Transforming the legal profession: an interview study of change managers in law

A lively debate progresses about change to the professions, including law, especially change in the form of managerialism. ‘Managerialism’ covers the methods and beliefs of managers within organisations, used to actively influence, evaluate, and ‘market’ professional work. But what about when that managerialism is change itself? How do we understand managerialism-as-change? This paper reports on an interview study with change managers, or ‘transformation leaders’ in the legal profession. Transformation leaders offer rich insights into the dynamics of professional change because they are incontrovertibly change agents. They are also themselves a form of managerial change as a new cadre of managers within the professions; managers with ‘hybrid’ identities whose legitimacy in professional settings is not assured. The findings presented include: the change leaders’ identities; the types of change being introduced; the constraints on and affordances for change in legal practices; and how change leaders secure, and sometimes struggle to secure, the authority needed to implement change. The concluding discussion highlights the study's contributions to our understanding of professional change and managerialism in the legal context – both what changes are being pursued and how they are materialising through certain ‘managerial’ goals, strategies, and the interactions of those with mixed identities and status.

Online Communities of Practice and Professional Change: a Three-Tier View of the Knowledge Embedding Process

<p>This interpretivist study, in the field of information Systems, investigates the process of transformative professional change using a knowledge management lens. The goal of the research was to understand how online communities of practice (CoPs) facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge. It was guided by the question: How do online CoPs facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge? This topic was of contemporary and strategic significance in New Zealand: The government had embarked on a strategy to transform teaching in NZ schools, aiming to leverage a major investment in IT infrastructure, using online CoPs to help embed a new paradigm of studentcentred, ICT-enriched learning at system level. There was, however, no research to suggest how this might occur. Despite the increasing use of online CoPs by organisations, and an expansion in the number of tools available for this purpose, there is little understanding of how online CoPs can facilitate knowledge transfer. The way in which knowledge embedding (deep transfer) occurs, and the role online CoPs may play in supporting this process, is particularly poorly understood. This is significant issue in this internet-rich era, when developing nations are aiming to cultivate knowledge economies. I conducted the research using a case research strategy, qualitative methods and an inductive process of theory generation. The research case was a national professional development programme for schools, with five CoP subunits: Four were regionally based school cluster CoPs and one was a distributed blogging community. (Membership of this community overlapped with three of the cluster CoPs.) Based on my analysis of data, and on feedback from participants, I found that three complementary mechanisms were operating simultaneously, facilitating the embedding of knowledge at meso, micro and macro levels. The result of my study is a threelevel explanatory theory. At the meso (school) level, knowledge embedding followed a six-stage cycle, with different activities and issues characterising each stage. Online CoPs played a different role at each stage. At the micro (individual) level, knowledge embedding was driven by teachers' crossings of multiple engagement spaces (communication contexts) in a polycontextual environment. Crossings drove personalisation and facilitated the linking of theory and practice, leading to deep individual understanding. At the macro level, the embedding of knowledge was driven by the brokering function of a middle layer community in a system of overlapping, tiered CoPs. Key roles were played by two kinds of knowledge brokers: connector-leaders and follower-feeders. All three embedding-facilitating mechanisms promoted five fundamental knowledge embedding processes: focusing, persuading, aligning, adapting, and owning (developing ownership).</p>

Online Communities of Practice and Professional Change: a Three-Tier View of the Knowledge Embedding Process

