Page 115 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

3. (Re)Negotiating Service Design 103
3.2. Theory
3.2.1. Constructing an occupational mandate
Occupations evolve constantly. Triggers for occupations to emerge and change include internal triggers, such as through versatile framing of change opportunities (Howard-Grenville et al. 2017), and external triggers, among which the introduction of new technologies, vacuums left by other occupations or the hiving off dirty work (Bucher & Strauss 1961; Hughes 1984; Huising 2015; Fayard et al. 2017; Zetka 2003). Further, existing research showed that all emergent occupations develop in similar stages, including finding like-minded colleagues, gaining occupational mandate for activities and ‘legitimizing and solidifying the jurisdiction’ (Fayard et al. 2017; Bucher 1988), and the workplace is a suitable setting to study these processes of emergence (Abbott 1988; Bechky 2011).
Scholars showed that occupations can ‘solidify and legitimize juris- diction’ - “the link between a profession and its work” (Bechky 2003: 720) through discursive, material or political strategies. To begin with, occupa- tional members can make jurisdictional claims by using opaque and formal knowledge (Abbott 1988; Alvesson & Robertson 2006; Foucault 1989). For example, by talking in complex and conceptual terms that are specific to their occupation, occupational members can encourage others to grant them authority over certain activities while discouraging others to ques- tion their expertise (Hughes 1958; Power 1997; Lawrence 2004). Another way for occupations to strengthen jurisdictions is to use institutional vocabularies (Suddaby & Greenwood 2004). Further, research suggests that jurisdictions can solidify through material practices. In her study, Bechky (2003) for example showed how engineers at a manufacturing firm used artifacts like drawings and machines to demonstrate the superiority of their knowledge and enhance their professional power in the workplace vis a vis the occupations of technicians and assemblers involved in similar work activities. Finally, occupational members can strengthen and expand their jurisdiction by formal political strategies. Occupational members can lobby for changes in the law (Bechky, 2011), exert control over legislation, form associations and control membership (Kronus 1976; Begun & Lippin- cott 1987; Halpern 1992; Kipping & Saint-Martin 2005; Starr 1982).
For an occupation to emerge, occupational members do not only need to solidify their jurisdiction but also develop an occupational mandate. An occupational mandate is a sort of ‘license’ that helps occupational members to find common ground with respect to work and to be able to differen- tiate them from other occupations, involved in similar task domains and to