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臺大管理論叢
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27
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1
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145
Second, professional work is mobilized by organizations through cultivating their
professions in a specific context and influencing, either directly or indirectly, the
institutionalization project of other entities. Organizations professionalize themselves by
implementing various professional projects and legitimize themselves by creating positive
images of their professionals. A key component to a professional project is the ability to
expand the knowledge base and extend the scope of professional jurisdiction to generate new
expertise. As a result, professionals use their expertise and legitimacy to challenge the
incumbent order and define a new, open, and uncontested space. The efforts in professional
work result in institutionalization and field-level change.
Third, discourse work is performed by actors to construct, manifest, interpret, or
theorize particular meanings. Discourses are collections of interrelated texts presented in a
wide variety of forms, including written documents, media accounts, speeches, pictures, and
symbols. Actors can use these texts and portray themselves as storytellers, rhetors, and/or
educators, to generate discursive space, to distribute discourses, and further influence target
audiences. Thus, the essence of discourse is not only used for narrative, but it also has
agency to produce effects in the real world.
In this article, we make three contributions. First, we develop a multi-dimensional
theoretical model that identifies the micro-processes whereby strategic actors affect the
emergence of new institutional logic through the co-working of identity work, professional
work, and discourse work. This model combines identity image, professional competence,
and discursive recognition to explore how actors lead societal-level movement and
simultaneously observe how actors gradually develop routines and capabilities within
organizations.
Second, we reveal the performing techniques from each institutional work. Our case
shows that, for identity work, ITRI engaged in defining the problem, developing an agenda,
and restructuring organization positions to confirm the changing goal and self-narrative
identity. ITRI also implemented many professional projects, including networking with
professional communities to introduce and learn various service design approaches,
promoting foresights to become aware of unsatisfied needs or pain points in our life, and
cultivating blueprint-design capabilities to study service-related technologies. Finally, ITRI
also developed motivating stories, tropes, and pedagogies to promote service innovation. In
sum, these performing techniques collectively constitute a toolkit for actors looking to
change institutions.
A third and final contribution of our study concerns the form that change takes in the