Trish Reay, University of Alberta: "Getting the Leopard to Change Its Spots: Co-Creating A New Professional Role Identity"

Location:  TC.5.12

Time and Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2015, 16:30

We investigated how professional role identity change can be accomplished in highly institutionalized contexts characterized by resiliency. We show how the collective professional role identity of family physicians was changed through a process of reinterpreting multiple logics and their relationships. Through our inductive analyses, we identified four sequential microprocesses processes that occurred over time and collectively served to rearrange the constellation of logics guiding physician role identity: (1) revealing the hidden influence of a logic; (2) reinforcing the conflict between two logics; (3) reframing the meaning of a dominant logic; and (4) re-embedding the new arrangement of logics. Each of these processes were instigated and orchestrated by managers who had been charged with leading the reform initiative. However, each of the processes also relied on action and participation from a variety of actors – including the physicians. We contribute to the professional role identity and institutional literatures by highlighting the role of others in reconstructing collective professional role identity, explicating the underlying meaning of logics to show how multiple logics and the relationships among them can be reinterpreted, and emphasizing the importance of the institutional context for understanding professional role identity change.

Trish Reay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and also holds a visiting professor appointment at the Warwick Business School. Her research interests include qualitative research methods, organizational and institutional change, professions and professional identity, and knowledge transfer. She has studied these topics in health care settings and in family firms. Published articles from these research streams appear in Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Work and Occupations, Family Business Review, Entrepreneurship, Theory & Practice, and Health Care Management Review. She is currently an Editor-in-Chief at Organization Studies, and on the editorial review boards of Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Academy of Management Discoveries, and Journal of Professions and Organization. She is also the Academic Director of the Centre for Effective Business Management of Addictions Treatment, housed in the Alberta School of Business.