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The medical profession continues to sub-divide and sub-specialise into increasingly smaller units (Rosen, 1944). From cardiologists to cardiac surgeons, gynaecologists to geriatricians, orthopaedic surgeons to otologists, renal physicians to respiratory physicians, virologists to vascular surgeons, and diabetologists to dermatologists, to name but a few. It has been said that the profession is becoming increasingly composed of groups of doctors that have separate identities, boundary awareness, ideology, and governing principles. As such there is no longer a core within the profession that shares a sense of unity (Roth & Ruzek, 1986: 166). \ud \ud But how does this differentiation affect the identity of doctors and how does it affect the way they perceive those working in the other sub-groups of the profession? Does a cardiologist consider themselves to be higher status than a dermatologist, or are they just different in kind? Does a general practitioner or psychiatrist feel subordinate to a hospital specialist? How do doctors construct their professional status, and do doctors working within different specialties, or who work in different organisational contexts, do it in different ways? How do these constructions of status manifest themselves, and to what extent can they provide insights into the behaviour of doctors within processes of organisational change?