The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine

Gill, Michael J and Burrow, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7846-1996 2018. The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine. Organization Studies 39 (4) , pp. 445-465. 10.1177/0170840617709306

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Abstract

Fear is a common and powerful emotion that can regulate behaviour. Yet institutional scholars have paid limited attention to the function of fear in processes of institutional reproduction and stability. Drawing on an empirical study of elite chefs within the institution of haute cuisine, this article finds that the multifaceted emotion of fear characterised their experiences and served to sustain their institution. Chefs’ individual feelings of fear prompted conformity and a cognitive constriction, which narrowed their focus on to the precise reproduction of traditional practices whilst also limiting challenges to the norms underpinning the institution. Through fear work, chefs used threats and violence to connect individual experiences of fear to the violation of institutionalized rules, sustaining the conditions in which fear-driven maintenance work thrived. The study also suggests that fear is a normative element of haute cuisine in its own right, where the very experience and eliciting of fear preserved an essential institutional ingredient. In this way, emotions such as fear do not just accompany processes of institutionalization but can be intimately involved in the maintenance of institutions.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Emotion; Fear; Fear work; Haute cuisine; Institutional work; Phenomenology
Additional Information:	Released with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Publisher:	SAGE
ISSN:	0170-8406
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 March 2017
Date of Acceptance:	19 January 2017
Last Modified:	12 Nov 2024 14:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/98794

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