Resilience has become a key concept in the sciences and practices of environmental governance. Yet governing for resilience is a major challenge because it requires governance systems to be both stable and flexible at the same time. The concept of ‘institutional work’ is a promising lens for analysing the dynamic tension between stability and flexibility in governance systems. It refers to actions through which actors create, maintain, or disrupt institutions. The paper explains the concept of institutional work and shows how it usefully integrates several emerging lines of study regarding agency in governance. Overall, the concept of institutional work opens up novel opportunities for analysing the interactions between actors and institutional structures that produce stability and flexibility in governance systems.

复原力已成为环境治理科学和实践中的关键概念。然而，治理弹性是一项重大挑战，因为它要求治理系统同时稳定和灵活。“机构工作”的概念是分析治理系统中稳定性与灵活性之间的动态张力的有前途的镜头。它是指行为者通过其创建，维护或破坏机构的行为。本文解释了制度性工作的概念，并说明了它如何有效地整合了有关治理中的代理的若干新兴研究领域。总体而言，机构工作的概念为分析行为者与机构结构之间的相互作用提供了新的机会，这些机构与机构结构在治理系统中产生了稳定性和灵活性。