Professional agency, leadership and organizational change
Over the past two decades, the diversification and fragmentation of professional roles has progressively developed (Currie, Lockett, and Suhomlinova, 2009; Noordegraaf, 2011a; Adler and Kwon, 2013). More professions with more sub-specialties have created a complex web of experts in various sectors of activities (Evetts, 2003). This web relates to organizations that increasingly operate in flexible (international) networks or chains and often outsource work to third parties. The growing fragmentation of organizations is in turn affecting the changing nature of professional work, with greater diversification among professionals and professional interests (Scott, 1982; Cooper et al., 1996; Noordegraaf, 2011a). In parallel, a growing convergence and proliferation of control structures has been witnessed, as ‘professional practice in many sectors is increasingly driven by pressure for revenue generation and accountability to the state and to avoid legal prosecution’ (Leicht and Fennell, 1997, p. 219). The traditional view of professional practice as self-regulating and based on ‘peer group control’ is supplemented with bureaucratic measures for professional production that push toward a greater embodiment of professions within organized settings and the development of strategies to better control risks (Courpasson, 2000; Noordegraaf, 2011a, 2011b; Adler and Kwon, 2013).
Against this background, two contrasting notions have emerged as to how professionals are connected to organizational change. One notion is that organizational change is imposed on professionals (Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Adler and Kwon, 2013) with detrimental consequences for their status and autonomy (Evetts, 2011; Hupe and Van der Krogt, 2013). Professionals increasingly must report their decisions to complex systems of accountability for the purpose of remuneration and must spend a growing share of their time on administrative work rather than on supporting their clients (Evetts, 2011). Negative impacts of organizational change on professional status and work are recognized within a broad diversity of research on corporatization (Waring and Bishop, 2013), proletarianization (Reed, 2007), or deskilling of professionals (Currie, Finn, and Martin, 2009) and are associated with a group of sociological theories labelled as ‘mutation theories’ (Adler and Kwon, 2013).
An alternative, more positive, approach is based on the premise that professionals act as co-creators of organizations and organizational transformations (Suddaby and Viale, 2011). From this perspective, it is argued that professionals are able to influence their work environment, especially when they collaborate (Adler and Kwon, 2013), despite increasing pressures for accountability and transparency and despite multiple regulatory requirements that are often difficult to reconcile (Noordegraaf, 2011a; Hupe and Buffat, 2014). According to this more optimistic notion about the relationship between professionals and organizational change, professionals are viewed as ‘agents who possess and develop their own strengths’ (Noordegraaf et al., 2014, p. 2) rather than as victims who lack the capability to influence the organizational context according to professional needs and values.
Given these contrasting notions, this chapter aims to clarify and discuss the assumptions and conditions related to the roles and involvement of professionals in organizational change, in line with professional aims and values. We focus on the capability of professionals to develop and deliver their services in a context of various demands and challenges, which may even lead to new roles such as organizational leaders of change.
The chapter is structured as follows. First, we briefly discuss the changing context of professionals in organizations that influence their agency and consequently their role in shaping organizational change. Second, we present a number of concepts from the literature – ‘organized professionalism’ (Noordegraaf, 2011a), ‘governmentality’ (Miller and Rose, 2008), and ‘pluralistic organizations’ (Denis et al., 2007) – that we find useful in examining the link between professional agency and organizational change. Finally, we discuss the implications of these concepts for research and practice.
The context of changing relationships between professionals and organizations
The organization of professional occupations has evolved greatly over the past few decades (Scott, 1982; Muzio et al., 2013). Organizational boundaries have weakened as professional services have been deregulated, global competition has increased within and between professions, and work contexts have changed (Noordegraaf, 2011a; Adler and Kwon, 2013). Some of the changes have involved professionals moving away from solo practices to small organizations or group practices to join the ranks of larger professional organizations (Adler et al., 2008; Evetts, 2011). Overall, professional organizations have gone through a process of inter-archetype transformation because institutional values and ideologies have evolved over the years toward increased reciprocal influence between these two worlds (Cooper et al., 1996; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2001).
