Abstract This paper addresses the need for an approach to theorizing professional work and professional service firms in the generative machine learning (GML) age. We develop an approach using insights from existing literature on digital, algorithmic, and artificial intelligence technologies. We seek to extend existing theories whilst also responding to the distinctive characteristics of GML and the implications for how we theorize change. We argue that an approach is needed focused on emerging and future interdependencies between professionals and GML, something that implies extending but also reimagining theoretical perspectives on expertise, work, and organizations.

Abstract Individuals who are closely affiliated with total institutions often have their personal identities intertwined with the institutional logics of the institution. When these individuals transition from these institutions, they carry the logics of their past affiliations with them. This study aims to explore the boundaries that individuals cross during career transitions from a total institution such as the military. Qualitative research was conducted with a sample of twenty-five Indian Navy officers to understand the identity transformation process that veterans undergo to adapt to civilian careers. Semi-structured interviews were used to gain insights into the experiences that veterans face when transitioning to non-military work environments. Navigating these institutional boundaries requires the individual to either identify with or adopt the logics of the new setting. The study found that this transition occurs on a spectrum, ranging from active identification with the new logics to complete resistance to adopting the new institutional logic. Based on their position on the spectrum, the participants were categorized into three archetypes: Achievers, Jugglers, and Defenders.

Abstract Work rules are an important guiding principle that regulates professional behaviour in organizational settings, however, the mechanism through which work rules affect physicians’ compassion satisfaction and career satisfaction remains unknown. Additionally, existing literature mainly focuses on direct associations, overlooking team support’s potential mediating role. This creates a research gap regarding team support as a mediator between work rules and both compassion and career satisfaction, requiring further scholarly investigation. Hence, the present study aims to investigate team support as a mediator between work rules and both compassion and career satisfaction in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Obs and Gynae) physicians. A cross-sectional survey was distributed to 347 participants between 24 and 60 years (M = 31.22; SD = 6.81) in tertiary care hospitals. Participants were approached through purposive and convenient sampling techniques. A structural equation modelling through AMOS was analysed to study the complex interlinkages among the variables. The study found significant mediation of team support between work rules and career satisfaction (b = 0.077, 95% CI = 0.052, 0.106, P = 0.000). Also, an indirect significant path of team support is found between work rules and compassion satisfaction (b = 0.032, 95% CI = 0.020, 0.044, P = 0.000). Teamwork has far-reaching implications for healthcare professionals’ well-being, team dynamics, patient care quality, and the overall effectiveness of healthcare organizations. Filling this research gap enables healthcare professionals to foster more supportive work environment, benefiting both physicians and the patients they serve.

Abstract While recent debates about the professions have noted the pervasive influence of organizations, less is known about how this plays out at the macro or occupational level. In this paper, we address this concern, focusing on corporate professionalism (CP) as an emergent form which appears to be shaped by organizational interests. Drawing on relational perspectives of professions, we focus on the strategies of two associations in the UK management consultancy field over a 50-year period. Our analysis of archival and interview data reveals how, over time, both associations substantially modified their strategies in response to shifting priorities of firms employing large numbers of consultants—abandoning early commitments to occupational professionalism in favor of a corporate form. A key contribution of the paper is to develop a process model for understanding how and why CP emerges. We also highlight the need to pay more attention to the often neglected role of employing organizations in accounts of professional formation in contemporary society.

Abstract As an employee population, correctional officers (COs) perform a stressful, dangerous, and extreme job that has significant consequences for their health and well-being. Yet, COs are often reluctant to focus on their own mental health concerns. In this study, we explore how US COs communicatively engage and avoid discussing mental health in relation to their work. Using a phronetic iterative approach, we analyze how a discourse of professionalism promotes COs (1) practicing emotion suppression and impersonalization to protect themselves from inmates and mental health challenges and (2) constructing mental health as an inmate problem in ways that may limit COs’ abilities to address their own mental health concerns. We assess how professional ideals thus serve as both a protective resource and a constraint, with dehumanizing consequences for COs and those they serve. We then consider theoretical implications for studying professionalism in working class occupations and stigma management communication. We also outline possibilities for disrupting and reconstructing mental health in correctional work.

