| Abstract: |
How have reforms in French doctoral education and academic research been
implemented? How do changing doctoral education practices lead to changing
research practices? New practice adoption among academics usually happens
incrementally in the course of their everyday activity. Top-down
organizational change requires these autonomous professionals to adopt new
practices willingly, so as to comply with the reform. Understanding the
microlevel conditions under which this adoption happens is critical to the
management of change in universities and research organizations. Drawing on
the empirical analysis of a reform seeking to improve PhD supervision in
French universities, we find that academics adopt new practices only once they
have performed a cognitive reframing of the situation, and under the condition
that new practices are - or can be made - compatible with their autonomy of
judgment and their extant professional role and identity. Otherwise, the
reform leads to ceremonial adoption, hesitation or rejection of new practice.
Paradoxically, coercive features of the reform may support new practice
adoption, but only when they are taken over by professionals themselves and
support them in the building of a leader figure compatible with professional
values. |