The new public management (NPM) appears to be important to the understanding of this context for public professionals and organizations (Currie et al., 2009; Evetts, 2011). Inspired by practices from the private sector, NPM reformists are trying to measure and optimize professional work (Adler and Kwon, 2013). Traditional accountability models such as ‘peer group control’ are no longer perceived as sufficient to guarantee the performance of professional organizations (Scott, 1982; Adler and Kwon, 2013), and new techniques and guidelines for cost control and production are being implemented to improve the performance of professional work. These organizational changes inspired by NPM may have consequences for professional agency in terms of lower autonomy and a decrease in work motivation (Evetts, 2003).
Along with global and regulatory pressures, accessibility of information and the proliferation of communication channels available to clients have transformed the environment of professionals and their organizations (Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008; Currie and White, 2012; see also the chapter by Tonkens in this volume). Clients now have more opportunities to become informed actors, and they expect professionals to reduce the uncertainty related to their needs and requests (Dingwall, 2008; Adler and Kwon, 2013).The diversification and complexity of customer needs regarding professional work has consequences for organizations and professions, with the client increasingly being seen as able to perform a more regulating role (Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Cooper et al., 1996; Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008) rather than being a passive actor (Hupe and Buffat, 2014).
Given these contextual changes, both organizations and professionals are more and more being invited to play active roles in adapting to contextual pressures (Muzio et al., 2013). They are challenged to become actively engaged in an ‘assimilation process’ in order to maintain, develop, and implement new practices. Without professional engagement in developing such practices, organizational changes in routines, values, and norms cannot be institutionalized (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2001). In the next section, we present some vital concepts from the literature to understand the various ways that professional agency can be related to organizational change.
Professionals as leaders of organizational change: three concepts
Three recently developed central concepts are used in this chapter to understand the role of professionals in organizational changes: ‘organized professionalism’, ‘governmentality’, and ‘pluralistic organizations’. We selected these concepts to move beyond mutation theory (Adler et al., 2008) in order to explore and understand how transitions in professional organizations and professions may represent opportunities for professional agency. Each of the three concepts has received considerable attention in the literature without their having been related to one another in an explicit way. In this section, we compare and contrast the assumptions, opportunities, and consequences of the three concepts to provide valuable insights into the nature and conditions of professional agency in organizations.
The notion of ‘organized professionalism’ has been proposed to define and understand the emergence of a new synthesis between professions and organizations in contemporary societies. This convergence of organizational logic and professional logic is considered in itself a process of change, as underlined by Noordegraaf (2011b, p. 469): ‘Traditionally, professionals are not “made” to act as organizational members. They are made into “professional” workers who treat cases and clients as effectively and responsibly as possible.’ This new convergence is based on evolving contingencies, task complexity, interdependence, and responsibilities (Noordegraaf, 2011a, 2011b). The notion of organized professionalism does not address a new phenomenon, but one could argue that the interest in this concept is symptomatic of increased pressure to renew and, in some cases, to intensify the relationships between organizations and professions. Given the purpose of our chapter, we reconstruct a representation of professional agency within this idea of organized professionalism.
Underlying the concept of organized professionalism is the assumption that both sides of the relationship (professions and organizations) respond to societal demands for changes in the nature of their relations, roles, and positions. Noordegraaf (2011a) invites us to go beyond promulgating dualisms (e.g. occupational versus organizational control, professionals versus managers) to better understand how both professions and organizations mutually adapt to evolving contingencies. He identifies this gap in the contemporary literature on professionals and organizations:
Although they highlight the potential interweaving of organizational and professional domains, they generally portray organizational and professional behaviour as intrinsically conflicting. They do not really clarify whether and how organizations and professionals can work together in the face of contextual change.
