The experiential epistemic basis for client contestation of a profession’s jurisdiction results in a more prominent role for emotions as compared to regulators and managers. This difference likely arises because the construction, validation, and transmission of expert knowledge is guided by ideals of distance and objectivity which invalidate emotional experience as a way of knowing and repress its display ( , (). Identities and Insecurities: Selves at Work. Organization, 10(3). 527–547. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084030103010 ; , (). The Appeal to ‘Professionalism’ as a Disciplinary Mechanism. The Sociological Review, 47. 280–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.00173 ) . In contrast, adherents to social movements valorize emotional experience as a form of knowledge about self and society ( , (). Understanding self-help/mutual aid: experiential learning in the commons. Rutgers University Press. ) . Movement adherents encourage their peers to display pride openly, as a mechanism for bonding and affirmation ( , (). Emotions and identity in women’s self-help movements. InStryker, S., Owens, T. & White, R. (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements.. University of Minnesota Press. ; , & al., , & (). Creating Emotional Resonance: Interpersonal Emotion Work and Motivational Framing in a Transgender Community. Social Problems, 51(1). 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2004.51.1.61 ) ; while engaging in collective outbursts of anger is a well-known social movement tactic for getting the attention of incumbents whose practices are targeted for change such as governments, corporations, and professions ( , (). Homosexuality and American psychiatry: the politics of diagnosis. Princeton University Press. ; , (). Moving politics: emotion and act up’s fight against AIDS. The University of Chicago Press. ) . Thus, our model highlights the central role of social emotions when clients contest a profession’s jurisdiction.

Most organizational research on jurisdictional contestation of professions, in contrast, has not focused on social emotions. Studies focusing on contestation by regulators and managers have mostly overlooked the emotions of contestants, describing struggles between collective actors pursuing divergent institutional projects as driven by power or efficiency considerations ( , (). Institutional change and healthcare organizations: from professional dominance to managed care. University of Chicago Press. ; , (). In an age of experts: the changing role of professionals in politics and public life (2. pr., and 1. paperback print). Princeton Univ. Press. ) . A few recent studies of jurisdictional contestation exploring the role of clients have begun to integrate emotions. In their study of profession stigmatization, ( , & al., , & (). From Grace to Violence: Stigmatizing the Medical Profession in China. Academy of Management Journal, 64(6). 1842–1872. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.0715 ) found that individual clients angry at the medical profession sought to alter the profession’s prescribing practices by evoking shame in medical professionals. However, the phenomenon described by the authors is different to the one we theorize; no social movement is mentioned and, instead, news media are credited with amplifying the conflict although, and consistent with our model, felt anger led clients to oppose the profession. ( & , & (). Feeling Rule Management and Relational Authority: Fostering patient compliance in palliative care consultations. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01708406221081625 ) (in-press) find that palliative care professionals manage ‘feeling rules’ that define what forms of fear, hope and guilt constitute an ‘appropriate’ emotional response from clients to the profession’s work. This study suggests that in their everyday work professions seek to evoke―and are generally successful at achieving resonance of―specific forms of emotions which preclude jurisdictional contestation by clients.

So, despite some recent attention to emotions and professions, an integrative treatment of social emotions has not informed jurisdictional contestation research. Our theorizing of how social emotions shape client participation in the contestation of a profession’s jurisdictional control is therefore novel and advances research in multiple ways. First, it brings together insights scattered across a vast, heterogeneous literature, including studies of emotions in social movements and their struggles against opponents ( , (). Moving politics: emotion and act up’s fight against AIDS. The University of Chicago Press. ; , & al., , & (). Creating Emotional Resonance: Interpersonal Emotion Work and Motivational Framing in a Transgender Community. Social Problems, 51(1). 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2004.51.1.61 ; & , & (). From shame to pride in identity politics. InStryker, S., Owens, T. & White, R. (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements.. University of Minnesota Press. ) . This voluminous work, however, does not consider the implications of its findings for professions and the work domains they control, as we have done in this paper.

Second, our model adds a nuanced understanding of social emotions to research on jurisdictional contestation by considering a constellation of four intertwined social emotions; theorizing both sides of a framing contest to gain clients’ support; and distinguishing between, but also bringing together, emotional evocation and resonance. In conceptualizing social emotions in research on contestation of a profession’s jurisdictional control in this way, our model goes beyond studies that focus on a single emotion ( & , & (). The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine. Organization Studies, 39(4). 445–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617709306 ) ; the framing efforts of one collective actor ( , & al., , & (). Emotions in Institutional Work: A Discursive Perspective. Organization Studies, 37(7). 963–990. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840615613377 ) ; and either emotional evocation ( , & al., , & (). Preserving a Professional Institution: Emotion in Discursive Institutional Work. Journal of Management Studies, 57(4). 735–774. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12535 ) or emotional resonance ( , (). The Mind and Heart of Resonance: The Role of Cognition and Emotions in Frame Effectiveness. Journal of Management Studies, 54(5). 711–738. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org//a/bla/jomstd/v54y2017i5p711-738.html ) . By integrating these components into a single model, our integrative approach to social emotions makes an important contribution because it allows us to shed light on the origins and critical role of ambivalence in jurisdictional contestation of professions by client-led social movements.