From villain to VIP: institutional responses to generative AI in higher education

Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, we have witnessed unprecedented interest in generative AI (GenAI). This technology has impacted not only industries but also society at large. Higher education is no exception. In this paper we are interested in how GenAI has affected the context of higher education and how universities and the professionals that work in them have reacted to, made sense of, and responded to, this emergent technology. By analyzing communication from three leading Swedish universities with an institutional lens, we identify a change process comprised of four phases (hesitating, banning, allowing, and promoting). Throughout this change process higher education has come to organize for technology, rather than from technology, and GenAI has gone from being seen as a villain and treated with suspicion, to being viewed and treated as a valued colleague/VIP. Our study explains the emotional base for this shift and adds to our understanding of how micro-level sensemaking enables meso-level responses and macro-level shifts, thus contributing to theorization on emerging technologies, institutional work, and institutional change.