(Noordegraaf, 2011a, p. 1350)
The concept of organized professionalism has been useful in identifying the elements that favour the involvement of professionals in organizational change, for example, changing work preferences, a need to adapt professional work to the delivery of services in inter-professional teams, and regulatory measures to better regulate the quality and safety of professional services. Implementing the organized professionalism agenda is even presented as a necessary condition to ensure the joint legitimacy of professions and organizations. In our view, professional agency materializes within this context as a result of the growing interdependence of organizational performance and professional virtuosity (Waring and Currie, 2009; Muzio et al., 2013).
According to Noordegraaf (2011b), these changes are also partly shaped and promoted by the work of professional associations and institutions of higher education, which have progressively incorporated new standards in professional practices, a process documented empirically by Kitchener and Mertz (2012) in the case of American dentistry. These professional associations often get involved in change processes and act as leaders of change from outside the organizations, for example by advocating for new standards of practice. According to Noordegraaf, organizations, professionals, and managers are jointly (more or less) defining connective organizational standards that put professional practices in a broader context. Professional practices thus become more collective and organized in this process.
In the conclusion of his article on organized professionalism, Noordegraaf (2011a) suggests that such convergence between professions and organizations will not materialize automatically. Despite the ambition to transcend the conflictual dynamic assumed by mutation theories, politics and power relations will remain in the realm of so-called ‘organized professionalism’ and may limit the penetration of organizational principles in the professional world. Consequently, we argue that to better understand the role of professionals in organizational change, we need to identify the conditions under which managers and professionals perceive their collaboration for change as an effective strategy to respond to new societal demands. In other words, we need to understand how demands for a renewal of the relationship between professions and organizations are translated into transformative capacities and to identify what role professional agency plays in this process.
Engaging professionals in organizational change
Managerial elites cannot by themselves reconstruct expert organizations and transcend the dichotomies between professionals and managers and between occupational and organizational control (Noordegraaf, 2011a). The involvement, collaboration, and leadership of professionals are essential in this process. As we noted, the growing role of professional associations (Noordegraaf, 2011b; Kitchener and Mertz, 2012) in generating and prescribing standards for practice improvement (Timmermans and Epstein, 2010; Brunsson, Rashe, and Seidle, 2012) generates a set of changes that are professionally induced. Again, we are not describing a new phenomenon here. Professional associations have long been involved in the governance of professions in the United States, Canada, and Europe. However, we refer here to an intensification of their role in promoting innovations in practice. For example, quality and safety of care have been emphasized in the work performed by professional associations in many jurisdictions. We believe that changes in professional practice can only be activated and implemented through the development of an organizational context that is receptive to them, as has been suggested in recent works on clinical governance in the healthcare sector (Bohmer, 2011).
According to Noordegraaf, within the context of ‘organized professionalism’ the involvement of professionals as protagonists of change is structured around three dimensions of professional work: (i) their involvement in the improvement of practices through the use of evidence in order to better manage risks of all sorts (Noordegraaf, 2011a; Adler and Kwon, 2013); (ii) their participation in teams and in the development of an extended multi-professionalism as a resource for the adaptation of services to evolving expectations and needs of clients (Evetts, 2003; Falconbridge and Muzio, 2008; Noordegraaf, 2011a); and (iii) the development of competencies that reflect a more salient organizational ethos and imperatives within professionals’ mindsets (Muzio et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011a; Waring and Bishop, 2013). In all these spheres, strict bureaucratic and external control is not considered a viable solution to societal demands for greater accountability and more effective professional services (Flynn, 2004; Adler et al., 2008). For example, the translation of practice guidelines in healthcare into effective practices is mediated by a complex social process of learning and adaptation in which professional leaders play a key role (Ferlie et al., 2005; Noordegraaf, 2011a).
