Religion and Organization

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Religion and Organization:

A Critical Review of Current
Trends and Future Directions
a
Paul Tracey
a
Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
Published online: 09 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Paul Tracey (2012) Religion and Organization: A Critical Review
of Current Trends and Future Directions, The Academy of Management Annals, 6:1,
87-134, DOI: 10.1080/19416520.2012.660761
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2012.660761
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The Academy of Management Annals
Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2012, 87 –134
Religion and Organization:

A Critical Review of Current Trends and Future Directions
PAUL TRACEY∗
Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
Abstract
Given the profound role that religion continues to play in contemporary
societies, it is surprising that management researchers have not explored the
intersection between religion and organization in a more meaningful and
determined way. This may be because religion is considered too far removed
from the commercial organizations that form the empirical focus of much
work in the discipline, or simply because it is deemed too sensitive. Whatever
the reason, the upshot is that we know relatively little about the dynamics of
religious organizational forms or the influence of these forms (and the
values and practices that underpin them) on broader social processes and
other kinds of organization. This paper is designed to highlight the potential
of religion as a domain of study in management and to provide concrete sug-
gestions for taking forward research in this area. The paper consists of three
parts. I begin by reviewing some of the key literature in the sociology of religion
and religious organizations. I then evaluate the existing literature on religion
∗
Email: p.tracey@jbs.cam.ac.uk
ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online

# 2012 Academy of Management
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2012.660761
http://www.tandfonline.com
87
88 † The Academy of Management Annals
and organization, noting the salient contributions to date and highlighting

some of the issues raised by this body of work. In the third and final main
section, I suggest promising directions for future research.
Introduction
The field of complex organizations is rich with insight, theory, and analytical
technique. The arena of religious organizations is rich with distinctive organ-
izational designs, special interorganizational relationships, and a large pres-
ence across the landscape of society. Religious organizations have long

served as foundries of organizational forms and issues. Thus, there is
immense potential for research payoff in attending to them. The field of
complex organizations would be well-advised to treat religious institutions
more seriously, and scholars of religion would do well to study the emerging
scholarship on organizations of all sorts. (Demerath & Schmitt, 1998, p. 396)
Despite the predictions of secularization theory, the importance of religious
beliefs and practices to contemporary forms of organization has arguably
increased in recent decades. Indeed, from the mid-1970s onwards, a series of
major socio-political events have “forced religion back onto the scholarly table
for social scientists to consider” (Smith, 2008, p. 1561). These events include
the rise of religious conservatism and the evangelical movement in the US, the
growth of Pentecostalism across Africa, Latin America and large swathes of
Asia, and most obviously the emergence of militant forms of Islam and their con-
flict with the West. But religion has also had important effects on other domains,
including those of commerce. For example, religious groups have played a key
role in the rise of the fair trade movement (Clarke, Barnett, Cloke, & Malpass,
2007), the social enterprise and social business movements (Spear, 2007), and
spearheaded the move to encourage institutional investors, particularly global
pension funds, to consider social problems as important foci of their investment
strategies (Proffitt & Spicer, 2006). More broadly, with the notable exception of
Western Europe, much of the world “is as religious as it has ever been, and in
some places is more religious than ever” (Berger, 2001, p. 445).
And yet, for the most part, management researchers have stubbornly
refused to engage meaningfully with religion and religious forms of organiz-
ation, or to consider the effects of religious beliefs and practices on secular
organizations. Of course, there are some important exceptions. There is a sig-
nificant body of work connecting religion and business ethics, and the notion
of workplace spirituality has also generated considerable attention. However,
these debates have largely taken place outside the major journals, and can
hardly be said to have permeated thinking on management and organization.
Indeed, my review of the mainstream management literature identified just 86
papers that engage with the topic of religion. Moreover, the existing literature
Religion and Organization † 89
focuses overwhelmingly on Western Christianity, and seldom examines other

faiths or parts of the world.
The reasons for management scholars’ continued neglect of religion are not
clear. Perhaps it is considered too far removed from the commercial organiz-
ations that form the empirical focus of much work in the discipline, or simply
because it is deemed too sensitive. Whatever the explanation, the upshot is that
we know relatively little about the dynamics of religious organizational forms
or the influence of these forms (and the values and practices that underpin
them) on broader social processes and other kinds of organization. In this
article, I consider the literature on religion with relevance for scholars of

