We’re Not Like Those Crazy Hippies: The Dynamics of Jurisdictional Drift in Externally Mandated Occupational Groups
研究了高等教育中可持续发展管理者这一职业群体如何因外部授权模糊而出现管辖权漂移，通过放弃外部政治、转向内部政治和标准来维持中立，并暗中部分调整管辖权以重新对齐授权。
External actors often advocate for organizations to address a wide range of societal concerns, such as diversity, equality, and sustainability, and organizations have frequently responded by establishing new positions to oversee these demands. However, calls to address social problems can be broad and unrelated to an organization’s primary objectives, so the external mandates that underpin these new positions do not easily translate to clear task jurisdictions inside organizations. Furthermore, previous studies have found that the tasks that are pursued by occupations established through external pressure often diverge from what external groups had envisioned for these new roles. This study addresses the question of why this divergence occurs. It does so by examining the formation of the occupational group of sustainability managers in higher education. Through fieldwork, interviews, and analyses of longitudinal archival data, this paper uncovers the dynamics of jurisdictional drift and shows how jurisdictional drift unfolded first through sustainability managers’ confrontation of their jurisdictional ambiguity, and then through their efforts at performing neutrality, in particular by trading external Politics for internal politics and trading values for standards. Additionally, it uncovers how the sustainability managers attempted to partially realign their jurisdiction with their external mandate, but did so in a concealed manner. This study illuminates the process of how jurisdictions can come to drift away from mandates, highlights the importance of studying how mandates are translated into jurisdictions, and also furthers our understanding of the formation of externally mandated occupational groups.