Engagement of professionals in teams is favoured by organizational contexts where more distributed forms of leadership are valued (Denis et al., 2012). More collaborative forms of work require broad and coercive regulations (external governance) but also relate to intense work by and with professionals within organizations to create the conditions for collaboration (Ferlie et al., 2005; Currie and White, 2012). Adler and colleagues (2008) have documented the various dimensions and processes involved in such a collaborative shift in organizing professional work. Overall, there is a growing consensus around the need to organize professional practices on a more collective basis to support learning, effectiveness, and innovation (Orlikowski, 2002). The motivation behind such involvement of professionals in change processes is driven by the preservation of value-rationality as a fundamental principle of professional action (Adler et al., 2008).
According to our assessment of the concept of organized professionalism, professionals will thus play an essential leadership role in renewing work arrangements and adapting their work to complexity and interdependence. It is through their leadership and agency that transformations of organizational processes are based on expert advice, and that learning and collaboration are maintained and expanded under changing circumstances (Noordegraaf, 2011a). While the concept of ‘organized professionalism’ thus opens up a valuable approach to understanding the roles of professionals in organizational change, we believe that more attention should be given to the tensions and ambiguities associated with the process of convergence between organizational goals and professional practices. In the next sections we elaborate on the potential conflicts and uncertainties in professional roles related to organizational change, building on the concepts of ‘governmentality’ and ‘pluralistic organizations’.
Critical thoughts on the role of professionals in leading change have recently been articulated in the works of the Anglo-governmentalists, with their growing interest in empirical application of Foucault’s works to the study of broad societal transformations and their consequences for day-to-day practices (Rose et al., 2006; Martin et al., 2013). For example, in a study of criminal justice, Rose (2000) suggests that regulations and control in contemporary society cannot be understood properly without attention to the problem of agency:
And mobility and contestability is further enhanced by the fact that contemporary strategies for the government of conduct, far from seeking to crush and eliminate the capacities for action of those persons and forces they act upon, on the contrary seek to foster and shape such capacities so that they are enacted in ways that are broadly consistent with particular objectives such as order, civility, health or enterprise.
(p. 323)
Agency is an inextricable component of the contemporary governmentality project. The creation of space to activate new forms of control in organizations requires the active participation of agents with their potential for resistance to and reframing of forms of control (Ferlie et al., 2012; Martin et al., 2013). Pressures to develop and impose new forms of control are considered instances of organizational change in professional settings.
Our objective in this chapter is not to provide a systematic analysis of the tensions or complementarities between disciplinary power and governmentality, as proposed by Martin and colleagues, but to use the recent studies to explore the question of professional agency in organizational change. Anglo-governmentalists have found in the works of Foucault a conceptual apparatus to examine processes of change, such as the use and spread of more diffuse control or regulatory practices (Miller and Rose, 2008). Somewhat distinct from the ‘organized professionalism’ approach, their interest lies in how change is produced and reproduced through less visible or tangible processes. The concept of ‘governmentality’ raises the question of how to think about professional agency in a context that focuses on imposing control through monitoring and transparencies and on the embodiment of control through complex internalization processes (subjectification). Such control may end up in self-discipline and a less conscious participation of professionals in transformations.
According to the governmentality approach, the emergence of new control systems in professional settings is intimately related to the constitution of new knowledge such as data and information on risks, quality, and safety. New regulatory regimes take shape through systematic use of this knowledge that makes the activities of professionals more visible for scrutiny. Recent studies in healthcare, for example, have suggested that these regimes cannot develop and proliferate without the active participation of informed agents such as professionals (Ferlie et al., 2012; Martin et al., 2013; Ferlie and McGivern, 2014). Professional agency and the ambition to impose control on professional work thus co-exist somewhat. The process of subjectification that is central to the concept of governmentality cannot take form without the involvement of professionals in creating the conditions for their own subjectification.
