The agency of incumbents has gained increasing attention in the study of transitions. Recent studies show that besides being inert and resistant to change, incumbents can also support transitions. We focus on the agency of a particular type of incumbent, grid operators. In several countries, these actors play an active role in institutional change in the energy domain. At the same time, they are engaging in activities to maintain the regime. This paper examines the actions of grid operators when performing institutional work, i.e. when creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of Dutch media to analyze the actions of grid operators while engaging with decentralized energy innovations. We conclude that grid operators are both subject and object of institutional work as part of a distributed, collective process of institutional change. Furthermore, our analysis reflects on their paradoxical position as embedded actors engaging in institutional change.

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Few people disagree on the need for sustainable development, but ideas about what it exactly means and how to pursue it diverge considerably. Although such normative conflicts are key to sustainability transitions, attention to such conflicts is lacking in transition studies. In this paper we understand societal conflict as an informal assessment of sustainable transition pathways with the potential for learning about normative ideas about the direction, speed and means of transitions. We analyse the Dutch societal conflict on the plans for shale gas exploration between 2010 and 2013, based on a media-analysis and interviews, in order to identify the normative conflicts and to find out to which extent these normative conflicts resulted in higher-order learning. The two main normative conflicts in the case firstly concern the role of gas in the energy transition, and secondly the balance between local and national interests in defining the public interest. With that, the societal conflict challenges two key elements of the Dutch welfare state. We conclude that there has been higher-order learning as regards the first conflict, but not as regards the second.@en