management and organization. My aim is to highlight the key contributions
and theoretical debates that could inform part of a move towards a deeper
engagement with religion on the part of management researchers. My hope
is that this sort of engagement will lead to a more sophisticated understanding
of (1) religious organizations1 per se, and (2) how these organizations and the
values and normative frameworks that underpin them affect secular
organizations.
I begin by giving an overview of the sociology of religion and religious
organizations, highlighting its classical tradition, church-sect theory, rational
choice theory (RCT), and cultural approaches. I then review the literature
that incorporates a concern with religion in 21 of the main journals in manage-
ment, and classify the papers into a series of themes. Finally, I identify some
directions for future research in order to help guide scholarship that connects
religion and the study of organizations.
The Sociology of Religion and Religious Organizations

The sociology of religion and religious organizations is remarkable in its scale
and scope, and it is impossible to do justice to its subtleties and complexities
here. Its roots can be traced to the founding fathers of sociology, who were
writing at a time when religion played a more obviously prominent role in
social life. During the twentieth century, developments in the sociology of reli-
gion continued apace, with the intellectual center of gravity shifting from
Europe to the US. However, much of the work tended to be empirically
focused, with the “mostly taken-for-granted nature of the larger secularization
theory that overshadowed a lot of social scientific thinking about religion in
much of the last century” (Smith, 2008, p. 1561) hampering theoretical devel-
opment. This led Iannaccone, writing in the late 1980s, to note that “[t]he soci-
ology of religion is an area rich in generalizations but poor in theory” (1988,
p. S241). Nonetheless, the last two decades have seen sociologists make “impor-
tant strides in better understanding the energy, meanings and complexities in
and of contemporary religion” (Smith, 2008, p. 1562), with a series of impor-
tant conceptual developments having taken place. In this section, I briefly
outline what I see as the main theoretical traditions in the sociology of religion
with relevance to management and organization.
The Classical Tradition

The classical sociological writers—Marx, Weber and Durkheim—retain
powerful influence on the sociology of religion and religious organizations.
Not everyone is happy about this, with Stark (2004), a leading pioneer of the
new orthodoxy in the sociology of religion—RCT—calling for an end to the
“ancestor worship” that he believes characterizes the field.2 Nonetheless,