Recognizing the role of professional agency in the governmentality concept leaves open the question of the distributed nature of their capacities to shape new regimes of control. A long-standing hypothesis of the sociology of professions suggests that only a specific segment of professions, a new professional elite, will actively participate in the governmentality project. The proliferation of standards (Muzio and Kirkpatrick, 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011a), standard setters (Cooper et al., 1996; Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Currie et al., 2009; Adler and Kwon, 2013), and decision-support tools (Frey et al., 2013) in various professional practices is certainly symptomatic of a growing investment by a professional elite in generating new systems and devices. These changes simultaneously contribute to rethinking and reframing professional autonomy (Evetts, 2003) and to potentially improving professional practice (Adler and Kwon, 2013), but they leave aside the question of the participation of the majority of professionals in these transformations in day-to-day working life.
From a different angle, professionals can participate in the shaping and leadership of change based on their own values, experiences, and views. They not only become involved as a professional elite to generate the tools that are used in the new context of ‘organized professionalism’ but from a governmentality perspective, professionals within organizations (the operators as opposed to the regulators) can also deploy resistance or reinterpret imposed control or regulatory regimes (Rose et al., 2006; Adler et al., 2008; Currie et al., 2009; Waring and Currie, 2009). They are active agents in the contextualization of these new forms of control (DiMaggio, 1991; Waring and Bishop, 2013), as exemplified by the notion of organizational closure (Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008; see also Muzio et al., 2011; Noordegraaf et al., 2014) where professionals recreate work arrangements in organizations that in the end protect their core values and aspirations.
While the governmentality approach is coherent with the idea of professional agency (Evetts, 2003), the use of agency capacity in the context of organizational change is thus more problematic here at first sight than in the works on ‘organized professionalism’. From a governmentality perspective, professionals can be affirmative in their response to growing institutional reflexivity and can intervene in the co-evolution of power and knowledge, as exemplified by the generation of tools and systems to regulate practices. Professionals are not necessarily subjugated by these ‘new systems’, and their reactions cannot be limited to the internalization of norms with its consequences in terms of self-discipline.
However, one must keep in mind that the governmentality project also represents risks for the professional project. The imposition of new standards on practice may culminate in a kind of subjugated agency where participation in meeting more demanding standards can lead to an intense competition among professionals that may undermine collegiality as a legitimate collective form of control (Teelken, 2015). As Evetts (2003) suggests, the dynamic of performance and competition may culminate in a restratification of professions where emerging professional elites are involved in the creation and recreation of norms for higher performance. Such potential perverse effects on professions and professionalism of their active engagement with new standards has not been explicitly discussed by Adler and colleagues (2008) when they propose collaborative work as the essence of the new professional ethos.
These potential perverse effects are at first sight difficult to reconcile with the study of Faulconbridge and Muzio (2008) on lawyers in organizations. They, as we noted above, suggest that professionals are able to achieve a kind of organizational closure as an act of mediation between broad social forces, their day-to-day practices, and their professional norms. Faulconbridge and Muzio (2008) suggest that, similar to professional roles in organized professionalism, professionals lead changes in these firms by participating in a process of adaptation of professional aspirations to organizational or corporate goals. For professionals, leading organizational change will thus imply their capacity to shape this process of institutional reflexivity to achieve an acceptable equilibrium between professional and organizational projects.
While the principle of organizational closure offers a plausible solution to the dilemma of renewing the relations between professions and organizations without putting professional aims and ethos too much at risk, recent analysis of professions and professionalism indicates that much effort is needed to achieve such a level of protection (Falconbridge and Muzio, 2008; Adler and Kwon, 2013).
Our discussion of professionals and organizational change from a governmentality perspective suggests that professionals can take an active role in translating new forms of control and standards for their work context in line with what they value. In doing so, they may build on practices of professionals to translate change into workable options for their development in, for example, a study on major transformations in the forest industry in Canada, as discussed by Zietsma and Lawrence (2010). These authors identify a set of practices that support the ability of actors to create a protected space within the field where innovation and experimentation with new models become possible. By analogy, professionals may invent and deploy practices in such experimental settings to create effective mediations between new external forms of control and self-regulation.
