Professions are deeply implicated in the maintenance of established societal institutions through their ongoing jurisdictional control, which refers to their members’ monopolistic autonomy over their work ( , (). Theory and the Professions. 64 Indiana Law Journal 423 (1989), 64(3). Retrieved from https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol64/iss3/1 ; , (). Lords of the Dance: Professionals as Institutional Agents. Organization Studies, 29(2). 219–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607088151 ) . Over three decades of research inspired by ( , (). The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor. University of Chicago Press. ) System of Professions has focused on how inter-profession struggles for this control―jurisdictional competition―shapes continuity and change in work domains ( , & al., , , , , & (). Boundary Work among Groups, Occupations, and Organizations: From Cartography to Process. Academy of Management Annals, 13(2). 704–736. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2017.0089 ) . In addition to rival professions, other types of collective actors can shape continuity and change by challenging a profession’s jurisdictional control and engaging in struggles―jurisdictional contestation―over the boundaries and content of professionals’ work ( , (). Organization Contra Organizations: Professions and Organizational Change in the United Kingdom. Organization Studies, 17(4). 599–621. https://doi.org/10.1177/017084069601700403 ) . Such contestation is well documented and theorized in organizational studies of how professionals are regulated ( , & al., , & (). Transnational Regulation of Professional Services: Governance Dynamics of Field Level Organizational Change. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2269966 ) and managed ( , & al., , & (). The new managerialism and public service professions: change in health, social services, and housing. Palgrave Macmillan. ) . Challenges to a profession’s jurisdictional control from types of actors other than regulators and managers of organizations in which professionals work have received much less attention, however. In our polarized contemporary times where professions and other societal institutions are intensely contested by social movements ( , (). The revolt of the public and the crisis of authority in the new millennium (Second edition). Stripe Press. ) , a shift in focus towards these actors is increasingly needed ( , (). The crisis of expertise. Polity. ) . Our paper addresses this gap.

We draw upon research adopting the relational perspective on professions, which focuses on how professions seek the support of different audiences to maintain their jurisdictional control ( , & al., , & (). Three Lenses on Occupations and Professions in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1). 183–244. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2016.1120962 ; , (). For a Sociology of Expertise: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic. American Journal of Sociology, 118(4). 863–907. https://doi.org/10.1086/668448 ) . It highlights that, to defend its jurisdictional control from contestation, a profession needs to secure and preserve the trust of various audiences in its expert knowledge ( , & al., , & (). Professional Occupations and Organizations (1). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108804318/type/element ; , & al., , & (). Three Lenses on Occupations and Professions in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1). 183–244. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2016.1120962 ; , (). Introduction: Trust and Professionalism: Challenges and Occupational Changes. Current Sociology, 54(4). 515–531. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392106065083 ) . Because the importance of clients as such an audience is increasingly noted ( & , & (). The Role of Discernment and Modulation in Enacting Occupational Values: How Career Advising Professionals Navigate Tensions with Clients. Retrieved from http://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amj.2020.1014 ; , (). To Hive or to Hold? Producing Professional Authority through Scut Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60(2). 263–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839214560743 ; , (). The crisis of expertise. Polity. ) , we focus on constestation of a profession’s jurisdiction driven by clients’ mistrust in the profession’s expert knowledge. To do so, we use ( & , & (). A theory of fields (First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback). Oxford University Press. ) conflict-oriented theory of fields. Specifically, we theorize an episode of jurisdictional contestation as a framing contest ( , (). Framing Contests: Strategy Making under Uncertainty. Organization Science, 19(5). 729–752. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/25146214 ) between two collective actors in which a client-led social movement acts as challenger, and a profession as incumbent. The social movement has emerged from a marginalized community seeking emancipation from dependency on the profession whose expert knowledge constructs community members as flawed. Based on the experiential knowledge collectively held by its adherents, the social movement disrupts the profession’s jurisdictional control, while the profession tries to preserve trust in its expert knowledge. These collective actors engage in adversarial framing efforts to promote their opposing institutional projects to individual clients of the profession.