many sociologists of religion still draw on the classic texts in order to
explain contemporary religious organizations and practices. Moreover, it is
my judgment that these texts continue to offer insights for the study of religion
in the early twenty-first century, and therefore have relevance for management
researchers and other social scientists interested in the relationship between
religion and organization. It is also notable that organizational scholars’
engagement with this body of work is patchy at best. I therefore briefly
review the main ideas of Marx, Weber and Durkheim as they relate to religion
in the hope of stimulating management researchers with an interest in religion
to consider the implications of the classical sociological writers for their
research.
Two key ideas underpinned Marx’s (1843/1972)3 analysis of religion (Davie,
2006). First, religion and economics are intertwined, and it is not possible to
understand the religious dimension of social life as separate from the econ-
omic. Second, religion represents a kind of alienation, one designed to mask
the exploitation that infuses capitalism, and to legitimate the interests of
those who own the means of production by making private ownership seem
the natural state of affairs. Thus, religion is the “the opium of the people”
and is propagated by a property-owning class who control not only the
means of production, but the production of ideas. In other words, religion is
a mechanism for control on the part of the elite. There are two main criticisms
of Marx’s work on religion (Collins, 2007). The first is that Marx ignored the
role of religion in enabling “the people” to fight oppression. Indeed, until the
eighteenth century, religious movements provided the basis of nearly all of
the major uprisings by peasant or urban workers. Second, in historical
terms, religion has tended to have a much stronger influence on the elite
than on those who occupy the lower social strata. Thus, an alternative expla-
nation to that of Marx is that religion’s influence stems from the sense of soli-
darity that it provides among the ruling classes, rather than keeping the
working classes in their place.4
At the core of Weber’s work on religion is the notion that religion and
society are quite separate phenomena; that religion has its own existence
which is underpinned by its own belief system or “ethic” (Davie, 2006).
There are two main strands to Weber’s thinking (McKinnon, 2010). The first,
and the one for which he is particularly well known, is his writing on the Pro-
testant Ethic (Weber, 1904 – 5/1965). The crux of his argument here is that
various Protestant beliefs and practices fused together at a particular point
in time to undermine the traditional economic order and to produce the “capi-
talist spirit”. This spirit was driven by both the notion of a vocation or calling
(that God is served through work) and the idea that hard work can lead to sal-
vation (and the avoidance of damnation). The result is that Protestants hold
values and beliefs that encourage discipline, hard work, integrity and thrift.
The second strand to Weber’s work, and arguably the most important,
involved a comparative sociology designed to explore the role of religion in
shaping the development of different parts of the world (including books on
Confucianism and Taoism in China, and Hinduism and Buddhism in India).
He was clear that the relationship between religion and society (or ethic and
context) must be understood by considering each case individually. His
central idea is that each religion has a primary status group with a particular
lifestyle and prestige, whose members associate with one another but exclude
those from other groups. It is Weber’s contention that the beliefs and practices
of the dominant status groups provide the basis of the cultures of whole
societies.5
Durkheim approached the study of religion from a functionalist perspec-
tive, and was essentially interested in its social consequences (Davie, 2006).
For Durkheim (1912/1995), religion has four core features (Ramp, 2010).
First, it is a collective phenomenon. Second, it comprises beliefs and practices.
Third, it is not the same as magic. Fourth, it is based on a fundamental dis-
tinction between the sacred and the profane. It is, of course, the distinction
between the sacred and the profane for which Durkheim’s work on religion
is most well-known. The sacred is set apart from everyday activities, while
the profane has a functional quality, and is used or consumed for a particular
purpose. However, objects are not intrinsically sacred. They become so
because of the meaning that is ascribed to them by religious communities
in the context of specific situations that are repeated over time (a Christian
drinking a glass of wine in a bar would not consider the wine to represent
the blood of Christ, as she would do in the context of a church communion).
Crucially, all sacred objects represent parts of the collective. The sacred thus
has a “totemic” quality, converting the collective into a set of categories which
form the basis of a system of meaning or logic in a particular society. In light
of this, Durkheim’s work has been criticized for equating religion to “nothing
more than the symbolic expression of religious experience” (Davie, 2006,
p. 175). Nonetheless, the idea that objects become sacred in a given organiz-
ation because of the collective meaning ascribed to them by a particular com-
munity has important implications for the study of organizations, both
religious and secular.6
Church-Sect Theory (or Sect-Church Theory)

The most prominent theory in the sociology of religious organizations, and for
many years the basis of the sociology of religion in the Anglo-American world
(Robbins & Lucas, 2007) is church-sect theory.7 It has its roots in Weber’s
(1904 – 5/1965) work, but it is generally agreed that Troeltsch (1911/1976) rep-
resents the foundational contribution with respect to the church-sect para-
digm. This initial typology was quite simple, essentially classifying churches
and sects with regard to their respective empirical characteristics (Robertson,
1970).8 Dawson (2011) summarizes the key differences between churches
and sects as follows. First, church members tend to be born into their faith,
because their parents decide to have them baptized at a young age, and in
this respect, they do not make a conscious decision to join. By contrast, sects
tend to rely on conversion in adulthood, with the conversion process often a
dramatic and emotional one. Second, churches tend to have relatively hetero-
geneous congregations and they are inclusive organizations, whereas sects tend
to have relatively homogenous congregations and are often exclusive. Third,
churches tend to reflect and embody broader social values, whereas sects
tend to be more radical and to deliberately eschew dominant social values.
As a consequence, churches tend to be tolerant and moderate, whereas sects
require adherence to strict beliefs and practices with transgressions often pun-
ished by expulsion. Fourth, churches tend to be bureaucratic and hierarchical,
with leaders hired according to qualifications and experience, whereas sects
tend to be informal and the leadership charismatic. Finally, churches tend to
rely on ritual and dogma, whereas sects tend to be more spontaneous and
can be anti-ritualistic.
At its core, church sect-theory assumes a recursive process in which an
emotionally vibrant sect breaks away from an established hierarchical
church, perhaps in response to a perceived shift away from, or a watering
down of, particular beliefs or practices. Over time, the new sect itself experi-
ences a process of institutionalization, gradually becoming more hetero-
geneous, moderate, tolerant, bureaucratic, formal, and dogmatic. Eventually,
often over a period of about 50 or 60 years (the time that the founding gener-
ation remains in control), sects take a form akin to the parent church from
which they broke away (Lucas, 1995). In other words, they turn into churches.
This inevitably leads to some members feeling that the organization does not
meet their needs or has strayed too far from a core set of beliefs or practices,
which in turn leads to the emergence of a new sect or sects. And so the
process continues. Robbins and Lucas (2007, p. 239) neatly summarize this dia-
lectical dynamic at the heart of church-sect theory in the following way:
“Through the process of institutionalization and accommodation yesterday’s
deviant sects. . . have been seen to become tomorrow’s conventional, respect-
able (but less dynamic) churches”.
Despite its age, church-sect theory remains an important element of the

