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Abstract

This thesis investigates how emergent occupations navigate the processes of becoming experts, securing organisational jurisdiction, and sustaining career identities in the context of technological disruption and a wider crisis of expertise. Focusing on data professionals as a paradigmatic nascent occupation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and organisational practice, the thesis adopts a three-paper format that develops complementary conceptual, organisational, and individual-level insights.

The first paper (Chapter 2) is a conceptual study that reframes expert work as a socially constructed and politically negotiated process rather than a credential-bound property of professions. It theorises how organisational change generates new expert tasks, and how divergent recognition by professional groups and organisational audiences leads to distinct role reconfigurations. A typology of recognition misalignments and a process model of role trajectories extend existing theories of professions and organisational change.

The second paper (Chapter 3) is an ethnographic multi-case study of six organisations, based on 18 months of fieldwork. It extends the notion of dual-position brokerage in jurisdictional contests to explain how data consultants, positioned simultaneously as insiders and outsiders, mediate jurisdictional contests and secure organisational recognition for data work. The study highlights the mechanisms through which ambiguous tasks are stabilised, jurisdiction is built locally, and expertise gains durable legitimacy before occupational stabilisation.

The third paper (Chapter 4) draws on 42 in-depth interviews with data professionals and examines how individuals craft career identities under conditions of ambiguity. It develops a process model of career identifying as iterative cycles of anchoring, experimenting, recognising, and recalibrating. The analysis highlights “anchoring through adaptability” as a distinct identity mechanism in emergent occupations, illuminating how individuals sustain coherence while navigating shifting evaluation criteria and occupational futures.

Together, the three papers provide a multi-level account of occupational emergence. They demonstrate that expertise is not simply possessed but co-produced through recognition across organisational, occupational, and individual domains. By linking theoretical, organisational, and career-level processes, the thesis advances scholarship on work, occupations, and technology, and offers practical insights into how new forms of expertise can be integrated and sustained in contemporary organisations.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management Doctoral Theses

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