likely to display negotiating and political skills, and also to interact with the
external environment. These were categorised as cross-boundary
professionals and, as in the case of bounded professionals, boundaries were a
defining mechanism for them.
• Individuals who displayed a disregard for boundaries, focusing on broadly-
based projects across the university such as widening participation and student
transitions, and on the development of their institutions for the future. These
people undertook work that might be described as institutional research and
development, drawing on external experience and contacts, and were as likely
to see their futures outside higher education as within the sector. They were
categorised as unbounded professionals.
Of the twenty-four individuals, twelve (50%) were categorised as bounded, eight
(33%) as cross-boundary, and four (17%) as unbounded. (Whitchurch, 2008
(forthcoming) gives a more detailed account of the first part of the study, and of the
characteristics of the bounded, cross-boundary and unbounded categories of
professionals).
Bounded professionals might be said to be “social subjects of particular discourses”
(Hall, 1996: 6), with identities that comprise essential elements “ ‘taken on’ through
shared practices” (Taylor, 2008, p. 29), while the other two categories demonstrate,
as Delanty (2008) suggests, that identity construction may also be contingent upon
the position that an individual adopts in relation to variables such as organisational
structures and work teams. In the latter situation, individuals are not simply enacting
roles, for instance vis-a-vis institutional processes and policies, but become active
agents so that, in Archer’s terms, they “personify” as well as “animate” their roles
(Archer, 2000, p. 288). For them, therefore, identity is a “project”, with both
temporal and spatial dimensions, as opposed to an “essence” (Henkel, 2000, pp. 13-
14). While bounded professionals might be said to represent Friedson’s “standard”
group of professionals (Friedson, 2001, p. 212), undertaking tasks that, although
requiring specialised expertise, are geared to “standardised production” that is pre-
determined, the other categories represent different forms of “elite” professional, who
apply their expertise to more complex, individuated tasks (Friedson, 2001, p. 111).
While cross-boundary and unbounded professionals were active in extending their
roles beyond their given job descriptions, and were likely to operate on the borders of
academic space, they nevertheless originated in mainstream professional roles, for
instance in a student services or enterprise office. A fourth category, of blended
professionals, who were being recruited to dedicated appointments that spanned both
professional and academic domains, were explored in greater detail in the second set
of interviews. They worked in areas such as regional partnership, learning support,
outreach and offshore provision, and were likely to have mixed backgrounds and
portfolios, as well as external experience in a contiguous environment such as
regional development or the charitable sector. The four identity categories are
summarised in Table 2, the last three reflecting the concept of “borderlessness”
(Ohmae, 1990; Bjarnason et al, 2000).