<p>This interpretivist study, in the field of information Systems, investigates the process of transformative professional change using a knowledge management lens. The goal of the research was to understand how online communities of practice (CoPs) facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge. It was guided by the question: How do online CoPs facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge? This topic was of contemporary and strategic significance in New Zealand: The government had embarked on a strategy to transform teaching in NZ schools, aiming to leverage a major investment in IT infrastructure, using online CoPs to help embed a new paradigm of studentcentred, ICT-enriched learning at system level. There was, however, no research to suggest how this might occur. Despite the increasing use of online CoPs by organisations, and an expansion in the number of tools available for this purpose, there is little understanding of how online CoPs can facilitate knowledge transfer. The way in which knowledge embedding (deep transfer) occurs, and the role online CoPs may play in supporting this process, is particularly poorly understood. This is significant issue in this internet-rich era, when developing nations are aiming to cultivate knowledge economies. I conducted the research using a case research strategy, qualitative methods and an inductive process of theory generation. The research case was a national professional development programme for schools, with five CoP subunits: Four were regionally based school cluster CoPs and one was a distributed blogging community. (Membership of this community overlapped with three of the cluster CoPs.) Based on my analysis of data, and on feedback from participants, I found that three complementary mechanisms were operating simultaneously, facilitating the embedding of knowledge at meso, micro and macro levels. The result of my study is a threelevel explanatory theory. At the meso (school) level, knowledge embedding followed a six-stage cycle, with different activities and issues characterising each stage. Online CoPs played a different role at each stage. At the micro (individual) level, knowledge embedding was driven by teachers' crossings of multiple engagement spaces (communication contexts) in a polycontextual environment. Crossings drove personalisation and facilitated the linking of theory and practice, leading to deep individual understanding. At the macro level, the embedding of knowledge was driven by the brokering function of a middle layer community in a system of overlapping, tiered CoPs. Key roles were played by two kinds of knowledge brokers: connector-leaders and follower-feeders. All three embedding-facilitating mechanisms promoted five fundamental knowledge embedding processes: focusing, persuading, aligning, adapting, and owning (developing ownership).</p>

The Covid-19 Learning Crisis as a Challenge and an Opportunity for Schools: An Evidence Review and Conceptual Synthesis of Research-Based Tools for Sustainable Change

This paper advances our understanding of how schools can become change agents capable of transforming local practice to address the challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. It presents a novel application of cultural-historical activity theory to reinterpret evidence on widespread learning loss and increasing educational inequities resulting from the pandemic, and to identify scalable transformative learning opportunities through reframing the crisis as a double stimulation. By reviewing evidence of the emerging educational landscape, we first develop a picture of the new ‘problem space’ upon which schools must act. We develop a problem space map to serve as the first stimulus to articulate local challenges. Integrating this problem space with research on professional change, we identify conceptual tools to capture learning gaps and implement pedagogic interventions at scale, in order to enhance schools’ agency in directly addressing the crisis. These tools can act as the second stimulus, enabling educators to address local challenges. We conclude by discussing the Covid-19 educational crisis as a unique stimulus for professional learning and outline the potential for durable shifts in educational thinking and practice beyond the pandemic. We argue that this unprecedented historic disruption can be harnessed as a transformative professional learning opportunity. In particular, we consider how research on professional change offers local, scalable interventions and tools that can support educators in preventing the new insights from ‘slipping away’ post-pandemic. Utilising the notions of boundaries and tool-mediated professional change, we examine the ways in which this disruption generates opportunities to envision alternative futures for equitable learning in school.

On Comparative Methodologies, or, How Professional Ecologies Vary

Based on the authors’ own research experiences, this essay discusses the potentials of a “cross-jurisdictional” comparative methodology in the sociology of professions, which aims to describe similarities and variations in patterns of inter-professional interaction across substantively different work domains. This approach, the essay shows, stands in contrast to two more prevalent comparative methodologies in the field, dubbed here “cross-national” and “intra-national,” respectively. Drawing on Andrew Abbott’s seminal framework, cross-jurisdictional comparisons refrain from abstracting professional groups from their wider ecologies of inter-professional relations. On this basis, and invoking the methodological suggestions of Monika Krause on qualitative comparisons, the essay spells out key axes of variation between contemporary professional jurisdictions and ecologies, including along the lines of post-national analysis. The essay ends by highlighting more general reasons as to why reflecting further on new comparative possibilities may at present constitute a key stake for the future of research on professional change.

Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

This paper presents the findings of the first empirical study of the experiences of young lawyers who have entered an increasingly uncertain profession following a highly competitive education and recruitment process. These ‘millennial lawyers’ are framed by a narrative of ‘difference’. This ‘difference’ is commonly articulated negatively and as a challenge to organisational and professional norms. However, our findings suggest a more complex reality. In its synthesis of work on structure and agency, with the temporal focus required by generational sociology, this paper advances an original approach to the analysis of organisational and professional change within contemporary legal practice. Drawing on new empirical research, it demonstrates that although our sample shares many field-level expectations, there is also considerable stress, unhappiness and discomfort. This is generated by a complex interaction between the lawyers’ expectations of practice, and the structuring properties of the field. Thus, the capacity for organisational and professional change is more comprehensively understood within a temporal frame. This paper challenges academic and professional paradigms of generational change within the legal field. It concludes with recommendations for legal educators and the profession which foreground the complexity of millennial lawyers’ expectations of practice.

P891Psycho-social impact of predictive genetic testing in hereditary heart diseases (PREDICT Study)

Introduction Hereditary heart diseases are most often characterized by autosomal dominant inheritance and delayed cardiac expression. Predictive genetic testing is offered to asymptomatic relatives to allow targeted medical care with early therapeutics in order to reduce the risk of complications. Psychological issues and socio-professional impact of predictive testing are complex and have been poorly studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychological and socio-professional impact of predictive genetic testing in hereditary heart diseases through a prospective and retrospective study. Patients and methods This multicentric French study involved 20 expert centers in hereditary heart diseases. We included 517 adult relatives (42.3±16.7 years, 60.6% females) who performed predictive genetic testing (prospective study: N=264, retrospective study: N=253). The opinion and experience were collected via auto-questionnaires, at various moments in the prospective study, with different items and validated scales (STAI: score for anxiety and IES: impact of event). Results In the prospective study, family history was characterized by cardiomyopathy (88.4%) and channelopathies (11.6%). The main motivations for performing the test were: “to remove doubt” (65.3%), “for children” (64.0%), “to benefit from medical supervision” (34.9%). A mutation was present in 39.4% of relatives. No regret was expressed after testing (only 2.3% regrets). The result did not lead to a socio-professional change or family relationship change in 60.7%. Among those who had a change, it was perceived as unfavorable for only 3%. A change in socio-professional status and/or family relationship was mainly related to the result of genetic testing (p<0.0001). The level of anxiety (STAI scale) increased before the test result but then decreased and returned to baseline. Subjects with depression history were more likely to develop anxiety at long term after multivariate analyses (p=0.004). Quite similar results were observed in the retrospective study. Conclusions Our results show that contrary to a widespread opinion, the medical benefit was not the main motivation for predictive genetic testing. In most cases, no or marginal adverse psychological and socio-professional impact of genetic testing was observed when performed by a team expert in predictive testing. However careful management is required to identify and manage subjects at risk for increased anxiety or socio-professional change.

Persuasive speech in multi-professional change facilitation meetings

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe persuasive speech and discourses in multi-professional organizational change facilitation meetings at a hospital through rhetorical discourse analysis. Previous research has often considered organizational change to be a managerial issue, with other employees given the rather passive role of implementators. This study takes an alternative approach in assuming that organizational change could benefit by involving those who are most familiar with the tasks to be changed. Design/methodology/approach The study employed a qualitative, case study approach and focused on the construction of a hospitalist model within multi-professional change facilitation meetings. Eight videos of these multi-professional change facilitation meetings – which occurred between January and September 2017 – were observed and the material was analyzed by rhetorical discourse analysis. An average of 10–20 actors from different professional groups participated in the meetings. The change actors comprised physicians, nursing staff and nursing managers, along with a secretary and hospitalist. The meetings were conducted by a change facilitator. Findings The persuasive speech in the analyzed organizational change meetings occurred within five distinct discourses: constructing the change together, positive feedback, strategic change in speech, patient perspective and driving change. The content of these discourses revealed topics that are relevant to persuading members of healthcare organizations to adopt a planned change. Originality/value The presented research provides new knowledge about how persuasive speech is used in organizational change and describes the discourses in which persuasive speech is used in a healthcare context.