This paper explores how artisan entrepreneurs respond to conflicting institutional demands. Specifically, we focus attention on the conditions under which institutional conflict lead to the adoption of specific response behaviours. Prior research has highlighted the importance of artisan entrepreneurship in facilitating socio-economic, rural and regional development, with significant attention paid to strengthening the formal institutional environment, supporting organisations and government regulations. However, there has been limited focus on the negative consequences of conflicting institutional support and the demands they make on artisan entrepreneurs. The empirical setting for this paper is a full population analysis of the Irish artisan cheese sector. Our findings demonstrate that in the face of competing institutional demands entrepreneurs have three primary response behaviours, ‘navigate’, ‘bridge’ or ‘drown’.