Lords of the Dance: Professionals as Institutional Agents
Open accessAbstract
More so than other types of social actors, the professions in modern society have assumed leading roles in the creation and tending of institutions. They are the preeminent institutional agents of our time. Different professions work in various ways: some attempt to create general cultural-cognitive frameworks; others to devise normative prescriptions to guide behavior; and still others to exercise coercive authority. Also, individual professionals assume varying roles within their professional community: some concentrate on devising and testing general principles, others transport these ideas to varying communities; and still others work to apply the principles to individual cases. Professions themselves adhere to an institutional model, but this model has undergone important changes over time.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A profession controls a jurisdiction when it holds exclusive rights to interpret and respond to the needs of its clients, the latter being defined as the recipients of professional work in a given work domain.
“A profession controls a jurisdiction when it holds exclusive rights to interpret and respond to the needs of its clients, with the latter being defined as the recipients of professional work in a given work domain (Bouchard et al., 2023, pp. 3-4;Scott, 2008).”
From The AI of the Beholder: Intra‐Professional Sensemaking of an Epistemic Technology (2025) · cites this paper as Scott, 2008
Intra-professional variations in sensemaking responses to AI provide a counterpoint to the more uniform pursuit of the profession's institutional goals.
“These intra-professional variations in sensemaking responses to AI also provide a counterpoint to the more uniform pursuit of the profession's institutional goals as outlined in Scott (2008) and Goto (2022).”
From The AI of the Beholder: Intra‐Professional Sensemaking of an Epistemic Technology (2025) · cites this paper as Scott (2008)
Different types of service relations may be activating professional roles, which helps account for the variations across intra-professional segments observed in the study.
“This helps to account for the variations across intra-professional segments observed in our study where, echoing Scott's (2008) account, different types of service relations may be activating professional roles.”
From The AI of the Beholder: Intra‐Professional Sensemaking of an Epistemic Technology (2025) · cites this paper as Scott's (2008)
Cites
The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor
Abbott, A. (1988) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226189666.001.0001 · Cited by 7,733 · see citing works
Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis
Pierson, P. (2004) · doi:10.1515/9781400841080 · Cited by 4,957 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective
Hinings, B., Gegenhuber, T., & Greenwood, R. (2018) · Information and Organization · doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2018.02.004 · Cited by 1,537 · see citing works
Theory‐Driven Perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Business and Management
Brown, O., Davison, R. M., Decker, S., Ellis, D. A., Faulconbridge, J., Gore, J., Greenwood, M., Islam, G., Lubinski, C., MacKenzie, N. G., et al. (2024) · British Journal of Management · doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12788 · Cited by 128 · see citing works
The AI of the Beholder: Intra‐Professional Sensemaking of an Epistemic Technology
Scarbrough, H., Chen, Y., & Patriotta, G. (2025) · Journal of Management Studies · doi:10.1111/joms.13065 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
de Vries, W. T., Bennett, R. M., & Zevenbergen, J. A. (2015) · Survey Review · doi:10.1179/1752270614y.0000000103 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Lombana, Y. (2021) · Genealogy · doi:10.3390/genealogy5010012 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Scott, W. R.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Scott, W. Richard
- Venue
- Organization Studies
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2008-02
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 219-238
- ISSN
- 0170-8406 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-3044
- OpenAlex
- W2159890500
- Cited by
- 814
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 50 · 2021: 59 · 2020: 43 · 2019: 61 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 81 · 2016: 62 · 2015: 59 · 2014: 53 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 38
- FWCI
- 48.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Organization Studies (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Education, sociology, and vocational training
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice
- Keywords
- professions, institutional agents, professional community, institutional change, professional authority, normative prescriptions, coercive authority, professional roles
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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