Many actors claim to be experts of specialized knowledge, but for this expertise to be perceived as legitimate, other actors in the field must recognize them as authorities. Using an automated topic-model analysis of historical texts associated with the U.S. amateur radio operator movement between 1899 and 1927, we propose a process model for lay-expertise legitimation as an alternative to professionalization. While the professionalization account depends on specialized work, credentialing, and restrictive jurisdictional control by powerful field actors, our model emphasizes four mechanisms leading to lay-expert recognition: building an advanced collective competence, operating in an unrestricted public space, providing transformational social contributions, and expanding an original collective role identity. Our analysis shows how field expertise can be achieved outside of professional spaces by non-professionalized actors who master activities as a labor of love. Our work also reveals that lay-expertise recognition depends on the interplay between collective identities and collective competence among non-professional actors, and it addresses the shifting power dynamics when professional and non-professional actors coexist and strive for expertise recognition.
AbbottA.1988The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
AbbottA.1991“The future of professions: Occupation and expertise in the age of organization.” In TolbertP. S.BarleyS. R. (eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 8: 17–42. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
3.
AldrichH. E.FiolC. M.1994“Fools rush in? The institutional context of industry creation.” Academy of Management Review, 19: 645–670.
4.
AlvessonM.KärremanD.2007“Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development.” Academy of Management Review, 32: 1265–1281.
5.
AnandN.2005“Rituals.” In ArgyrisC.StarbuckW.CooperC. L., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management, 2d. ed, Organizational Behavior: 352–353. Oxford: Blackwell.
6.
AndrewsK. T.EdwardsB.2005“The organizational structure of local environmentalism.” Mobilization, 10: 213–234.
7.
AntebyM.2010“Markets, morals, and practices of trade: Jurisdictional disputes in the U.S. commerce in cadavers.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 55: 606–638.
8.
ArendtH.1958The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
BarleyS. R.1986“Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 31: 78–108.
10.
BarleyS. R.KundaG.2004Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
BarnouwE.1966A History of Broadcasting in the United States, vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press.
12.
BaronJ. N.DobbinF. R.JenningsP. D.1986“War and peace: The evolution of modern personnel administration in U.S. industry.” American Journal of Sociology, 92: 350–383.
13.
BartlettR. A.2007The World of Ham Radio, 1901–1950. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
14.
BaumJ. A. C.PowellW. W.1995“Cultivating an institutional ecology of organizations: Comment on Hannan, Carroll, Dundon, and Torres.” American Sociological Review, 60: 529–538.
15.
BeckerH. S.1982Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
16.
BerkG.SchneibergM.2005 “Varieties in capitalism, varieties of association: Collaborative learning in American industry, 1900 to 1925.” Politics and Society, 33: 46–87.
BrintS.1994In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
19.
CallonM.LascoumesP.BartheY.2009Acting in an Uncertain World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
20.
CarrollG. R.HannanM. T.2000The Demography of Corporations and Industries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
21.
ChenK. K.2009Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization behind the Burning Man Event. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
22.
ChenK. K.O’MahonyS.2009“Differentiating organizational boundaries.” In KingB. G.FelinT.WhettenD. A. (eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 26: Studying Differences between Organizations: Comparative Approaches to Organizational Research: 183–220. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.
23.
ChreimS.WilliamsB. E.HiningsC. R.2007“Interlevel influences on the reconstruction of professional role identity.” Academy of Management Journal, 50: 1515–1539.
24.
ClarkeA.1998Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and “the Problems of Sex.” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
25.
ClemensE. S.1996“Organizational form as frame: Collective identity and political strategy in the American labor movement, 1880–1920.” In McAdamD.McCarthyJ. D.ZaldM. N. (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings: 205–226. New York: Cambridge University Press.
26.
CollinsR.2004Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
27.
CreedW. E. D.DeJordyR.LokJ.2010“Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work.” Academy of Management Journal, 53: 1336–1364.
28.
