Constructing a Shared Governance Logic: The Role of Emotions in Enabling Dually Embedded Agency

Abstract

In a longitudinal qualitative study of a water stewardship council, we build theory about how and why actors embedded in disparate logics across multiple fields can overcome the constraints of their home logics to construct a new, shared governance logic together. Our findings suggest a recursive model of new logic construction in which council members mobilize three emotional facilitators (social emotions, moral emotions, and emotional energy) to affect three logic-construction cycles (agreeing on values, shared learning, and enacting shared values). Emotional facilitators work through three agentic mechanisms: enabling actors to become open and reflexive about their home logics and simultaneously increase their commitment to and engagement in constructing a shared governance logic. Ongoing interactions involving emotional facilitators, agentic mechanisms, and logic-construction cycles are essential in sustaining the new logic. The process model foregrounds the role of emotions in enabling dually embedded agency, thereby extending extant theory that has tended to focus narrowly on cognitive dynamics. We discuss implications for our understanding of institutional agency, the role of emotions in new logic construction, and the role of microlevel interactions in the formation of macrolevel structures.

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