Institutional transformation and status mobility: The professionalization of the field of finance

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 professionalization of finance occupations from 1945 through 1993.