A jurisdiction “is the link between a profession and its work” ( , , p. 20 (). The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor. University of Chicago Press. ) . A profession controls a jurisdiction when it holds exclusive rights to interpret and respond to the needs of its clients in a given work domain ( , (). Lords of the Dance: Professionals as Institutional Agents. Organization Studies, 29(2). 219–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607088151 ; , (). Men and Their Work. Quid Pro, LLC. ) . Abundant research has focused on inter-profession competition for control over 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 ) . But collective actors other than rival professions can also challenge a profession’s jurisdictional control and engage in struggles over the boundaries and content of professionals’ work. Most research on these struggles, termed jurisdictional contestation, focuses on regulators of professions or managers of organizations in which professionals work ( & , & (). The Impact of Institutional Forces Upon Knowledge Sharing in the UK NHS: The Triumph of Professional Power and the Inconsistency of Policy. Public Administration, 84(1). 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0033-3298.2006.00491.x ; , (). Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in Surgery. American Journal of Sociology, 115(3). 657–711. https://doi.org/10.1086/603535 ) . Indeed, the negotiated nature of the regulatory bargain between states and professions to define legal boundaries around the work over which a profession’s members are granted jurisdictional control has long been at the core of sociological research on professions ( , (). The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor. University of Chicago Press. ; , & al., , & (). Transnational Regulation of Professional Services: Governance Dynamics of Field Level Organizational Change. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2269966 ) .

In addition to regulators, organizational studies of professions have focused extensively on managers as key contestants of professionals’ jurisdictional control ( , (). Managerial Strategies of Domination. Power in Soft Bureaucracies. Organization Studies, 21(1). 141–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840600211001 ; , & al., , & (). The new managerialism and public service professions: change in health, social services, and housing. Palgrave Macmillan. ) . This research has theorized how reform attempts by regulators and managers typically encounter resistance from profession ( , & al., , , , & (). Institutional Work to Maintain Professional Power: Recreating the Model of Medical Professionalism. Organization Studies, 33(7). 937–962. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840612445116 ) and documented strategies used by each side to achieve settlements in their favour [ ( , (). Organization Contra Organizations: Professions and Organizational Change in the United Kingdom. Organization Studies, 17(4). 599–621. https://doi.org/10.1177/017084069601700403 ; , (). Managerial Strategies of Domination. Power in Soft Bureaucracies. Organization Studies, 21(1). 141–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840600211001 ) . Stated motivations for reform attempts vary widely, including to improve interprofessional collaboration ( , & al., , , & (). Contestation about Collaboration: Discursive Boundary Work among Professions. Organization Studies, 37(4). 497–522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840615622067 ) ; redistribute tasks to lower-status occupations ( , & al., , & (). Legitimizing a New Role: Small Wins and Microprocesses of Change. Academy of Management Journal, 49(5). 977–998. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.22798178 ) ; and improve service to clients ( , (). Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in Surgery. American Journal of Sociology, 115(3). 657–711. https://doi.org/10.1086/603535 ) . But at the core of each of attempt is a desired change to established professional practices ( , (). Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in Surgery. American Journal of Sociology, 115(3). 657–711. https://doi.org/10.1086/603535 ) . A key theme in much of this work is knowledge―its nature and relevance to professionals’ work as well as who possesses it. Outcomes of struggles over knowledge can profoundly alter a profession’s work domain. For example, ( & , & (). 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 ) studied how medical professionals reacted to UK hospital managers’ efforts to implement knowledge management techniques to enhance organizational learning around patient safety, which threatened physicians’ professional autonomy. They found that physicians adopted a range of responses that preserved their autonomy but altered the content of their work―and the requisite knowledge to do it―in ways that blurred the boundaries between professional and managerial ways of organizing work.

A profession uses expert knowledge—a system of abstractions guiding practical techniques and presumed to be exclusively held by the profession’s credentialed member ( , (). Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5958556.html ) —to legitimize its jurisdictional control over a work domain. Research on

professions has highlighted that, to maintain jurisdictional control, a profession must convince different audiences—including government regulators who oversee the profession’s activities, managers of organizations in professionals work, and the profession’s clients—that its expert knowledge can be trusted to inform problem diagnosis, solution prescription, and services rendered in ways that address clients’ needs ( , & al., , & (). Professional Occupations and Organizations (1). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108804318/type/element ; , (). The crisis of expertise. Polity. ) . Thus, a profession and its clients are interdependent. Clients depend on the profession to address their needs, while the profession depends on clients’ trust in its expert knowledge to maintain jurisdictional control over its work domain ( , (). To Hive or to Hold? Producing Professional Authority through Scut Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60(2). 263–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839214560743 ; & , & (). Trust as a Social Reality. Social Forces, 63(4). 967. https://doi.org/10.2307/2578601 ) .

Despite the centrality of clients to professionals’ work, their role in jurisdictional contestation has remained remarkably overlooked ( , & al., , p. 211 , & (). 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 ) . This gap represents an important matter of concern for organizational theorists in light of the ongoing “crisis of expertise” ( , (). The crisis of expertise. Polity. ) , which involves in many instances a rejection of professionals’ work by clients ( , (). Patient groups and health movements. InHackett, E., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M. & Wajcman, J. (Eds.), The handbook of science and technology studies. (3rd ed). MIT Press : Published in cooperation with the Society for the Social Studies of Science. ) . Additionally, there is a growing prominence of client engagement in initiatives to address persistent and seemingly intractable problems in professional organizations and systems ( , & al., , & (). Organizational Science and Health Care. Academy of Management Annals, 15(2). 537–576. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2019.0115 ) ; ( , & al., , , & (). Growing a Healthy Ecosystem for Patient and Citizen Partnerships. Healthcare Quarterly, 21(SP). 73–77. https://doi.org/10.12927/hcq.2018.25634 ; , (). “Dancing on Hot Coals”: How Emotion Work Facilitates Collective Sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 60(2). 642–670. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0101 ; , & al., , & (). How Nascent Occupations Construct a Mandate: The Case of Service Designers’ Ethos. Administrative Science Quarterly, 62(2). 270–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216665805 ) . Scholars are increasingly recognizing that profession-client relations merit more attention, and recent research has investigated how professionals engage clients to maintain or expand their jurisdictional control ( & , & (). 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 ) , in press; ( & , & (). Feeling Rule Management and Relational Authority: Fostering patient compliance in palliative care consultations. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01708406221081625 ) , in-press; ( , (). To Hive or to Hold? Producing Professional Authority through Scut Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60(2). 263–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839214560743 ) . But a focus on clients themselves as jurisdictional contestants remains elusive. We therefore theorize the processes leading clients to participate in jurisdictional contestation, and the specific ways in which they do so.