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RESEARCH PRODUCT

When professionals force managers to adopt a decoupling strategy

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Top managers in organizations usually adopt a “decoupling” strategy to regulate relations with the professionals whom they employ. The concept of decoupling worked out by Meyer and Rowan (1977) can be used to analyze senior management’s decision to avoid confrontations with professionals by accepting, more or less outright, differences between the institution’s norms and the practices of professionals. Operating in this way is no longer obvious, since managers increasingly interfere in the “business” of professionals. The latter still have resources for countering top management’s strategy of “conformity” with the requirements of institutional representatives ; but they have to put up a fight to preserve a method that has advantages no longer recognized by senior managers. To what extent do professionals force mangers to adopt a decoupling strategy ? Is this method of regulation a restriction on, or a boon for, organizations ? To answer these questions, the data are analyzed from studies conducted in two clinics in France, most of whose personnel are paramedics.