CrozierM.FriedbergE.1980Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
29.
DahlanderL.O’MahonyS.2010“Progressing to the center: Coordinating project work.” Organization Science, 22: 961–979.
30.
DavidR. J.SineW. D.HavemanH. A.2013“Seizing opportunity in emerging fields: How institutional entrepreneurs legitimated the professional form of management consulting.” Organization Science, 24: 356–377.
31.
DeephouseD. L.SuchmanM.2008“Legitimacy in organizational institutionalism.” In GreenwoodR.OliverC.SahlinK.SuddabyR. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism: 49–77. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
32.
DelfantiA.2013Biohackers: The Politics of Open Science. London: Pluto Press.
33.
DenzinN.MettlinC.1968“Incomplete professionalization: The case of pharmacy.” Social Forces, 46: 375–381.
34.
DerberC.SchwartzW. A.MagrassY. R.1990Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order. New York: Oxford University Press.
35.
de SaussureF. 1959Course in General Linguistics. BallyC.SechehayeA.RiedlingerA., eds. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill.
36.
DeSotoC. B.1936Two Hundred Meters and Down: The Story of Amateur Radio. West Hartford, CT: American Radio Relay League, Inc.
37.
DiMaggioP. J.NagM.BleiD.2013“Exploiting affinities between topic modeling and the sociological perspective on culture: Application to newspaper coverage of U.S. government arts funding.” Poetics, 41: 570–606.
38.
DiMaggioP. J.PowellW. W.1983“The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.” American Sociological Review, 48: 147–160.
39.
DobbinF.SuttonJ. R.1998“The strength of a weak state: The rights revolution and the rise of human resources management divisions.” American Journal of Sociology, 104: 441–476.
40.
DouglasS. J.1987Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899–1922. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
41.
DunnM. B.JonesC.2010“Institutional logics and institutional pluralism: The contestation of care and science logics in medical education, 1967–2005.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 55: 114–149.
42.
FerlieE.FitzgeraldL.WoodM.HawkinsC.2005“The nonspread of innovations: The mediating role of professionals.” Academy of Management Journal, 48: 117–134.
43.
FineG. A.1992“The culture of production: Aesthetic choices and constraints in culinary work.” American Journal of Sociology, 97: 1268–1294.
44.
FineG. A.2004Everyday Genius: Self-taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
FoucaultM.1977Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.
47.
FreidsonE.1986a Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
48.
FreidsonE.1986b “Les professions artistiques comme défi à l’analyse sociologique.” Revue française de sociologie, 27: 431–443.
49.
FreidsonE.1994“Pourquoi l’art ne peut pas être une profession.” L’art de la recherche, Essais en l’honneur de Raymonde Moulin: 117–135.
50.
FreidsonE.2001Professionalism, the Third Logic: On the Practice of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
51.
FurnariS.2014“Interstitial spaces: Micro-interaction settings and the genesis of new practices between institutional fields.” Academy of Management Review, 39: 439–462.
52.
GelberS. M.1999Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
53.
GioiaD. A.CorleyK. G.HamiltonA. L.2013“Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology.” Organizational Research Methods, 16: 15–31.
54.
GlynnM. A.2008“Beyond constraint: How institutions enable identities.” In GreenwoodR.OliverC.SahlinK.SuddabyR. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism: 413–430. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
55.
GoodrickE.SalancikG. R.1996“Organizational discretion in responding to institutional practices: Hospitals and cesarean births.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 41: 1–28.
56.
GreenwoodR.SuddabyR.HiningsC. R.2002“Theorizing change: The role of professional associations in the transformation of institutionalized fields.” Academy of Management Journal, 45: 58–80.
57.
GustersonH.1998Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
58.
HirschP. M.1986“From ambushes to golden parachutes: Corporate takeovers as an instance of cultural framing and institutional integration.” American Journal of Sociology, 91: 800–837.
59.
HwangH.PowellW. W.2009“The rationalization of charity: The influences of professionalism in the nonprofit sector.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 54: 268–298.
