Responding to Professional Knowledge Disruptions of Unmitigable Uncertainty: The Role of Emotions, Practices, and Moral Duty among COVID-19 Physicians
基于2020年意大利新冠医生的深度研究，揭示医生面对专业知识失效时，如何因道德责任驱动转向服务导向实践，并最终将其固化为日常工作。
Drawing on an in-depth study of physicians facing the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy in 2020, we advance theory on how professionals in their workplace respond to knowledge disruptions associated with complex societal challenges that undermine the adequacy of their knowledge base to solve professional problems. We show that, in the context of uncertainty generated by the knowledge disruption and the inability to mitigate this uncertainty through typical knowledge-based strategies, professionals experience a trail of negative epistemic emotions. Despite these negative epistemic emotions, and motivated by a heightened sense of moral duty, professionals engage in service-oriented practices of collegial and humanistic work that depart from the knowledge-centric practices of their usual work. We detail how the repeated development of positive moral emotions when performing such practices leads professionals to ultimately consolidate and embed service-oriented practices in their professional work. Our study contributes to the literature on professions and organizations by theorizing the distinctive category of knowledge disruptions of unmitigable uncertainty and by uncovering the microlevel dynamics and mechanisms that sustain professionals’ responses.