Forsaking an Organization in Favor of Another: Judgment Change in an Occupational Community

Abstract

Understanding how occupations change their judgments about organizations has important consequences for occupations themselves, organizations, and ultimately for institutional change. Collectively held judgments about the value of specific organizational forms are difficult to change because occupations share normative understandings about what is good practice and discriminate across organizations based on this knowledge. Given the difficulty of changing collectively held judgments in occupational communities, the question asked in this article is: How does normative judgment change about organizations develop within an occupational community? We investigate how judgement change occurs in an occupational community in the context of the television broadcasting sector in South Korea. We study how producers in public broadcasters changed their respective judgments about public broadcasters and new commercial broadcasters. Producers found expressing judgment change difficult initially, yet judgment change among more experienced producers enabled it to spread among rank-and-file producers, ultimately leading to an “exodus” of producers from public broadcasters. Findings suggest that occupational members at different stages of their careers play distinct roles in bringing about collective judgment change in occupations. Our study highlights the importance of normative judgments by expert occupations as an impactful means by which occupations can withdraw cooperation or sever their relationship with organizations. The article also contributes to the study of occupational communities in creative industries.