60.
JannR.1983“From amateur to professional: The case of the Oxbridge historians.” Journal of British Studies, 22: 122–147.
61.
JemielniakD.2014Common Knowledge?An Ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
62.
JonesC.Livne-TarandachR.2008“Designing a frame: Rhetorical strategies of architects.” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29: 1075–1099.
63.
KaplanS.VakiliK.2015“The double-edged sword of recombination in breakthrough innovation.” Strategic Management Journal, 36: 1435–1457.
64.
KhatibF.CooperS.TykaM. D.XuK.MakedonI.PopovicZ.BakerD., et al. 2011“Algorithm discovery by protein folding game players.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108: 18949–18953.
65.
KhuranaR.2010From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
66.
KhuranaR.NohriaN.2008“It’s time to make management a true profession.” Harvard Business Review, 86 (Oct.): 70–77.
67.
KimP. H.CroidieuG.LippmannS.2016“Responding from that vantage point: Field position and discursive strategies of legitimation in the early U.S. wireless telegraphy field.” Organization Studies, 37: 1417–1450.
68.
KimP. H.LongestK. C.LippmannS.2015“The tortoise versus the hare: Progress and business viability differences between conventional and leisure-based founders.” Journal of Business Venturing, 30: 185–204.
69.
KrippendorffK.2004Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
70.
LachmannR.1988“Graffiti as career and ideology.” American Journal of Sociology, 94: 229–250.
71.
LandauerT. K.2007“LSA as a theory of meaning.” In LandauerT.McNamaraD.DennisS.KintschW. (eds.), Handbook of Latent Semantic Analysis: 3–34. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
72.
LarsonM. S.1977The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis, vol. 233. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
73.
LeblebiciH.SalancikG. R.CopayA.KingT.1991“Institutional change and the transformation of interorganizational fields: An organizational history of the U.S. radio broadcasting industry.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 36: 333–363.
74.
LernerJ.TiroleJ.2002“Some simple economics of open source.” Journal of Industrial Economics, 50: 197–234.
75.
LippmannS.AldrichH.2016“A rolling stone gathers momentum: Generational units, collective memory, and entrepreneurship.” Academy of Management Review, 41: 658–675.
76.
LoewensteinJ.OcasioW.JonesC.2012“Vocabularies and vocabulary structure: A new approach linking categories, practices, and institutions.” Academy of Management Annals, 6: 41–86.
77.
LounsburyM.2001“Institutional sources of practice variation: Staffing college and university recycling programs.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 46: 29–56.
78.
LounsburyM.2002“Institutional transformation and status mobility: The professionalization of the field of finance.” Academy of Management Journal, 45: 255–266.
79.
LounsburyM.2007“A tale of two cities: Competing logics and practice variation in the professionalizing of mutual funds.” Academy of Management Journal, 50: 289–307.
80.
LounsburyM.CrumleyE. T.2007“New practice creation: An institutional perspective on innovation.” Organization Studies, 28: 993–1012.
81.
MaguireS.HardyC.LawrenceT. B.2004“Institutional entrepreneurship in emerging fields: HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy in Canada.” Academy of Management Journal, 47: 657–679.
82.
MairJ.MartiI.VentrescaM. J.2012“Building inclusive markets in rural Bangladesh: How intermediaries work institutional voids.” Academy of Management Journal, 55: 819–850.
83.
McAdamD.ScottW. R.2005“Organizations and movements.” In DavisG. F.McAdamD.ScottW. R.ZaldM. N. (eds.), Social Movements and Organization Theory: 4–40. New York: Cambridge University Press.
84.
McCarthyJ.ZaldM.1977“Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory.” American Journal of Sociology, 82: 1212–1241.
85.
McKennaC. D.2006The World’s Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
86.
MimnoD.2012“Computational historiography: Data mining in a century of classics journals.” Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 5: 1–19.
87.