We now turn to another vital concept, that of pluralistic organizations, to understand the opportunities and limits of professional agency in a context of organizational change to improve our understanding of the plural context in which professionals operate.
Strategic change in pluralistic organizations
One way to characterize organizational context as a setting for the role of professionals in leading change is found in the notion of pluralistic organizations (Denis et al., 2007). The term refers to organizations with multiple goals and commitments and where authority is conferred upwards (Cooper et al., 1996). Empirical studies of strategic change in pluralistic organizations (Denis et al., 2007; Currie et al., 2009; Martin et al., 2009) have documented the various roles of professionals in change processes. For example, a representation of professional agency in bringing about changes in pluralistic contexts is captured through a study on collective and distributed leadership (Denis et al., 2012). In their study of knowledge brokering among professionals within the National Health System (NHS), Currie and White (2012) show that professionals perform a kind of rhetorical work that impacts on organizational or field-level changes. The valuation of new frames like ‘integration of care’ helps some professional groups to gain agency in front of predominant professional groups and at the same time shapes a reformative template. While there is asymmetry among professional groups in their ability to lead change processes within organizations, the capacity of some groups to mobilize new reformative templates or ideas in their day-to-day work appears critical in developing leadership roles in change (Cloutier et al., 2015).
In fact, the notion of profession has been intimately linked to the one of change. In a paper on professions as institutions, Scott (2008) insists that professional projects can only be achieved and sustained by the constant exercise of agency. Professionalism is a contested and unstable construct that needs to be constantly reaffirmed and transformed through professional agency. According to Scott (2008), the roles of professionals in the production of changes can be classified in three categories: creators, carriers, and clinical professionals. Creators invent transformative ideas that change professions, their practices, and consequently organizations. Examples of creators are found in the invention of new models of intervention like the advanced chronic disease management model in healthcare special education policies (see, e.g. Ontario Ministry of Education 2006), or community health nursing (De Blok and Pool, 2013). Carriers are the disseminators who propagate new ideas in a given field and, consequently, play a transformative role. Clinical professionals bring about changes through the application of knowledge to specific cases and through incremental adjustments in practices. In all these roles, professionals are agents of change who mobilize their power and resources to achieve their projects.
In pluralistic contexts, distributed capacities (expertise, influence, legitimacy) mean that professionals are in a position to shape change. However, professional agency not only impacts professional projects but also reverberates to reflect the broader organizational and institutional processes (Suddaby and Viale, 2011). In contrast to the concept of organized professionalism, the literature on distributed leadership and pluralistic organizations does not emphasize that professional and organizational projects converge due to a set of contingencies. In this literature, leadership is defined as ‘the dispersion of leadership roles across organizations, and even beyond their boundaries, as a variety of people relay leadership responsibilities over time to achieve important outcomes’ (Denis et al., 2012, p. 241). It is recognized here that contradictions and resistance permeate the processes of organizational change (Denis et al., 2002; Currie et al., 2009; Martin et al., 2009), and the idea of professions as an endogenous force of change is considered in more problematic terms. Even change is problematized as an emergent phenomenon with uncertain boundaries. Professionals shape change through their day-to-day practices, but these changes are not necessarily aligned with corporate or organizational goals.
The idea of professional leadership as an adequate representation of professionals’ agency in organizational change is challenged by an empirical study by Reed and colleagues (see Chapter 14 by Reed in this Companion). They found that the call for professional leadership to implement large-scale restructuring in public services in England revealed intense pressures by reformers to transform sectors and activities, with negative impact on the status and autonomy of professionals and civil servants. They consider this situation as an illustration of ‘leaderism’, where a call for a voluntary engagement in reforms masks the imposition of policies by a central authority that impacts negatively on the public sector. Leadership is equivalent here to a discourse used to enrol professionals in change and transformations potentially in conflict with their values and interests. Leadership discourses thus may permeate change processes and influence how professionals connect with changes in their day-to-day work. To understand the roles of professionals in organizational changes, we therefore need to analyse how broad reformative templates and structural determinants (for example, neo-liberal reforms) shape and influence the micro-practices of professionals involved in formal and informal leadership roles, and inversely as well. The framing of professional agency in organizations within a highly distributed context with severe pressures for change needs to be explored in more detail.
