Tradition and organizational identity in religious entrepreneurship

Abstract

Religious entrepreneurial organizations face a distinctive dialectical tension as they negotiate between honouring and preserving their religious traditions while responding to entrepreneurial imperatives. Yet, our understanding of how these tensions impact organizational identity negotiation in such organizations remains limited. Drawing on qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews with a religious entrepreneurial organization, wholly owned by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and supplemented with focus groups consisting of co-religionists, we examine organizational identity dynamics. We demonstrate how tradition functions as an ‘enabling constraint’ that simultaneously limits and facilitates organizational identity negotiation. Our study offers two main contributions. First, it suggests that the concept of traditions, as we use it, presents a more plausible and dynamic view of how macro-level traditions influence and are influenced by organizations. Tradition-oriented organizations are not passive recipients of inherited beliefs and values; they can actively participate in the evolution and development of traditions. Second, our study demonstrates that traditions shape organizational identity elasticity through the three pillars of endurance, centrality and distinctiveness.

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