From Adaptation to Disruption: Structured Ambivalence as a Catalyst for Consumer-Led Institutional Work

Abstract This study explores how consumers respond to the ambivalence sparked by conflicting institutional norms in contexts such as the United States market for donor conception (i.e. egg, sperm, embryo). While prior research has framed responses to ambivalence as “coping,” we theorize these responses as consumer-led institutional work—i.e., active efforts to adapt to or challenge institutional norms. Drawing on interviews, archival narratives, and case profiles, we develop a typology distinguishing between adaptation work (efforts to reconcile contradictions in existing institutional arrangements) and disruption work (efforts to transform institutional arrangements), with individual and collaborative variants of each. Theoretically, we argue that structured ambivalence is both the experience through which institutional contradictions become salient and the catalyst that motivates institutional work. Our contributions are twofold. First, we demonstrate that adaptive work, which facilitates individual participation, paradoxically reinforces the very market system that produces ambivalence. Second, we identify structured ambivalence as a micro-level emotional catalyst driving the full spectrum of consumer-led action, ranging from quiet adaptation to the creation of new, market-changing organizations. This provides a more nuanced understanding of why consumers engage in institutional work, contributing to the microfoundations of institutions perspective by specifying the emotional and reflexive underpinnings of institutional continuity and change within markets.