Encouraging institutional change with cultural theory

Societal climate transitions must (1) fundamentally alter unsustainable normative assumptions and (2) be attentive to notions of social justice. Our research project seeks to encourage this by disseminating knowledge of intersectionality theory to four Swedish government agencies involved in the Swedish climate transition: the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA), the Swedish Transport Administration (STA) and Vinnova (VIN), Sweden’s innovation agency. In this article, we assess the normative narrative assumptions that underpin interview respondents’ framing of institutional change possibilities. We analyse these data utilising the theory of sociocultural viability (cultural theory). Cultural theory allows us to (a) locate each agency’s institutional norms and values within a typology and (b) suggest concrete strategies for encouraging desired institutional change attentive to institutional types and the forms of knowledge each can process. We argue that the SEPA, SEA and STA manifest primarily a hierarchical-type institutional perspective, while VIN evidences a hybrid individualist-hierarchy perspective. The paper suggests ways for communicating knowledge aimed at engendering change within these institutions. Cultural theory’s typology then generates further insight of interest to institutional change-makers beyond these cases. Thus, the results are of interest to scholars promoting institutional change, using intersectionality or other means.