Page 116 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

104 Design Meets Business
execute tasks in exchange for “money, goods and services” (Hughes 1984: 287). An occupational mandate differs from a jurisdiction in that it does not refer to who can engage in certain work activities, but it is about creating a common agreement about ‘what and how work is ideally conducted’. Or as Nelsen & Barley (1997: 619) write: “members of the culture must acknowl- edge an activity as a form of work before anyone can meaningfully contest who shall perform it”.
The few studies that explore the construction of an occupational mandate (Fayard et al. 2017; Nelsen & Barley 1997) show that occupational mandates are constructed in workplace interactions rather than in public arenas, such as courts and schools. For occupational members to reach common agreement about their work, it is useful to develop a sense of soli- darity and loyalty (Fayard et al. 2017). Bucher (1988: 136) refers to this process of creating collective feelings of belonging as “discovering colleague- ship”. For example, scholars showed that it is important for occupational members to share a similar culture, or “a set of values, norms, and perspec- tives that apply to but extend beyond work related matters” (van Maanen & Barley 1984: 287). A shared culture can help to foster a sense of community and identity among occupational members, while at the same time helping occupations to differentiate from others. This is illustrated in the study of Nelsen and Barley (1997) who give an insightful account of how paid Emer- gency Medical Technicians (EMTs) create feelings of commonality through, among others, wearing a medical uniform, using formal medical language and promoting their work as a highly skilled activity. Another example is the work of Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky (2017) who explore how Service Designers differentiate themselves from other occupations who engage in similar work activities through enacting values in material practices. For example, different from product designers who often see themselves as the sole owner of design processes, and consultants who tend to accommodate to the needs of clients and integrate them in all phases of projects, Service Designers adhere to the value of ‘co-creation’ and include their clients at selected moments in design activities. Building on different empirical cases, these studies demonstrate that in order to understand the construction of an occupational mandate, it is useful to look beyond credentials, papers and formal barriers to entry, and explore interactions - what people say and do, and the symbols they use - in the workplace.
So far, most occupational scholars have explored the final stage of ‘legitimizing and solidifying the jurisdiction’. Less attention is paid to the construction of an occupational mandate. A reason for this focus in the literature can be that it is difficult to research occupations once they are emerging because they are often not yet organized as formal bodies such as