Professional Autonomy and Bureaucratic Organization.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship between bureaucratic structure and degree of professional autonomy within the client-professional relationship by systematically comparing the perceived autonomy of professionals in three types of bureaucratic settings, nonbureaucratic, moderately bureaucratic, and highly bureaucratic.
Abstract: Autonomy is regarded as an important dimension of professionalism. A number of investigators claim that bureaucratic organization limits professional autonomy. This study was undertaken to determine empirically the validity of this claim. The relationship between bureaucratic structure and degree of professional autonomy within the client-professional relationship was examined by systematically comparing the perceived autonomy of professionals in three types of bureaucratic settings, nonbureaucratic, moderately bureaucratic, and highly bureaucratic. The data revealed that those professionals associated with the moderately bureaucratic setting are most likely and those in the highly bureaucratic setting are least likely to perceive themselves as autonomous. These findings do not support the contention that bureaucracy is necessarily detrimental to professional autonomy.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the independent impact of risk-taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy on performance of young high-technology firms at an embryonic stage of development.
906 citations
Cites background or methods from "Professional Autonomy and Bureaucra..."
...The autonomy (AUTONOMY) measures were developed from Engel (1970), Hornsby et al. (2002), and Spreitzer (1995)....
[...]
...The autonomy (AUTONOMY) measures were developed from Engel (1970), Hornsby et al....
[...]
...This requires policies of empowerment, open communication, unrestricted access to information, and authority to think and act without interference (Engel, 1970; Spreitzer, 1995)....
[...]
...The autonomy (AUTONOMY) measures were developed from Engel (1970), Hornsby et al. (2002), and Spreitzer (1995). In examining business performance, we used two dimensions: customer performance and...
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how knowledge professionals use mobile email devices to get their work done and the implications of such use for their autonomy to control the location, timing, and performance of work.
Abstract: Our research examines how knowledge professionals use mobile email devices to get their work done and the implications of such use for their autonomy to control the location, timing, and performance of work. We found that knowledge professionals using mobile email devices to manage their communication were enacting a norm of continual connectivity and accessibility that produced a number of contradictory outcomes. Although individual use of mobile email devices offered these professionals flexibility, peace of mind, and control over interactions in the short term, it also intensified collective expectations of their availability, escalating their engagement and thus reducing their ability to disconnect from work. Choosing to use their mobile email devices to work anywhere/anytime—actions they framed as evidence of their personal autonomy—the professionals were ending up using it everywhere/all the time, thus diminishing their autonomy in practice. This autonomy paradox reflected professionals’ ongoing nav...
651 citations
TL;DR: Barley et al. as discussed by the authors examined the degree to which professionals in general and lawyers in particular are committed to their profession and the organizations that employ them and found that organizational commitment is highly dependent on perceived opportunities for career advancements and the criteria used in the distribution of rewards.
Abstract: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 American Sociological Meetings, Los Angeles. This research was funded by the Alberta Law Foundation (Grant #6035) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Award #725-91-3002), and assistance was provided by the Law Society of Alberta. I wish to thank Charles W. Mueller for his helpful suggestions and advice on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper has also benefited greatly from the insightful and constructive comments of the editor, Stephen R. Barley, and the Managing Editor, Linda J. Pike, as well as the feedback provided by the three anonymous ASQ reviewers. This study of lawyers examines the degree to which professionals in general and lawyers in particular are committed to their profession and the organizations that employ them. I examine how the different structural arrangements of professional and nonprofessional organizations relate to lawyers' organizational and professional commitment. Results show that organizational commitment is highly dependent on perceived opportunities for career advancements and the criteria used in the distribution of rewards. Few of the structural characteristics are important in explaining professional commitment, and lawyers working in nonprofessional organizations are significantly less committed to the legal profession than those working in professional organizations. The results of this study suggest that future research must look beyond the structural characteristics of professionals' work settings if we want to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting professional commitment.'
556 citations
TL;DR: The authors brings these disparate research streams together and shows that they cohere around four central themes: expert knowledge, autonomy, a normative orientation grounded in community, and high status, income, and other rewards.
Abstract: Both professional work and the sociological study of professional work experienced a “golden age” in the mid-20th century. When dramatic changes began to shake the professions in the 1970s and 1980s, however, old approaches no longer fit, and the research area became quiescent. Yet interest in professional work simply “went underground,” surfacing under other names in a variety of sociological and interdisciplinary fields. In the process, researchers’ focus expanded to include a broader range of “expert” or “knowledge-based” occupations as well as traditional professions. This essay brings these disparate research streams together and shows that they cohere around four central themes: expert knowledge, autonomy, a normative orientation grounded in community, and high status, income, and other rewards.