A review on plural forms of leadership (Denis et al., 2012) argues that a key challenge for contemporary organizations is to channel the latent leadership capacity that is embodied in the knowledge of professional workers. The involvement of various actors in leadership roles may be performed within the context of a variety of ideological positions and objectives, as studies on leaderism suggest. Works on collective and distributive leadership also suggest that professional agency is a key asset in structuring a group of leaders who can support (or not!) organizational change. To maintain a kind of collective agency in leading change is, however, a challenge, and demonstrates the fragility of leadership roles and positions in pluralist organizations (Denis et al., 2002). When professionals get involved in leading change, they necessarily share their leadership roles with other powerful actors and broader organizational interests (Suddaby and Viale, 2011). Such sharing of positions and the negotiation of goals and objectives may be a source of increased differentiation among professionals, where those who carry on the ‘organizational agenda’ for change can gain access to powerful positions within their field.
For many years, the theorizing of professions as linked to organizations has been dominated by a focus on the controversial relationship between the two worlds. The relationship between professionals and organizations has been portrayed extensively as dichotomous and intrinsically conflicting (Waring and Currie, 2009). Organizations are perceived as investing in structural approaches and managerial instruments to discipline professionals rather than in strategies to rely on and develop professional commitment (Adler and Kwon, 2013). Recently, we have begun to observe more optimistic views on the relationship between professions and organizations, suggesting the idea of co-evolving strategies of professionals and organizations in response to endogenous and exogenous demands (e.g. changes in client–professional relationships, new government regulations, and global pressures for competition). Work by Adler and Kwon (2013) on professional communities as a form of social organization that develops within formal organizational structures suggests that tensions can be transcended. Similarly, works by Noordegraaf (2011a, 2011b, 2014) see in the intensification of reciprocal relations between organizations and professions a new synthesis that also transcends tensions and contradictions. Based on our discussion of three vital concepts in understanding professional agency and leadership – organized professionalism, governmentality, and strategic change in pluralistic organizations – we argue that both propositions (pessimistic or optimistic) are probably too simplistic to convey a realistic picture of professions and organizational change. Although we believe that there is room for professional agency in positively influencing organizational change, we have argued all along in this chapter that such positive accommodations imply a demanding process of investments and change on the part of both organizations and professions.
Opportunities and challenges to professional agency related to organizations and change cannot be captured by a focus on either controversy or harmony. Based on the three concepts of professional agency on which we focus, we suggest that there are many (and competing) meanings of professionals as leaders of change. We argue for an understanding of professional agency as involving opportunities for leadership in terms of co-evolving strategies with organizations, as well as resistance to developments that are perceived as suppressing or denying professionals’ specific qualities and contributions. Commitment and resistance are considered intrinsic properties of how professional agency develops within the context of changes. We believe that the way in which professionals develop their agency and collaborate with organizations is always a political process contingent on the interests and values of the participants and their ability to advance them while being conscious of their dependence upon organized settings in their quest for professional virtuosity and legitimacy.
