[Certified “administrative managerLTD.” Identity embeddedness to legitimize a new role][Certifié « Cadre administratif de pôle ». L’encastrement identitaire pour légitimer un nouveau rôle]

The hospital new governance reform has created a brand new role of administrative man- ager of clinical directorates. This administrative manager should assist a clinical director, along with a senior nurse, however he has no clear instruction about his/her activities, while his/her environment is highly institutionalized. This article aims at investigating the legitimization process of this new role within clinical directorates' teams: how adminis- trative managers try to legitimize their role as perceived by their colleagues? To address the issue, we resort to the literature relating to both new organizational practices legit- imization, and identity work; our empirics consists in case studies of 4 "Mother-Child" clinical directorate teams in France, each of one involving an administrative manager. We proceed through qualitative methods including 30 interviews and 8 meeting observations. Our results show how administrative managers struggle to integrate their identity into their colleagues' work systems, while justifying to them the usefulness of their role. We finally discuss the concept of identity embeddedness in relation to neo-institutional and identity work theories, as well as implications for clinical directory teams.