Because published research and first-hand accounts describe episodes of jurisdictional contestation as deeply emotional ( , (). Emotions and identity in women’s self-help movements. InStryker, S., Owens, T. & White, R. (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements.. University of Minnesota Press. ; , (). Homosexuality and American psychiatry: the politics of diagnosis. Princeton University Press. ) , we use literature on how emotions shape people’s participation in contested social arrangements ( & , & (). People, Actors, and the Humanizing of Institutional Theory. Journal of Management Studies, 57(4). 873–884. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12559 ; , & al., , , & (). Emotions in Organization Theory (1). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108628051/type/element ; , (). Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research. Annual Review of Sociology, 37(1). 285–303. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150015 ) . We put a specific constellation of four emotions―pride, anger, shame, and fear (as well as ambivalence when these emotions overlap in conflicting ways)―at the core of our theorizing because the emancipation of members of marginalized identity movements is theorized as an emotional process in which participants move through experiences of fear and anger to convert their shame of individual deviance into a pride of collective affirmation ( & , & (). From shame to pride in identity politics. InStryker, S., Owens, T. & White, R. (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements.. University of Minnesota Press. ) . Further, this specific constellation of emotions is described in many studies of social movements ( , (). Moving politics: emotion and act up’s fight against AIDS. The University of Chicago Press. ; , & al., , & (). Creating Emotional Resonance: Interpersonal Emotion Work and Motivational Framing in a Transgender Community. Social Problems, 51(1). 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2004.51.1.61 ; , (). Homosexuality and American psychiatry: the politics of diagnosis. Princeton University Press. ) . Building on these ideas, our model explains how, through their adversarial framing efforts, a social movement and a profession each seek to evoke these specific emotions in particular ways to shape the actions of clients in their favor.

Efforts to evoke specific emotions do not always achieve intended effects, however. We therefore draw upon the literature on emotional resonance, which highlights how felt emotions shape a person’s participation in social life ( , (). The Mind and Heart of Resonance: The Role of Cognition and Emotions in Frame Effectiveness. Journal of Management Studies, 54(5). 711–738. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org//a/bla/jomstd/v54y2017i5p711-738.html ; , (). Emotional Resonance, Social Location, and Strategic Framing. Sociological Focus, 37(3). 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2004.10571242 ) . We apply these insights to the context of a profession whose jurisdictional control is being disrupted by a social movement. Specifically, we argue that a specific constellation of emotional experiences leads individual clients to support one or both framing contestants, to varying degrees, in specific ways. We theorize five modes of client participation in jurisdictional contestation, which we term escape, opposition, accommodation, acquiescence, and stewardship, and describe how a client enacting each mode seeks to shape established arrangements towards change or continuity. We develop our model by drawing on empirical examples from health-related professions, which have faced numerous historical and recent episodes of jurisdictional contestation; but we also discuss its generalizability to other work domains and other stakeholders.

With our model, we make several contributions to the literature on professions. First, by theorizing the participation of individual clients in an episode of jurisdictional contestation as resulting from a framing contest between a challenger social movement and an incumbent profession, our model highlights that the authoritative nature of a profession’s expert knowledge can be countered by the experiential knowledge collectively held by movement adherents. In this way, we complement existing research on jurisdictional contestation, which tends to focus on regulators and managers as the main challengers. Whereas these actors use formal authority to challenge a profession and redefine the boundaries and content of its work ( & , & (). Managing Expert Knowledge: Organizational Challenges and Managerial Futures for the UK Medical Profession. Organization Studies, 30(7). 755–778. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840609104819 ) , our model shows how a social movement can use an alternative epistemic basis to draw individual clients into a collective challenge to a profession’s jurisdiction.

Second, we consider the role of multiple, intertwined social emotions in this process. Rather than focusing on a singular emotion ( & , & (). The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine. Organization Studies, 39(4). 445–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617709306 ) , we focus on pride, anger, shame, and fear as a constellation and illustrate how each side in the movement-profession framing contest seeks to evoke these emotions in individual clients, but in different ways and to different ends. Finally, we introduce a typology of five modes of client participation in jurisdictional contestation that highlights how specific configurations of emotional resonance lead an individual client exposed to a framing contest to enact a particular mode. By doing so, we bridge the collective and individual levels of analysis while laying the foundation for future research into synergies and tensions between clientele segments enacting different modes.