Our reading of the literature indicates that it would be wise to move away from a unitary view of professionalism and professions in their relation to organizational change. Gaining distance from a unitary view should not be made at the expense of a more realistic and less normative approach to the role of professionals as leaders of organizational change. The idea of professionals as leaders of change can, in fact, be misleading when the real issue is how professionals exert agency to reformulate the professional project in the context of change and how this reformulation is associated (or not) with more active or explicit leadership roles in driving change. We need also to take into account that professionals shape change through their activities and practices. For example, the concept of organized professionalism is implicitly attached to the idea that professional and organizational transformations are co-constitutive and can co-evolve in response to endogenous and exogenous changes. Organizational adaptation becomes impossible without professional agency. However, the view that is promoted of professional agency where a variety of contingencies create an inevitable convergence and harmonization between professions and organizations is probably too deterministic.
Studies of governmentality identify how professionals, through various mechanisms of subjectification, become agents of change. The propensity of professionals to lead change is (at least partly) nurtured by their involvement in a process of institutional reflexivity. The exposure of professionals to new regimes of governance shapes the expression of their agency and creates new leadership opportunities. The consequences for the professional ethos of involvement in such leadership roles is an open empirical question. As noted before, studies based on the concept of leaderism are sceptical of the capacity of professional leadership to promote productive relationships between organizations and professions. Studies on pluralistic organizations have revealed how professionals in such contexts participate actively in a non-linear process of change marked by contradictions, tensions, and collaboration among a wide range of actors. The ability to secure a position as a leader of change in such a context is challenging even for powerful professionals. Moreover, the consequences of professional agency as expressed in leadership roles are problematic and may in the end undermine professionals’ ability to exert influence.
In sum, we suggest that there is much more variation in leadership roles of professionals than is implied in either a focus on problematic aspects of the relationship between professionals and organizations or a positive view in regard to opportunities for agreement and co-creation. Based on the literature review in this chapter, we emphasize that the notion of professionals as leaders of change is multifaceted. Leadership cannot be associated only with attempts to generate proportional organizational and professional benefits. There are other ways for professionals to demonstrate agency that do not align with how their organizations seek to adapt to changing environments. One can argue that passivity or resistance, in particular for more powerful professions, is also a demonstration of their agency in a context of change. Professionals may resist specific changes to protect their values and aspirations, which is in itself a demonstration of their agency and leadership. Such resistance may not necessarily imply the continuation of traditional systems and practices.
The literature review also demonstrates that different outcomes may occur following the intensification of organizing in professional practices (Ferlie et al., 2005; Falconbridge and Muzio, 2008). Professionals may find ways to accommodate these new pressures for accountability, higher reliability, and greater responsiveness to clients’ needs, or they may see in change challenges to professional projects and aspirations. Thus, in all cases, professionals develop strategies to influence and deal with the evolving context of their practice (Noordegraaf, 2011a; Adler and Kwon, 2013; Muzio et al., 2013). We suggest that more attention should be paid in future research to how professional agency plays out in actual organizational change processes – a promising avenue to better understand how organizational and professional transformations are intimately linked.
This chapter reveals that many changes in the context of professional practice and the embodiment of professionals in organized work settings have an impact on professionals and their work; however, professionals’ roles in organizational change can only be elucidated by studying the evolution of their capacity for agency in these situations. It has often been suggested that professionals in leadership roles should go beyond taking a traditional attitude of protecting autonomy and improving material positions and move beyond their usual tasks of delivering professional services (Evetts, 2003). In line with these studies, we suggest a more dynamic and practice-based approach to understanding how professionals get involved in organizational transformations (Denis and Van Gestel, 2015).
One consequence of a dynamic and practice-based approach is to better understand how professionals become closely involved in processes of decision-making on organizational change (Suddaby and Viale, 2011; Muzio et al., 2013). Such involvement, as we have seen, can take various forms. It also implies the possibility that professionals may develop generative mechanisms to reframe their work and autonomy (Reed, 2009). Examples of such generative mechanisms can be found in the collaborative organizational community as one of the main foundations of contemporary professional work (Adler et al., 2008) and in a more explicit recognition of the distributed aspects of leadership in professional or expert organizations and their consequences for the expression of leadership in change processes (Denis et al., 2012).
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