“After All, I am a Doctor”: The Role of Values in the Construction of Agency of Fertility Doctors

Abstract

In this article, we offer an analysis of the role of professional values in the agency of professional actors, which are recognized as key agents of institutional change. We explore this question by looking specifically at the role of French fertility doctors in relation to the debates around the reform of assisted medical procreation in France which is up for revision since 2018. Relying on an inductive study of forty-seven interviews, complemented by analysis of treatises written and published by doctors, public interviews in the press, and observations of meetings and conferences of practitioners publicly committed to promoting a change, we explore how the confrontation between their professional values and the realities of their practices created specific agentic capabilities and normative beliefs that can explain the strong implication of these doctors in institutional change. In doing so, we show how these agentic capabilities lay at the core of their professional identity and interact with professional interests such as competition and business. Our contributions demonstrate that an institutionalist perspective on professional agency offers the opportunity to re-establish the importance of normative elements in the agency of professional actors beyond the focus on jurisdictional conflict and competition.