As Chapter Three indicated, the professional struggle to gain cultural legitimacy within the bureaucratic field is inherently tied up with the struggle by organisations that provide child and family social work services for social acceptance. With most social work service organisations being constituted not only by the profession of social work, but also by the state that owns and runs those services, the changing circumstances, pressures and contexts, both within and outside of such organisations, means that achieving and maintaining acceptance and legitimacy becomes a never-ending process of change and renewal. Indeed, there is a range of representations of public service organisations, which are themselves eternally evolving.

This chapter argues that the different communities and constituencies interested in statutory child and family social work services impose competing representations of what organisations that provide social work services are and do. These representations provide conflicting sets of standards, ideals and goals, which can be understood as institutional logics. These multiple institutional logics imposed on social work services set the boundaries for pride and shame for an organisation, thereby directing and shaping its identity. Within this context, this chapter introduces the idea of organisational emotional safety, in which organisations are constructed to avoid organisational shaming and rejection, on the one hand, and attract pride and acceptance, on the other. In an attempt to manage its image and reputation, organisational leaders engage in this form of emotion work to navigate the competing and conflicting pressures, demands and expectations in order to create and maintain a consistent set of organisational actions which ensures that it is safe from episodic shaming, while evoking pride within the organisation and acceptance without.

A case example is provided to illustrate the argument that pride and shame play a significant role in the creation, maintenance and disruption of child and family social work services. This illustration enables a detailed look at the processes through which pride and shame influenced, shaped and guided the thoughts, actions and feelings of organisational leaders and actors in attempts to create, embed and maintain what was perceived as the necessary changes for the organisation to verify its identity as a high-performing child and family social work service.