New Technologies to Change Work: The Creation of Professional Identity and Legitimacy

Abstract

Studies of professionals in organizations have highlighted the importance of building and maintaining a mandate, and have proposed that many professionals face difficulties defining their differentiating skills and knowledge in the context of new technologies. In this paper, we examine how the influx of new technology and robots in particular, influence the professionalization struggles and strategies by the Danish medical laboratory scientists (lab scientists), which we term a marginalized professions due to its weak professional status in the healthcare field. We examine how the professional project and professional capital is constructed and put to work by the association of the lab scientists as we underscore the important yet overlooked role played by associations in shaping how new technology may be coupled to the professional project. Using a theorization inspired by Bourdieu in particular, we show how robots may pose both an opportunity and a ‘wicked’ problem for professionalization. We conclude by discussion these contributions and outlines options for future research.