196 citations
Cites background from "Professional Autonomy and Bureaucra..."
...Researchers began to investigate the impact of bureaucratic work structures on individual professionals, finding that bureaucracy did not necessarily constrain professional autonomy (Engel, 1969, 1970), but did produce a sense of role conflict (Corwin, 1961; Scott, 1965)....
[...]
TL;DR: Using Walker & Avant's (1995) model for concept analysis, an analysis of professional nurse autonomy is presented, defined as belief in the centrality of the client when making responsible discretionary decisions, both independently and interdependently, that reflect advocacy for the client.
Abstract: Professional nurse autonomy, an essential attribute of a discipline striving for full professional status, is often confused with personal autonomy, work autonomy or aggregate professional autonomy. Using Walker & Avant's (1995) model for concept analysis, this paper presents an analysis of professional nurse autonomy. Professional nurse autonomy is defined as belief in the centrality of the client when making responsible discretionary decisions, both independently and interdependently, that reflect advocacy for the client. Critical attributes include caring, affiliative relationships with clients, responsible discretionary decision making, collegial interdependence, and proactive advocacy for clients. Antecedents include educational and personal qualities that promote professional nurse autonomy. Accountability is the primary consequence of professional nurse autonomy. Associated feelings of empowerment link work autonomy and professional autonomy and lead to job satisfaction, commitment to the profession, and the professionalization of nursing. A student-centred, process-orientated curricular design provides an environment for learning professional nurse autonomy. To support the development of professional nurse autonomy, the curriculum must emphasize knowledge development, understanding, and clinical decision making.
191 citations
Cites background from "Professional Autonomy and Bureaucra..."
...Structural or work autonomy is the worker's freedom to make decisions based on job requirements (Hall 1968, Engel 1970, Batey & Lewis 1982, McKay 1983)....
[...]
References
More filters
Book•
[...]
01 Jan 1959
TL;DR: In every administrative group, gaps appear between granted and exercised authority as mentioned in this paper, and these divergences are inherent in a continuing process of reorganization, authorized or not, given the nature of personnel, and the official frameworks they create, even the cliques essential for intertwining official and informal actions occasionally get out of hand and must be curbed.
Abstract: This chapter covers only one set of struggles for dominance, that between managers of the production and maintenance branches of the line, and between the entire Milo unit and its Office over the same issue. In every administrative group, gaps appear between granted and exercised authority. Symptoms in a sense of disorganization, these divergences are inherent in a continuing process of reorganization, authorized or not. Given the nature of personnel, and the official frameworks they create, even the cliques essential for intertwining official and informal actions occasionally get out of hand and must be curbed. Inspired by fear of unofficial reprisals, the alterations are usually concealed and therefore not incorporated into future planning, so that the organization is always out-of-date in some sense. Achievement of organizational goals intertwines with individual and group ends near and remote from those of the firm.
835 citations
TL;DR: The early view to which we need here pay attention was that occupations should be judged and valued according to their compatibility with the good life as mentioned in this paper, i.e., they were to be tested by their effect on the giver of the service rather than on the recipient.
Abstract: The professions, conceived as a select body of superior occupations, have existed from time immemorial, although their identity has often been in dispute. The ancients wrote and argued about them, while Herbert Spencer traced their origin among primitive peoples. The earliest view to which we need here pay attention was that occupations should be judged and valued according to their compatibility with the good life. They were to be tested by their effect on the giver of the service rather than on the recipient. The professions were, in English parlance, the occupations suitable for a gentleman. This idea naturally flourished in societies which distinguished sharply between life lived as an end in itself, and life passed in pursuit of the means which enable others to live as free civilized men should. The professions in such a society were those means to living which were most innocuous, in that they did not dull the brain, like manual labour, nor corrupt the soul, like commerce. They even contained within themselves qualities and virtues which might well find a place among the ends of the good life itself. Leisure, based on the ownership of land or of slaves, was the chief mark of aristocracy, and here too the professions were but slightly inferior. For leisure does not mean idleness. It means the freedom to choose your activities according to your own preferences and your own standards of what is best. The professions, it was said, enjoyed this kind of freedom, not so much because they were free from the control of an employer—that was assumed—but rather because, for them, choice was not restricted and confined by economic pressure. The professional man, it has been said, does not work in order to be paid: he is paid in order that he may work. Every decision he takes in the course of his career is based on his sense of what is right, not on his estimate of what is profitable. That, at least, is the impression he would like to create when defending his claim to superior status.
227 citations