Professionals' Identity Responses to a Regulatory Change Impacting the Nature of a Profession

Abstract

Despite calls to understand the micro-foundation of institutional theory and to understand how professional identity change relates to the broader macro context (e.g., Lok, 2010; Lepisto, Crosina and Pratt, forthcoming); exploration of the link between a field-level institutional change and the individual professionals' identity responses within the field remains. For this dissertation, I conducted an inductive qualitative study of French veterinarians and their reactions to "the Service Directive", a European Union regulation that re-categorizes veterinarians as "service providers" from "healthcare professionals." Drawing on interviews with practicing veterinarians, leaders of the field, observations, and archival data, my dissertation advances our understanding of professionals' responses to an institutional change which can potentially redefine what their profession is. My findings suggest that professionals negotiate an institutional change (in this case, the Service Directive) at the professional level before its formal implementation and before individual professionals within their organization engaged in any form of response. My dissertation introduces a model centered on understanding how veterinarians responded to this change at the individual level (and more particularly, in terms of identity) within their organization. This model suggests that individual professionals perceive the institutional regulatory change in hopeful, fearful or ambivalent manners. I found that these perceptions are influenced by professionals' work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation. Further, I found that these perceptions lead to different types of identity responses: identity expansion, identity maintenance, giving up a possible self, and de-emphasizing an existing identity. My research enriches emerging perspectives on identity responses to an institutional change by pointing out various identity responses and tying them to the perceptions of an institutional change. My research further suggests that such a change can be perceived as an opportunity, as a threat, or both, not solely as a threat. Furthermore, my dissertation introduces the notions of orientation (work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation) as key to the processing of an institutional trigger. Finally, it calls attention to an emotional processing of the institutional trigger.