Emotive institutional work in navigating institutional plurality

In this study, we focus on the internal workings of an organization’s response to institutional plurality. To better understand how individuals experience institutional contradictions, we conducted a qualitative inquiry of the inhabitants of a university organization in the field of higher education; a field where both the organizations and individuals are prescribed to demands from competing institutional logics, namely the logics of science and market. Our results indicate that the subjective, but shared experience of institutional complexity combines emotions of being free, ambiguity, concerns and uncertainty, disappointment, and feeling legitimate. We contribute to the literature on organizational institutionalism, especially to its strands of inner workings of institutional struggles within organizations and emotions in institutional work.