers our insights into the internal dynamics behind PSFs’ (Professional Service Firms’) external responses, but also sheds light on why professional groups stay on board despite unfavorable internal conditions.","PeriodicalId":45650,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Professions and Organization","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/jpo/joaa021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61681917","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}
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