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Book part
Publication date: 15 October 2020

Sida Liu

Professionals often dislike dirty work, yet they accommodate or even embrace it in everyday practice. This chapter problematizes Andrew Abbott’s professional purity thesis by…

Abstract

Professionals often dislike dirty work, yet they accommodate or even embrace it in everyday practice. This chapter problematizes Andrew Abbott’s professional purity thesis by examining five major forms of impurities in professional work, namely impurity in expertise, impurity in jurisdictions, impurity in clients, impurity in organizations, and impurity in politics. These impurities complicate the relationship between purity and status as some impurities may enhance professional status while others may jeopardize it, especially when the social origins of professionals are rapidly diversifying and professional work is increasingly intertwined with the logics of market and bureaucracy. Taking impurities seriously can help the sociology of professions move beyond the idealistic image of an independent, disinterested professional detached from human emotions, turf battles, client influence, and organizational or political forces and towards a more pragmatic understanding of professional work, expertise, ethics and the nature of professionalism.

Details

Professional Work: Knowledge, Power and Social Inequalities
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-210-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 August 2016

Alexandra Hendley

Gender, race, and class-based meanings inform longstanding divisions and status hierarchies within the culinary profession, such as those between public and private and amateur…

Abstract

Purpose

Gender, race, and class-based meanings inform longstanding divisions and status hierarchies within the culinary profession, such as those between public and private and amateur and professional cooking. Private and personal chefs’ work in homes disrupts these divisions and hierarchies. Given their precarious position, how do these chefs negotiate their standing within the profession?

Methodology/approach

This chapter draws on interviews with 41 private/personal chefs. Eight were primarily private household employees, while all others were primarily self-employed.

Findings

The chefs negotiated their status by making distinctions between themselves and commercial chefs, along with other private/personal chefs. The chefs both challenge and reinforce the dichotomies and criteria shaping status evaluations within the culinary profession. Similarly, they both contest and reinforce gender, race, and class hierarchies.

Social implications

The chefs’ conceptual distinctions can potentially (re)produce or challenge material inequalities. Moreover, while the fields of private/personal cheffing create opportunities for more adults to cook for a living, the traditional status hierarchies remain largely the same. It is likely that as long as those hierarchies persist, the chefs’ conceptual distinctions will continue to challenge and reinforce them.

Originality/value

Research on private/personal chefs has been minimal, so this chapter fills this gap. It also adds to scholarship connecting workers’ status struggles and gender, race, and class inequalities. The case of private and personal chefs sheds new light on how gender, race, and class intersect to inform status evaluations within the culinary profession.

Details

Gender and Food: From Production to Consumption and After
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-054-1

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 17 March 2017

Abstract

Details

From Categories to Categorization: Studies in Sociology, Organizations and Strategy at the Crossroads
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-238-1

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1997

Sue Llewellyn

Fundholding (the opportunity to hold a budget at practice level) has given general practitioners (GPs) purchasing power for medical services within the reformed UK National Health…

1117

Abstract

Fundholding (the opportunity to hold a budget at practice level) has given general practitioners (GPs) purchasing power for medical services within the reformed UK National Health Service (NHS). This new purchasing power equates to financial leverage with the NHS consultants in hospitals. Argues that fundholding is presented as an opportunity for GPs to engage in a “turf battle” with the hospital consultants without this battle becoming publicly visible. Fundholding as an accounting‐based intervention masked the nature of the professional challenge which GPs launched against the consultants and, hence, allowed territorial claims to be renegotiated through the medium of contracting. This circumvented the damage to medical professional ideologies which would have ensued if intra‐professional conflicts had become overt. The empirical study which is referred to indicates that GPs are using contracts to improve processes of case management at the hospital interface (an area where consultants have failed to communicate with GPs) and to have an input into the setting of quality standards within the hospitals. The increased financial flexibility conferred through holding budgets is also enabling GPs to expand in‐house services for primary care. Theorizes the changing power relations between GPs and consultants through exploring four dimensions of intra‐professional differentiation: task specialization; client differentiation; organization of work; and career pattern. Concludes that budgets have constituted a catalyst for professional development through reconnecting the monetary bonds between the polarized professionals in British medicine. This study indicates that, as fundholding progresses, the boundary between primary and secondary care is becoming blurred; that lead fundholding GPs are being managerialized; and that the purchasing dialogue between the GPs and the Trusts is marginalizing the role of the Health Boards (bodies which had previously held sole responsibility for the co‐ordination and delivery of health care but which now have a more limited purchasing/commissioning role).

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 15 October 2020

Abstract

Details

Professional Work: Knowledge, Power and Social Inequalities
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-210-9

Book part
Publication date: 17 March 2017

Ezra W. Zuckerman

The “categorization as a theoretical tool” framework is delineated to clarify how innovation is possible even though candidates for exchange face a “categorical imperative” …

Abstract

The “categorization as a theoretical tool” framework is delineated to clarify how innovation is possible even though candidates for exchange face a “categorical imperative” – pressure from their audience to adopt the conventional practices associated with existing categories. The key insight is that categorization is generally a useful tool for sorting and screening exchange opportunities. This insight is developed to suggest how the nature of the imperative varies with the audience’s objectives and the theory of value it espouses and how the strength of the imperative varies with the social challenges and opportunities for engaging in, and learning from, experiments with unconventionality.

