Acting as Neither Individual nor Professional: Physicians’ Constitutive Ambivalence in Adopting Complex Technologies

• In Event: 548 - Theory Section Paper Session. Theorizing the Social: Studies of Science and Technology

Abstract

To work towards more systematic theoretical accounts of why experts sometimes act in ways that seem inconsistent with their professional interests, this paper investigates how physicians came to adopt a technology they wouldn't have been expected to adopt. The case is of a new computer mouse-driven technology used by doctors for whom manual dexterity – their “good hands” – forms the basis of status judgments. To study this counterintuitive case of adoption, I draw on interviews with physicians and salespersons, demographic data on cardiac electrophysiologists, a content analysis of the corpus of research articles on the technology, sociometric data on authorship of these articles and the clinical guidelines, and cross-national data on federal investments in health and technology. In contrast to a dominant perspective that would account for adoption in terms of collective efforts in interprofessional competitions, this paper argues that adoption is primarily tied to concerns about bodily preservation that stem from a gradual rise in the length of electrophysiology training, and membership in national health regimes that reward patient volume. I conclude that such potentially status-depreciating decisions result from the nature of these physicians’ constitutive ambivalence. The case offers lessons for theorizing which elements of expert work contribute most to individuals’ constitutive ambivalence, and the factors contributing to group coherence and atomization.

Author

• Daniel A. Menchik, Michigan State University