A Selfless Integrator or a Selfish Quasi‐Professional? Relational Tactics for Organizational Professionals’ Durable Influence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Our study works towards a ‘sociology of organizational professionals’ by elucidating how they navigate domains dominated by occupational professionals. It shows that relational tactics impact whether organizational professionals remain limited to a periphery, become subservient to occupational professionals, or achieve durable roles. Drawing on qualitative data from 12 Italian hospitals, we analyse how quality managers enact relational strategies towards executives and senior clinicians in the context of integrated care. We identify four configurations of tactics with distinct role outcomes. Tactics focused only on executives (transparent knowledge sharing, subordinate activation) yield no role enhancement. Tactics directed only at occupational professionals (transparent knowledge sharing, rapid relational engagement) render quality managers subservient to occupational professionals. Tactics simultaneously aimed at executives and occupational professionals enhance the role in a durable way. Such tactics may follow a ‘selfless’ approach (rapid relationality, subordinate activation, transparent knowledge sharing), which enables quality managers to expand their role across domains, becoming itinerant integrators; or a ‘selfish’ quasi‐professional approach (rapid reciprocity, consultant activation, opaque knowledge sharing), which enables quality managers to enrich their role, becoming stable niche service providers. We offer new insights into how organizational professionals negotiate authority, influence, and mobility within established professional hierarchies through relational strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".