CONCEPT
Organizations as Jurisdictional Arbiters
Abbott's principle that jurisdictional disputes are settled not in the court of professional opinion but in the court of organizational demand — organizations are the primary institutional mechanism through which the system of professions is reorganized.
Organizations are not passive consumers of professional services but active participants in the system of professions. Their decisions about how to deploy professional expertise are the primary mechanism through which jurisdictional competition is resolved. The profession that better serves organizational needs wins the jurisdiction, regardless of which profession's internal standards are higher. In the AI transition, organizations face two archetypal responses—headcount reduction or capability expansion—and the choice between them is not merely a business strategy but a jurisdictional intervention with consequences extending far beyond any single firm's quarterly results.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The principle is counterintuitive to practitioners, who naturally assume that the better-qualified group will prevail. But the history of professions demonstrates that quality as defined by the profession is not the same as adequacy as defined by the organizations consuming the profession's output. Organizations care whether the work serves their purposes; professions care whether it meets their