Topic
Structure and agency
About: Structure and agency is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1265 publications have been published within this topic receiving 63660 citations.
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115 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession and found that five of the six career strategies tend to reproduce rather than transform opportunity structures in the legal profession.
Abstract: The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) ‘temporally embedded’ conceptualization of agency as having past, current and future elements. We identify six career strategies, which relate to different career points. They are assimilation, compromise, playing the game, reforming the system, location/relocation and withdrawal. We find that five of the six strategies tend to reproduce rather than transform opportunity structures in the legal profession. The overall picture is one of structural reproduction (rather than transformation) of traditional organizational structure and practice. The theoretical frame and empirical data analysis presented in this article accounts for the rarity of structural reform and goes some way towards explaining why, even in contexts populated by highly skilled, knowledgeable agents and where organizations appear committed to equal opportunities, old opportunity structures and inequalities often endure.
114 citations
TL;DR: Giddens as mentioned in this paper argued that both Boland's and our viewpoints can be accommodated within structuration theory, and suggested that this accommodation has implications for some of the wider debates which have taken place between accounting researchers who use different social theories in their studies of accounting practice.
Abstract: In his paper, “Accounting and the Interpretive Act”, Boland [Accounting, Organizations and Society (1993), pp. 1–24] argues that our paper Macintosh & Scapens [Accounting, Organizations and Society (1990), pp. 455–477] which used structuration theory as a framework for management accounting research is a structuralist analysis which merely views structuration at a distance and ignores the role of the human agent in the creation of meaning. In this paper we clarify our position and deal with Boland's specific criticisms of our discussion. After noting some inconsistencies in Boland's own position, we discuss the need for methodological brackets in operationalizing structuration theory. Giddens offers a bilateral set of brackets and distinguishes between institutional analysis and the analysis of strategic conduct. We draw on Giddens' distinction between institutional analysis and the analysis of strategic conduct to argue that both Boland's and our viewpoints can be accommodated within structuration theory. We then suggest that this accommodation has implications for some of the wider debates which have taken place between accounting researchers who use different social theories in their studies of accounting practice.
113 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a structural analysis of change in the English and Welsh legal profession over the last 25 years, using concepts drawn from Weberian sociology of the professions and more recent theory connecting agency and structure.
Abstract: The paper provides a structural analysis of change in the English and Welsh legal profession over the last 25 years, using concepts drawn from Weberian sociology of the professions and more recent theory connecting agency and structure. Through a consideration of data returned to the Law Society, and other data, this paper outlines changes in the internal division of labour in English law firms. It is argued that, in response to external threats, especially the growth in the numbers of qualified recruits, the elite of the profession has reworked professional closure. From controlling access to training places (i.e. labour market closure), legal firms have shifted towards controlling conditions of work and promotion (identified as internal organizational closure). This has produced recognizable effects: it has sustained the remuneration and status of the professional elite of partners, but has also allowed the assimilation of large numbers of recruits to the profession, and the expansion in the size of leg...
112 citations
Book•
09 Apr 2009
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that alternative perspectives are required in order to account for structure and agency in teaching-learning interactions in higher education and examine the ways in which teaching learning interactions are shaped by teaching learning environments, student and academic identities, disciplinary knowledge practices and institutional cultures.
Abstract: Whilst current research into teaching and learning offers many insights into the experiences of academics and students in higher education, it has two significant shortcomings It does not highlight the dynamic ways in which students and academics impact on each other in teaching-learning interactions or the ways in which these interactions are shaped by wider social processes This book offers critical insight into existing perspectives on researching teaching and learning in higher education and argues that alternative perspectives are required in order to account for structure and agency in teaching-learning interactions in higher education In considering four alternative perspectives, it examines the ways in which teaching-learning interactions are shaped by teaching-learning environments, student and academic identities, disciplinary knowledge practices and institutional cultures It concludes by examining the conceptual and methodological implications of these analyses of teaching-learning interactions and provides the reader with an invaluable guide to alternative ways of conceptualising and researching teaching and learning in higher education
111 citations