Emotions as Responses to Institutional Contradictions

Abstract

In this paper, we advance knowledge of the role of emotions in actors’ responses to institutional contradictions in the context of the currently disrupted, Nordic higher education sector. By means of an empirical case study, we explore and examine how moral emotions that arise from identity conflicts associated with the “moral self” shape actors’ interpretations and enactments as responses to institutional contradictions. Drawing on the literature on communicative institutionalism, emotions-as-judgements, and institutional contradictions, we theorize actors’ emotional responses to institutional contradictions as acts of evaluative meaning-making and empirically elaborate how actors engage in this emotional meaning-making to cope with moral identity conflicts that arise from experiences of institutional contradictions. Based on our qualitative analysis of 36 in-depth interviews, we identify three patterns of emotional meaning-making through which actors account for their experiences of institutional contradictions: ‘seeing through the eyes of valued others’; ‘struggling to uphold one’s moral integrity’; and ‘accepting conflict as an opportunity for personal growth.’ Overall, the study contributes to the research on responses to institutional contradictions by extending our understanding of the nature of emotions as interpretation-, action-, and response-signaling sources for institutional work.