sociology of religious organizations. Demerath, Hall, Schmitt, and Williams
(1998, p. viii) point out that, “as conceptual frameworks go, this one has
gone far”. However, criticisms of the theory have been mounting for some
time (Dawson, 2011). The main criticism leveled is that church-sect theory
may have been an appropriate framework for explaining the evolution of Euro-
pean Christianity, but it does not capture the complexity of contemporary reli-
gious organization, and its applicability to other faiths such as Islam is not so
obvious. For example, Robbins and Lucas (2007) note that the new religious
movements (NRMs) that characterize the early twenty-first century partly

reflect processes of globalization and secularization, and cannot be accounted
for fully through the relatively simple church-sect logic. Moreover, a number of
scholars have pointed to cases that do not fit church-sect reasoning (Stark &
Bainbridge, 1985). For instance, some sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses
and scientology have survived well beyond the first generation of leaders.
As a result of these critiques, it is clear that church-sect theory’s influence
has been on the wane, and is “in need of serious modification” (Robbins &
Lucas, 2007, p. 239). However, it is worth noting that the new dominant para-
digm in the sociology of religious organizations—RCT—has been concerned in
part with explaining the dynamic underpinning of the relationship between
church and sect, and so in this respect, church-sect theory’s influence con-
tinues. It is to RCT that I now turn.
Rational Choice Theory (or Religious Competition Theory)

The application of a version of RCT from economics to the study of religious
organizations, also known as religious competition theory, has gained much
influence in the sociology of religion. Indeed, it has arguably become the domi-
nant approach to the study of religious organizations. The work of Bainbridge,
Iannaccone, Finke, and in particular Stark, is seen as constituting the core of
this paradigm (e.g. Finke & Iannaccone, 1993; Finke & Stark, 1998; Stark &
Bainbridge, 1985; Stark & Finke, 2000).
At the heart of RCT is a series of microeconomic assumptions about human
behavior in the context of religion. In particular, a central idea is that “within
the limits of their information and understanding, restricted by available
options, guided by their preferences and tastes, humans attempt to make
rational choices” (Stark & Finke, 2000, p. 65). These choices are framed in
terms of rewards and compensators (Stark & Bainbridge, 1987). Rewards are
things that individuals want and are prepared to accept costs in order to
obtain them. These include the legitimacy and networking benefits of church
membership and attendance. Compensators are a kind of reward, the benefits
of which are not easily perceptible, such as immorality or forgiveness. In
making decisions with respect to religion, RCT assumes that individuals seek
to maximize rewards while minimizing costs, and are engaged in an exchange

