Maintaining the Values of a Profession: Institutional Work and Moral Emotions in the Emergency Department
通过研究急诊科医生与其他专科医生的互动，揭示了两种制度工作过程，其中道德情感在维护职业价值观中起关键作用，对理解组织内专业工作与情感机制有价值。
Specialization within professions creates challenges for maintaining the macro-level values of the profession in the everyday work of specialists at the micro level inside organizations. By conducting a qualitative study of emergency-department physicians and their interactions with other hospital specialists, we show how specialists maintain professional values through two distinct processes of institutional work in which moral emotions—that is, emotions linked to the interests of others—play a key role. The first process is activated when a perceived episodic problem, which arises from value conflicts in interactions between different specialists, elicits transitory moral emotions that motivate institutional maintenance work through individual action. The second process is activated when a perceived systemic problem, which arises from conflict between professional values writ large and organizational practices, elicits moral emotions that are enduring and shared across specialists. These emotions mobilize collective action in institutional maintenance work that changes the organizational practice. By focusing on values as a source of conflict and a motive for professional action inside organizations, our model contributes a nuanced understanding to the everyday work of professionals and specialists and draws attention to emotion elicitors and emotional scope as affective mechanisms in processes of institutional work.