MohrJ. W.1998“Measuring meaning structures.” Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 345–370.
88.
MohrJ. W.BogdanovP.2013“Introduction—Topic models: What they are and why they matter.” Poetics, 41: 545–569.
89.
NelsenB.BarleyS. R.1997“For love or money? Commodification and the construction of an occupational mandate.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 619–653.
90.
PadgettJ. F.PowellW. W.2012The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
91.
PowellW. W.KoputK. W.Smith-DoerrL.1996“Interorganizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: Networks of learning in biotechnology.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 41: 116–145.
92.
PowellW. W.SnellmanK.2004“The knowledge economy.” Annual Review of Sociology, 30: 199–220.
93.
RaoH.MoninP.DurandR.2003“Institutional change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy.” American Journal of Sociology, 108: 795–843.
94.
RuefM.ScottW. R.1998“A multidimensional model of organizational legitimacy: Hospital survival in changing institutional environments.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 43: 877–904.
95.
SchneibergM.ClemensE. S.2006“The typical tools for the job: Research strategies in institutional analysis.” Sociological Theory, 24: 195–227.
96.
Scott MortonF. M.PodolnyJ. M.2002“Love or money? The effects of owner motivation in the California wine industry.” Journal of Industrial Economics, 50: 431–456.
97.
SeidelM.-D. L.StewartK. J.2011“An initial description of the C-form.” In MarquisC.LounsburyM.GreenwoodR. (eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 33: Communities and Organizations: 37–72. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.
98.
SelznickP.1957Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
99.
ShapinS.SchafferS.2011Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
100.
SlottenH. R.2009Radio’s Hidden Voice: The Origins of Public Broadcasting in the United States. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
101.
StaggenborgS.1988“The consequences of professionalization and formalization in the pro-choice movement.” American Sociological Review, 53: 585–605.
102.
StarS.GriesemerJ.1989“Institutional ecology, translations, and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science, 19: 387–420.
103.
StarrP.1982The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry. New York: Basic Books.
104.
StebbinsR. A.2007Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
105.
SteyversM.GriffithsT.2007“Probabilistic topic models.” In LandauerT.McNamaraD.DennisS.KintschW. (eds.), Latent Semantic Analysis: A Road to Meaning, 427: 424–440. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
106.
StraussA.CorbinJ. M.1998Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
107.
StuartT. E.HoangH.HybelsR. C.1999“Interorganizational endorsements and the performance of entrepreneurial ventures.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 315–349.
108.
SuchmanM. C.1995“Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches.” Academy of Management Review, 20: 571–610.
109.
SuddabyR.GreenwoodR.2001“Colonizing knowledge: Commodification as a dynamic of jurisdictional expansion in professional service firms.” Human Relations, 54: 933–953.
110.
SuddabyR.GreenwoodR.2005“Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 50: 35–67.
111.
TaylorR. F.2004“Extending conceptual boundaries: Work, voluntary work and employment.” Work, Employment and Society, 18: 29–49.
112.
VallasS. P.2012Work: A Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
113.
VentrescaM. J.MohrJ. W.2002“Archival research methods.” In BaumJ. A. C. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Organizations: 805–828. Oxford: Blackwell.
114.
VergneJ.-P.2011“Toward a new measure of organizational legitimacy: Method, validation, and illustration.” Organizational Research Methods, 14: 484–502.
115.
von HippelE. 1988The Sources of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.
116.
WeberM.1978Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
117.
WilenskyH.1964“The professionalization of everyone?” American Journal of Sociology, 70: 137–158.
118.
WilsonJ.MusickM.1997“Who cares? Toward an integrated theory of volunteer work.” American Sociological Review, 62: 694–713.
119.
WolpeP.1985“The maintenance of professional authority: Acupuncture and the American physician.” Social Problems, 32: 409–424.
ZaldM. N.LounsburyM.2010“The wizards of Oz: Towards an institutional approach to elites, expertise and command posts.” Organization Studies, 31: 963–996.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
