Institutional Transformation and Status Mobility: The Professionalization of the Field of Finance

Abstract

This work reports on a study that investigated how the transformation of institutional logics—the tearing down of old logics and the construction of new ones—opens up possibilities for actors to make new kinds of status claims. Drawing on a historical analysis of the field of finance in the United States and evidence on professional finance association foundings, I show how a transformation in the logics guiding the field and development of financial expertise shaped the prnfessionalization of finance occupations from 1945 through 1993.