The theory of collegiality and its relevance for understanding professions and knowledge intensive organization

Emmanuel Lazega (1)

1 CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS)

When such tasks are carried out by collective actors (such as professional committees or workgroups), cooperation and mutual adjustments by these actors are not accounted for by models such as Weberian bureaucracy. Instead of weakening the concept of bureaucracy - as did the sociology of organizations during the past century - I would like to argue that two conflicting trends currently take place in societies where the knowledge economy accounts for an increasing part of production and growth. The first trend is simply the continuation of Weberian rationalization through bureaucratisation. The second trend is another kind of rationalization through collegiality and its particularistic social processes. I assume that understanding this second trend provides insights into modern professions since their practice seems to become more collective and organizational - with the further loss of independence that comes attached. Competition between the two trends characterizes an increasingly large area of production, as it becomes knowledge-intensive.The purpose of this paper is not to describe the relationship between the two trends (...).

Domains: Sociology

Emmanuel Lazega. The theory of collegiality and its relevance for understanding professions and knowledge intensive organization. Klatetzky Thomas, Tacke Veronika. Organisation und Profession, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp.221-251, 2005. ⟨hal-01030835⟩