relationship with a god or gods (Hamilton, 2011).
More broadly, RCT conceptualizes religion in the context of a market with a
focus on the supply side. Religious preferences are assumed to be quite stable,
with changes therefore driven by suppliers in the form of entrepreneurial reli-
gious organizations that cater for previously untapped religious preferences.
Thus, a central assumption of RCT is that religious organizations compete
with one another for adherents, and that greater choice and competition will
lead to higher levels of religious activity because it will increase the likelihood
that the preferences of religious consumers will be satisfied. In this regard, RCT
“turns conventional theory on its head” (Hamilton, 2011, p. 120); rather than
assuming that religious competition undermines the legitimacy of religion and
results in a process of secularization, as Durkheim suggested, RCT assumes
that religious competition is the most effective way to ensure a vibrant
“market” for religion.
As one might expect, RCT has been subject to much critique (Hamilton,
2011; Wilde, Geraty, Nelson, & Bowman, 2010). Most obviously, for some soci-
ologists, there is a major difference between the processes through which indi-
viduals buy a product and choose a faith; religious beliefs are considered to be
the result of a process of socialization to a much larger extent than the purchase
of, say, a toothpaste or a car, for which it is easier to make a rational choice
argument. Second, because RCT assumes a belief in the supernatural, it has
been criticized for ethnocentrism and a focus on Western forms of religion,
and thus an inability to explain Eastern religions such as Buddhism that do
not rely on supernatural assumptions. Third, the idea that individuals and
organizations seek to maximize returns becomes problematic without some
sort of quantifiable currency or metric through which one can account for
costs and benefits. It is therefore difficult to subject many of the claims of
RCT to empirical examination, and harder still to sustain a theoretical argu-
ment drawn from a microeconomic tradition that relies fundamentally on
metrics of this sort (Bryant, 2000). Others have raised methodological concerns
about the empirical measures of religious pluralism that RCT relies upon,
which have been criticized from a statistical perspective (e.g. Breault, 1989;
Chaves & Gorski, 2001; Olson, 1998).
Cultural Theories
A final main perspective in the sociology of religion and religious organizations
can be termed loosely as a “culture” perspective. This body of research in fact
incorporates a number of related approaches to the study of religion. It is
evident most obviously in the literature on NRMs, which examines the emer-
gence and growth of new forms of religious collectives. This work is connected
to a broader intellectual endeavor that aims to understand religion in social and
cultural terms, and which makes a number of contributions to the sociology of

religion (Bromley, 2011). Specifically, the study of NRMs sheds light on the
relationship between religion and the social context in which religious beliefs
and practices take place. In particular, this work helps to explain the forms
of social dislocation that lead individuals to construct new types of social
organization underpinned by new meaning systems. They also help to
explain a crucial dynamic with regard to religious behavior: conversion. A sig-
nificant amount of work has emerged on this topic, which has shown how
social networks and the reconstruction of an individual’s social identity are a
crucial part of the conversion process (Lofland & Stark, 1965; Snow & Macha-
lek, 1984). Bromley (2011) notes that this research highlights the multidimen-
sional nature of conversion, and emphasizes in particular (1) the importance of
both individual and group processes, (2) the key role of both symbolic and rela-
tional factors, and (3) that individual outcomes of the conversion process may
be short-term or long-term.
It is interesting that “despite a similar genesis in the classical nineteenth
century theories of social change, scholarly analysis of religious and social
movements have frequently addressed different problems and formulated
different paradigms” (Hannigan, 1991, p. 311). Nonetheless, some sociologists
with an interest in religion draw directly from social movement theory to
explore not only the emergence of new religious movements, but also the
role of religious groups in the development of new social movements and
counter-movements designed to address particular social issues (e.g. Zald &
McCarthy, 1998) and how religious beliefs at a macro level affect the develop-
ment of social movement organizations (e.g. McVeigh & Sikkink, 2001; Schei-
tle & Hahn, 2011). On the whole, however, it is perhaps surprising that social
movement theory does not occupy a more central place in the sociology of reli-
gion, especially given its influence on the discipline more broadly.
Finally, new institutional theory forms part of the cultural approach in the
sociology of religious organizations. For example, Cormode (1998) uses insti-
tutional theory, and more specifically the concept of isomorphism, to under-
stand the “secularization problem” (p. 117), Stout and Cormode (1998)
show how the logic of religion in the United States is connected to other
macro-level logics such as the state, capitalism, and the family, and Chaves
(1996) examines the diffusion of women’s ordination among Christian
denominations in the US. More recently, Wilde et al. (2010) draw on new insti-
tutional theory in the context of the Second Vatican Council to show that
aspects of the environment frame the interests of leaders, often leading them
to prioritize organizational legitimacy rather than issues of growth and effi-
ciency, as predicted by rational choice theorists. My own reading of this
work (as an institutional theorist from the organizational tradition) suggests
that its aim is to use institutional theory to more fully understand religious
organization rather than to push the boundaries of institutional theory itself.
In sum, the sociology of religion and religious organizations represents the

most comprehensive and sophisticated body of social scientific research on
religion. While it is somewhat fragmented, it clearly offers an important refer-
ence point for organizational researchers with an interest in religion. Moreover,
many of the assumptions that underpin the frameworks used by sociologists of
religion resonate and/or overlap with those used by scholars in management.
Certainly, rather than “reinventing the wheel”, it makes sense for management
researchers working at the intersection of religion and organization to familiar-
ize themselves with this scholarship, and to draw on it where relevant, at least
as a point of departure. In the following section, I examine the existing organ-

izational research with a focus on religion.
The Study of Religion in Management and Organization Theory