Abstract How can professionals tasked with innovation navigate institutional complexity in hybrid organizations without contesting the various institutionalized expectations about what constitutes appropriate and beneficial new ideas? This article investigates this question through an ethnographic study of pharmaceutical professionals tasked with research and development at an internationally operating life science company producing pharmaceutical innovations. There, pharmaceutical professionals must address and satisfy three institutional demands to project legitimacy of their new ideas: (1) scientific validity expected by leading members of their profession; (2) commercial value demanded by management; and (3) legal responsibility enforced by state agencies. Facing the challenge of creating legitimate novelty opposite these competing institutional demands, the pharmaceutical professionals initially design new ideas to primarily meet the jurisdictional control exerted by key opinion leaders in the field of clinical pharmacology. Yet, the resultant scientifically tailored designs regularly conflict with the institutional demands enforced by other powerful institutional referents within their organization. To resolve this issue, the professionals utilize a strategy of subversion to undermine the power and authority of these powerful referents by employing tactics of withdraw, manipulation, collusion, and ambushing. Based on these findings, the present study contributes to institutional theory and to literature on creativity and innovation management by theorizing subversive ingenuity as a distinct strategy professionals employ to navigate competing institutional demands during innovation processes in hybrid organizations.

Abstract 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.

ABSTRACT The authority of quality engineers as a profession is a contested issue that relates both to the occupation’s internal regulation and to the professional status of quality engineers within the organizations for which they work. In this article, we examine the professional authority of quality engineers from both these perspectives. The issue is addressed first through a conceptual framework, followed by a presentation of an empirical study in which seven experienced quality professionals were interviewed and completed questionnaires. We focus on the situation in Israel as a case study, but our insights are relevant to quality engineers throughout the world. We demonstrate limitations with regard to both (1) the epistemic authority (expertise) of quality engineers vis-à-vis their status as a professional association and (2) the organizational authority of quality engineers vis-à-vis their organizational role as quality managers. These limitations can be attributed to the occupation’s status as a semi-profession; the level of expertise required is not fixed or uniform; the authority of a quality engineer varies from one organizational structure to another. In addition, individual quality engineers are accorded different levels of influence, usually at the discretion of their employing organizations. For these reasons, the expertise of quality engineers as a professional group remains an open issue.

Abstract Recent approaches to professions and professional identity question the premise that professionalization is the ultimate generator of status, showing that the classical model of professionalization does not always coincide with workers’ creative construction of professionalism and professional dignity. Extending these approaches, and focusing on workers’ identity discourse, this study examines how private child-care workers in Israel claim professional status precisely by avoiding formal professionalization and promoting a counter-professionalization ethos. Drawing on field observations and interviews, we analyze nannies’ tacit occupational community dynamics, by which they establish professional rules and boundaries and discursively construct a respected professional self. Their identity-talk reveals a vocational self-imaging based on personal charisma, one that resists training and credentials. This vocational self-imaging allows rebuttal of the nanny stereotype as a low-class uneducated workforce, associated with their ethnicized backgrounds, by symbolically transforming it and using it as a high-value identity resource. This counter-professionalized identity-talk prevails despite the social distinction between senior and junior nannies. Thereby, nannies gain professional status while the professionalization of child care is rejected. The analysis of these cultural dynamics provides a stronger perspective on professions as spheres of identity construction—specifically those ranked lower as unskilled labor—and on workers’ agency behind their ostensibly passive compliance with under-professionalization.

Abstract Contrary to earlier research on why universities change their visual identities from traditional to more abstract ones, resting on a demand-side approach, we offer an explanation based on a supply-side approach. We argue that universities’ change of visual identities toward abstract symbols reflects a professional logic shared by graphic designers and discuss the mechanisms and institutional agents that have fueled the professional project of graphic designers and the institutionalization of their professional logic. Simultaneously, we make visible the role of a professional group—the graphic designers—that have escaped the gaze of earlier organizational research.