“What Are We Doing? This Is So Wrong!”—The Role of Emotions and Values in Institutional Innovation

Dag-Håkon Eriksen () and Beate Jelstad Løvaas ()
Additional contact information
Dag-Håkon Eriksen: VID Specialized University
Beate Jelstad Løvaas: VID Specialized University

Chapter 19 in The Palgrave Handbook of Emotions and Values in Organizational Institutionalism, 2026, pp 507-536 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter investigates how emotions and values play a role in institutional innovation. Based on a qualitative study of two global faith-based organizations, the chapter demonstrates how emotional reactions on the part of organizational actors initiated values work in terms of group reflection practices in emotionally safe spaces. These organizational practices, in turn, stimulated and sustained institutional innovations, such as new mindsets, relations, structures, and decision-makingdecision-making processes in the organizations. The presented process model for institutional innovation shows that conditions at the micro, meso, and macro levels affect the innovation process. The formative cross-cultural experiences of individual actors (micro); safe spaces, and storytelling practices in the organizations (meso), and contextual changes in the field (macro) were identified as factors facilitating the process of institutional innovation. The chapter also highlights how significant diversity among organizational actors during group reflection practices benefits institutional innovation, as various worlds of concern meet and create awareness of current institutional arrangements. This reflection in safe spaces may enable participants to reorient their prevailing habits, which is key to institutional innovation.

Keywords: Emotions; Values; Institutional innovation; Reflexivity; Values work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-032-12670-2_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032126702

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-12670-2_19

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().