Healthcare professionals’ buy-in to change: the role of task characteristics

Abstract This article examines how healthcare professionals respond to organizational change, focusing on the introduction of standardized care pathways in a newly established Emergency Department (ED) at a large Danish hospital. Drawing on qualitative data, it explores the varying responses of three key specialties—internists, orthopaedists, and anaesthetists—and shows that professional sub-groups’ reactions are shaped by the material characteristics of their work tasks, including duration, complexity, and manual dexterity. These characteristics influence how professionals perceive care quality, learning opportunities, and the alignment of work design with their craft. The findings show that internists leveraged organizational power to shape ED processes around their task characteristics, anaesthetists remained largely unaffected, and orthopaedists resisted changes that disrupted their professional development. The study contributes to debates on professionalism by demonstrating how protective and connective forms of professionalism coexist and are negotiated at the intra-professional level. It also contributes to work design theory by linking task-level variation to professionals’ motivation. By exploring the micro-foundations of professional craft, the article shows the limitations of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to standardization, as the impacts on care quality vary across specialties. These insights are particularly relevant in the context of increasing regulatory pressures and automation, where the ability to align work design with task characteristics will shape the future trajectories of professional groups.