The institutionalization of expertise in university licensing |
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Authors: | Jason Owen-Smith |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, 500 S. State St., # 3001, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382, USA |
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Abstract: | This article draws on ethnographic data from a field leading university licensing office to document and explain a key step
in the process of institutionalization, the abstraction of standardized rules and procedures from idiosyncratic efforts to
collectively resolve pressing problems. I present and analyze cases where solutions to complicated quandaries become abstract
bits of professional knowledge and demonstrate that in some circumstances institutionalized practices can contribute to the
flexibility of expert reasoning and decision-making. In this setting, expertise is rationalized in response to institutional
tensions between academic and business approaches to deal making and professional tensions between relational and legal approaches
to negotiation. Abstraction and formalization contribute both to the convergence and stability of routines and to their improvisational
use in professional work. Close attention to these processes in a strategic research setting sheds new light on an interesting
tension in sociological theories of the professions while contributing to the development of a micro-level, social constructivist
institutional theory. |
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Keywords: | |
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