View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Trepo - Institutional Repository of Tampere University This is the post print/pre print version of the article, which has been published in Organization Studies . 2018, 39 (11), 1601-1624.https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617717093 The Emergence of Transformative Agency in Professional Work Tiina M Tuominen and Mikko H Lehtonen Tiina M Tuominen Aalto University School of Science and Hanken School of Economics, Finland Mikko H Lehtonen Aalto University School of Science, Finland Corresponding author: Tiina Tuominen, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University School of Science, Maarintie 8, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland. Email:
[email protected] Abstract Even though transformative agency is widely discussed in organization studies, recent conceptualizations provide little information about the dynamics through which transformative agency emerges at the individual and collective levels, or how these levels influence one another in a particular context. We employ critical realist theories to explore transformative agency in different types of temporary service development groups in 1 professional service organizations. Our study suggests how individuals’ transformative agency emerges from their reflexivity and bargaining power conditioned by resource distributions, and how collective agency subsequently emerges from different combinations of these individual properties in temporary agentic groups. The study clarifies the interplay between the individual and collective levels of agency, and supports further multilevel studies on transformative agency in organizational change. Keywords Transformative agency, reflexivity, morphogenesis, professional service firm, collective agency, synchronic emergence, diachronic emergence Introduction The concept of agency is used in organization studies to explain organizational members’ ability to purposively pursue continuity or transformation of their social contexts.