Understanding Professional & Organizational Fields
Robert (Bob) Gurney, PhD.
The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into understanding professional fields and organizational fields and, promote actions to develop and apply the knowledge in constructing organizational development practices. This paper is NOT an extensive theoretical dissertation however, the intentions are to work towards stimulating and challenging leaders to pursue knowledge for applied practices in the workplace.
Historical views of professionalization are directed to occupations that demonstrate unidirectional characteristics, meaning that occupations continue along a traditional path of developing their founding profession. Another view is that occupations are multidirectional, meaning that the occupation pursues different directions, towards more specialized approaches. There is a common belief among professions, in that they claim a jurisdiction of a field through professional knowledge. Some professions demonstrate either proactive or reactive actions by seizing the opportunities of a practice that appears to be vacant in either similar or other domains, and then either reinforce or dismiss their previous jurisdiction. Professions claiming legitimacy of control in a domain are judged by various groups, and positive reviews tend to ratify the profession’s claim which aids in their resistance to competitors.
Professions have been further differentiated into two categories: the ‘profession community’ is characterised by routine interaction between or among professions which are ordered and institutionalised with the organization, and; a ‘community of professions’, is characterised by the profession’s acceptance and value as a legitimate organizational entity.
In professional fields, there tends to be membership to the profession (professional association). A typology of membership strategies in professional fields include contexts of association, stratification and colonisation. Association strategies develop interaction rituals where less established professional groups become involved in common activities with more established groups, as an attempt to gain legitimacy; in such cases of the formation of new professional associations with strategies of establishing alliances or collaborations with other professional groups. Stratification strategies refer to a membership strategy involving the development or interaction of rituals into hierarchy chains demonstrating how professional groups in a field relate to each other and restructuring interaction chains to provide leadership and direction to other professional groups through formal titles of position. Colonisation strategies refer to the relationship between the actors of the professional group and the clients or stakeholders they serve, whose perception of the field’s legitimacy is critical to its survival.
Organizational fields have been defined as sets of organizations that, in aggregate, constitute an area of institutional life; key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products. An important part of this definition is the concept of ‘sets’ or ‘communities’ of organizations that directly interact with one another or are influenced by each other in a meaningful way. The ‘field idea’ comprehends the importance of tying organizations to one another, in terms of connecting, and similarity of position in a network structure as an attribute of structural equivalence:
The structure of an organizational field cannot be determined a priori but must be defined on the basis of empirical investigation. Fields only exist to the extent that they are institutionally defined. The process of institutional definition or structuration, consists of four parts: an increase in the extent of interaction among organizations in the field; the emergence of sharply defined inter-organizational structures of domination and patterns of coalition; an increase in the information load with which organizations in a field must contend; and the development of a mutual awareness among participants in a set of organizations that they are involved in a common enterprise. (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, p. 148)
The interaction of multiple independent organizations, constituting a multidisciplinary approach and their affiliation with an ‘umbrella’ organization may be interpreted as ‘sets’, comprising an organizational field. Networks or multidisciplinary organizations originate with actors whose identity determines the networking relationships and acquires legitimacy by positioning in an established field or creating a new field. It is through their particular-identity lens that actors of organizations, by virtue of their position and/or professional affiliation, craft their specific definitions of institutional resources and core capabilities for contributions to multidisciplinary organizations. An identity is based on essential core properties that differentiate it from others in its domain. These core properties tend to evolve in response to environmental exigencies and shifts in an organization’s identity would exhibit strong path dependency. When an organization is characterised by multidisciplinary professional groups, demonstrating multiple identities, inter-disciplinary conflict tends to emerge. Claims and counterclaims over the organization’s identity, as efforts to legitimize one or more professional groups over others, define the organization’s multidisciplinary capabilities that are advantageous to a discipline(s) or group (s).
The concept of membership describes the basis of an organization to legitimately participate in a social environment. Although the concept of membership has not been prominent in the theoretical development of neo-institutional theory, it is central to the concepts of institutions and fields. Researchers have argued that institutional membership is critical to organizations because of the field boundaries as they are perceived by participants and, affect how organizations select models for endeavours, where they focus on information gathering energy and recruiting personnel.
A more recent addition to understanding organizational fields, claims that patterns of interaction between organizational communities become defined by shared systems of meaning. These meaning systems establish the boundaries of each community of organizations, defining its membership, the appropriate ways of behaving, and the appropriate relationships between organizational communities. Other researchers argue that, the key processes associated with the development of fields involve; the structuring of membership, the negotiation and construction of field boundaries, and the emergence of sharply defined inter-organizational structures of domination and patterns of coalition.
In conclusion, the defining and understanding of professional fields and organizational fields can be beneficial to leaders. The leadership within organizations may look to recognizing the autonomy and specializations of professions, and how they can contribute to addressing issues and solving problems through developing them into organizational fields. Leading professional groups and leading organizational fields are a challenge. Educating people to the learning and understanding of the fields presented, may act as a catalyst in creating a positive organizational behavior and ‘results driven’ activities.
Copyright: Robert (Bob) Gurney, PhD