IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v329y2023ics0277953623003891.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reconfigured professional purpose in times of crisis: Experiences of frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Rodriguez, Jenny K.
  • Procter, Stephen
  • Perez Arrau, Gregorio

Abstract

How is professional purpose impacted in the context of a crisis? Building on discussions about professional purpose and identity, the paper explores how the understanding that professionals have about the framing, scope of functioning and aims of their profession is impacted during a time of crisis. The paper draws on interviews with 41 kinesiologists working at an accidents & emergencies (A&E) hospital in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper shows professional purpose as a fluid, situated notion that gets re-shaped in light of contextual features. In the face of new and changing demands during times of crisis, professionals reconfigure their professional purpose to take advantage of the opportunities available. This reconfiguration takes place in response to the external context of the profession (its positioning in the public domain) and the internal relational context of the profession (its positioning with other professionals). The paper suggests a research agenda to develop a processual, situated approach to the interrogation of professional purpose to embed contextual features in scholarship in this area.

Suggested Citation

  • Rodriguez, Jenny K. & Procter, Stephen & Perez Arrau, Gregorio, 2023. "Reconfigured professional purpose in times of crisis: Experiences of frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:329:y:2023:i:c:s0277953623003891
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953623003891
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116032?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yan Liu & Long Lam & Raymond Loi, 2014. "Examining professionals’ identification in the workplace: The roles of organizational prestige, work-unit prestige, and professional status," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 789-810, September.
    2. Rosoff, Stephen M. & Leone, Matthew C., 1991. "The public prestige of medical specialties: Overviews and undercurrents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 321-326, January.
    3. J. Michelle Brock & Andreas Lange & Kenneth L. Leonard, 2016. "Generosity and Prosocial Behavior in Healthcare Provision: Evidence from the Laboratory and Field," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(1), pages 133-162.
    4. Luisa Abad González & Juan Antonio Flores-Martos & Carmen Cipriano-Crespo & Montserrat Pulido-Fuentes, 2021. "Strengths and Weaknesses of Healthcare Professionals’ Identity during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study within the Spanish Context," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-15, January.
    5. Chiu‐Ping Hsu & Chia‐Wen Chang & Heng‐Chiang Huang & Chi‐Yun Chiang, 2011. "The relationships among social capital, organisational commitment and customer‐oriented prosocial behaviour of hospital nurses," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(9‐10), pages 1383-1392, May.
    6. Mats Alvesson & Hugh Willmott, 2002. "Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 619-644, July.
    7. Album, Dag & Westin, Steinar, 2008. "Do diseases have a prestige hierarchy? A survey among physicians and medical students," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 182-188, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Polat, Ayşe & Demircioğlu, Zübeyde & Küçükali, Hüseyin, 2024. "Are we heroes or couriers? A phenomenological study on reappropriation of professional subjectivity and agency among health professionals during COVID-19 contact tracing in Türkiye," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Creed, Peter A. & Searle, Judy & Rogers, Mary E., 2010. "Medical specialty prestige and lifestyle preferences for medical students," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1084-1088, September.
    2. Johannessen, Lars E.F., 2014. "The narrative (re)production of prestige: How neurosurgeons teach medical students to valorise diseases," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 85-91.
    3. Grue, Jan & Johannessen, Lars E.F. & Rasmussen, Erik Fossan, 2015. "Prestige rankings of chronic diseases and disabilities. A survey among professionals in the disability field," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 180-186.
    4. Eveline Bruijn & Gail Whiteman, 2010. "That Which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work by Local Indigenous ‘Stakeholders’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 479-495, October.
    5. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    6. Minbaeva, Dana & Rabbiosi, Larissa & Stahl, Günter K., 2018. "Not walking the talk? How host country cultural orientations may buffer the damage of corporate values’ misalignment in multinational corporations," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 880-895.
    7. Elaine Kelly & Isabel Stockton, 2024. "A senior doctor like me: Gender match and occupational choice," IFS Working Papers W24/11, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    8. Yves Gendron & Laura F. Spira, 2009. "What Went Wrong? The Downfall of Arthur Andersen and the Construction of Controllability Boundaries Surrounding Financial Auditing," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 987-1027, December.
    9. Joseph Olita Omekede & Dr. Joseph Musungu & Dr. Felix Orina, 2022. "Intrafemale Civility: Sisterhood in Ellen Sirleaf’s “This Child Will Be Greatâ€," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(8), pages 447-453, August.
    10. Sörgärde, Nadja, 2020. "Story-dismantling, story-meandering, and story-confirming: Organizational identity work in times of public disgrace," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3).
    11. Jeffrey S. Bednar & Benjamin M. Galvin & Blake E. Ashforth & Ella Hafermalz, 2020. "Putting Identification in Motion: A Dynamic View of Organizational Identification," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 200-222, January.
    12. Lambert Jerman & Julien Raone, 2014. "Dompter La Verite Dans L'Organisation : La Subjectivation Comme Production De L'Animal Confessant," Post-Print hal-01899765, HAL.
    13. Duanyi Yang, 2020. "Why Don’t They Complain? The Social Determinants of Chinese Migrant Workers’ Grievance Behaviors," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 73(2), pages 366-392, March.
    14. Marie LEMAIRE, 2018. ""It's a Bible!" Unexpected use, misuse and non-use of CSR standards among "activist" workers," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2018-08, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    15. Brett R. Smith & Amanda Lawson & Jessica Jones & Tim Holcomb & Aimee Minnich, 2022. "Trying to Serve Two Masters is Easy, Compared to Three: Identity Multiplicity Work by Christian Impact Investors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(4), pages 1053-1070, September.
    16. Mats Alvesson & Dan Kärreman, 2007. "Unraveling HRM: Identity, Ceremony, and Control in a Management Consulting Firm," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 711-723, August.
    17. Clare Leaver & Owen Ozier & Pieter Serneels & Andrew Zeitlin, 2021. "Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(7), pages 2213-2246, July.
    18. Malik, Tariq H., 2019. "Society-nature-technology (SNT) nexus: Institutional causes and cures of national morbidities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 491-503.
    19. den Nieuwenboer, N.A. & Kaptein, S.P., 2007. "Spiraling Down into Corruption: A Dynamic Analysis of the Social Identity Processes that Cause Corruption in Organizations to Grow," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-086-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    20. Jiayi Zhao & Karen Jones, 2017. "Women and Leadership in Higher Education in China: Discourse and the Discursive Construction of Identity," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:329:y:2023:i:c:s0277953623003891. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.