Details

From Categories to Categorization: Studies in Sociology, Organizations and Strategy at the Crossroads
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-238-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 15 July 2020

Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and George Serafeim

Using data from a top-five global executive placement firm, the authors explore how an organization's financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in

Abstract

Using data from a top-five global executive placement firm, the authors explore how an organization's financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory, they hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization years before the misconduct, these alumni experience a compensation penalty. The stigma effect increases in relation to the job function proximity to the misconduct, recency of the misconduct, and an employee's seniority. Collectively, results suggest that the stigma of financial misconduct could reach alumni employees and need not be confined to executives and directors that oversaw the organization during the misconduct.

Details

Employee Inter- and Intra-Firm Mobility
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-550-5

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2015

Joseph Amankwah-Amoah

The purpose of this paper is to examine how decision-maker attributes unfold to precipitate organisational failure. The analysis brings to light how key attributes such as…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how decision-maker attributes unfold to precipitate organisational failure. The analysis brings to light how key attributes such as information-processing capabilities and human capital decay interact to bring about business decline and exit.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on an integrated review and conceptualisation of the literature.

Findings

The study articulates how a set of attributes of decision makers, i.e. human capital obsolescence, powerlessness, meaninglessness and institutional linkages, contributes to organisational failure.

Research limitations/implications

The paper concludes by setting out an array of strategies of learning from others’ failures.

Originality/value

In spite of a growing body of research on organisational failure, scholars have placed overwhelming emphasis on ecological explanations and business failure prediction models. The study moves beyond the ecological explanations to offer a more fine-grained analysis of firm-level factors that precipitate business failure.

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 115 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 April 2003

Harris H Kim and Edward O Laumann

In this chapter, we show how embedded social relations affect economic transactions and intraprofessional stratification in the market for legal services. We argue that networks…

Abstract

In this chapter, we show how embedded social relations affect economic transactions and intraprofessional stratification in the market for legal services. We argue that networks are critical in fostering individual upward mobility not only because they provide valuable information to ego (lawyer) but also because they function as a crucial mechanism by which the focal actor’s (lawyer’s) status is transmitted to outside alters (clients). Consistent with Podolny’s (1993) general theoretical statement, we claim that ties to prestigious network partners send positive signals concerning the ability and trustworthiness of legal professionals. That is, networks help reduce the information asymmetries faced by potential buyers concerning the actual (unknowable) quality of legal services. Our argument is that, in doing so, the network-embedded status of lawyers serves to contribute to their earnings. We demonstrate this point empirically by examining how networks relate to the process of income attainment among a random sample of lawyers in Chicago (1995).

Details

The Governance of Relations in Markets and Organizations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-202-3

Article
Publication date: 13 May 2020

Fanghong Liu and Jiangang Wang

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge inflows and outflows interact to affect performance outcomes. Though previous studies have dealt with knowledge inflows and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge inflows and outflows interact to affect performance outcomes. Though previous studies have dealt with knowledge inflows and outflows, the quality and quantity characteristics of knowledge are often not taken into account, thus leaving a research gap with regards to the effect of their interactions on performance outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on Poisson regression analysis, this quantitative study fills the aforementioned research gaps by analyzing the ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows from an ambidexterity perspective and examines their effects on two-phase performance (i.e. regular season and playoffs), using a longitudinal data set of National Basketball Association transactions from the 2003-2004 to 2014-2015 season.

Findings

The results suggest that the complementarity between knowledge inflows and outflows along the quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge, respectively, has a positive impact on two-phase performance, while the imbalance between knowledge inflows and outflows under the quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge, respectively, has a negative impact on playoffs performance (Phase 2). These findings suggest that organizations can balance knowledge inflows and outflows under a single quality or quantity dimension of knowledge. Furthermore, the interaction between the quantity of the inflows of knowledge and the quality of the outflows of knowledge and the interaction between the quality of the inflows of knowledge and the quantity of the outflows of knowledge are both positively related to two-phase performance. These findings suggest that organizations can balance knowledge inflows and outflows across quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge. Finally, the effects of the interaction between knowledge inflows and outflows on playoffs performance are greater than regular-season.

Practical implications

Organizations should leverage ambidexterity to manage/balance knowledge inflows and outflows across quality and quantity dimensions, further enhancing performance outcomes.

Originality/value

This study, first, provides new insights into knowledge flows by distinguishing between the quality and quantity of knowledge, the inflows and outflows of knowledge, constructing ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows from an ambidexterity perspective. Second, it contributes to the relationship between knowledge flows and organizational performance by revealing how ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows exert different effects on performance outcomes. Third, it adds to the literature of ambidexterity-performance relationships and expands it to the context of sports.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 24 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

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