Dissertation defense announcement, Laure Lelasseux

PhD Candidate Laure Lelasseux, Management and Human Resources.

We are happy to announce PhD Candidate Laure Lelasseux's dissertation defense on June 29, 2.30pm.

Specialization: Management and Human Resources.

Subject: Professions and institutional change Keywords: Professions, Institutional change, Professional agency, Identity, Emotions. 

Supervisor: Roxana Barbulescu Associate Professor, HEC Paris 

Abstract: Overall, in my dissertation, I aimed at answering the following question: What constitutes, drives, and structures professional agency in relation to institutions? While research has already clearly established the importance of professions and professionals as preeminent actors of institutional change (Muzio et al., 2013; Scott, 2008), I demonstrate that professional agency bears specificities that differentiate it from the agency of other actors. Throughout my three chapters, I identified three types of specificities that should be taken into account in studies of professions and professionals as agents of institutional change. First, professional agency is inscribed within local practices, which are sites of experience of institutional contradictions. I consider that in order to be fully understood, professional agency must be articulated through professional identity (Chapter 1). Additionally, connecting agency and professional identity opens ways to integrate the role of emotions in the study of professions, as causal mechanisms for professional action (Chapter 3). Last, professional agency is influenced by professions’ embeddedness in permanent interprofessional competitions (Abbott, 1988; Anteby, 2010; Barley, 1986; Nelsen & Barley, 1997). This implies that the process of taking part in regulatory agency is not only dependent on the needs of the professions to secure their own interests but also on their position in the system of professions (Abbott, 1988), (Chapter 2).

Contact for more information: dauvergne@hec.fr