Professional Agency, Identity, and Emotions While Leaving One’s Work Organization

Abstract

This study investigated the enactment of professional agency in an emotionally troubled work context emerging from a conflicted relationship between the professional and the work organization. Narrative interviews with Finnish educators were utilized. The findings indicate that the enactment of agency was in part framed by the educators’ rational interpretations of the relationship between themselves and their employer, plus their work history and future prospects. However, it was simultaneously embedded with contradictory emotions, such as a sense of being undervalued, fear, and a sense of empowerment. Within this framework, multifaceted professional agency was enacted particularly via leaving the organization. This was also a means of upholding one’s professional identity and resisting the organization’s work practices. The paper contributes to the theorizing of professional agency, particularly regarding its emotional dimension, and elaborates the significance of an emotional relationship between professionals and their organizations.
 Keywords: career, educators, emotions, meaningful work, narrative research, professional agency, professional identity

Coaches as sport workers: professional agency within the employment context of elite European basketball

“…adjusting to the owner's demands and accommodating their input). In contrast, coherent with Vähäsantanen et al (2015), the coaches interviewed chose to be more active in their assertion of agency; namely, by ending their contractual obligations on mutual terms as opposed to poor performance or the owner's dissatisfaction. This enabled the coaches to strategically manoeuvre their way out of difficult situations, whilst concomitantly retaining credibility and their professional reputation and integrity.…”

“…The reading of coach's lives here is contiguous with wider industrial relation and sociology of work examinations (e.g, Gardiner et al, 2009;Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011), that have critiqued professional agency and sought to demonstrate the ways in which worker's actions and behaviours are contingent, at least to a significant degree, on the unique (sub)cultural milieu, personal histories and employment context. To recall Vähäsantanen (2015) and Vähäsantanen and Eteläpelto's (2015) framing of professional agency, an appreciation of the contexts in which coaches operate is fundamental. Of particular importance is the necessity of understanding how the historical, socio-cultural and political specificities of their employment conditions shape their conceptualisation of the self, their role and their immediate career decisions.…”

“…Integral in Vähäsantanen and Eteläpelto's (2015) theorising, and implied in the anecdotal examples above, is the necessity of acknowledging the wider milieu in which individuals work and also recognising that an individual's capacity to enact professional agency is contingent upon the associated socio-cultural constraints and resources they have at their disposable (in the case of our coaches, for example, their professional credibility, social networks, economic and political capital, and/or sporting habitus). To simplify, how coaches have become professionals, who they are and are connected to, their employment genealogy, performance record, professional integrity, social connections and organisational relationships, understanding of how to do their job 'effectively', and their personal perception of themselves and longevity in the role and sport, all may come to bear on their work-related decision making capacities.…”

Uraohjaajien osaaminen ja haasteet työelämän murroksessa

“…Tunteiden ja tunneälyn merkitys on kasvanut, sillä kumpikin linkittyy vahvasti työntekoon, uravalintoihin ja yksilön muuttuviin identiteetteihin. (Vähäsantanen & Eteläpelto 2015. ) Vaikka työ tukee mielenterveyttä, epävarmuus ja henkinen kuormitus työelämässä ovat lisääntyneet yhtäläisesti niin suomalaisten (Julkunen 2008; Työolotutkimus 2013) kuin kansainvälisten havaintojen mukaan (Vos, de & Heijden, van der 2015;Lent & Brown 2013).…”

A Novel Instrument to Measure the Multidimensional Structure of Professional Agency

“…This kind of agency is manifested via a range of activities. These could involve a decision to take a new career direction and to leave the current work organisation; on the other hand, the decision might be to make a strong commitment to one's current career pattern and work (Brown 2004;Tomlinson et al 2013;Vähäsantanen and Eteläpelto 2015).…”