To review the management literature on religion, I examined 21 scholarly jour-
nals that I consider to constitute the mainstream outlets in management
research. I felt it was important to include journals that are both North Amer-
ican and European in origin9. I also wanted to make sure that the main man-
agement disciplines—namely organization theory, strategy, and organizational
behavior—were adequately represented. My approach was to search for key
terms in the abstract of each paper published in each journal from the first
issue to July 2011. The search terms used included “religion”, “religious”,
“church”, “mosque”, “synagogue”, “temple”, “Christian”, “Muslim”, “Islam”,
“Jewish”, “Sikh”, “Buddhism”, “spirituality”. I then checked each paper to
ascertain whether religion constituted a relatively important part of its argu-
ments. Papers where religion was found to be very marginal to the arguments
were not included in the review. This was often straightforward, but at other
times involved making a subjective judgment. Dialogue pieces and book
reviews were also excluded. This process resulted in a total of 86 papers
being selected for review. The distribution of the papers across the 21 journals
is listed in Table 1. Having identified the relevant articles, I sought to classify
them according to a set of core themes. The following 11 themes were ident-
ified: religion and the environment; the strategy and performance of religious
organizations; organizational change; organizational culture; power, authority,
and discrimination; religion and individual behavior in organizations; business
ethics; comparative studies; religion and social identity; workplace spirituality;
and religious ideas in secular contexts. In organizing the themes, I sought to
move in a general sense from the macro level to the micro level of analysis,
although the final theme (on religious ideas in secular contexts) clearly cuts
across levels. The first five themes are rooted mainly in the disciplines of
strategy and organization theory, themes six to ten are rooted mainly in
organizational behavior, with the final theme having relevance for all three
disciplines.
Table 1 Number of Papers in the Main Management Journals that Include a Focus on Religion
Journal title Number of papers (total 5 86)
Academy of Management Annals 0
Academy of Management Executive/Perspectives 1
Academy of Management Journal 5
Academy of Management Review 2
Administrative Science Quarterly 10
British Journal of Management 1
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 2
Human Relations 31
Industrial and Corporate Change 1
Journal of Business Venturing 0
Journal of International Business Studies 3
Journal of Management 1
Journal of Management Studies 2
Journal of Organizational Behavior 5
Long Range Planning 5
Management Science 0
Organization 6
Organization Science 1
Organization Studies 6
Strategic Management Journal 3
Strategic Organization 1
Each paper was assigned to a theme with the exception of Bartunek (2006)
who offers a personal reflection on her own career and work, and Cooper
(2007) who uses the Church to illustrate his postmodern critique of organiz-
ation as “a social body or collection of organs” (p. 1547) and whose article
defies straightforward classification. Again, the process of assigning papers to
themes was not an exact one, and some of the papers could have been classified
within multiple themes. A list of the papers assigned to each category is
included in Table 2. In the remainder of this section, I summarize some of
the key papers from each theme, where relevant connecting with related
ideas and literatures, and evaluate the key insights that they offer.
Religion and the Environment

Ten of the papers included in my review examine the relationship between reli-
gious organizations and the contexts in which they are embedded and/or the
effects of religious beliefs and values on the cultural or institutional environ-
ments of organizations. Four of the ten draw explicitly on ideas from social
movement theory. For example, Hiatt, Sine, and Tolbert (2009) show how
a faith-based social movement organization, the Women’s Christian
Table 2 Breakdown of Papers in the Main Management Journals that Include a Focus on Religion by Subject Category
98
Subject category Papers
†
1. Religion and the Creed, W.E.D., DeJordy, R., & Lok, J. (2010). Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity
environment (n ¼ 10) work. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1336–1364.
Hiatt, S.R., Sine, W.D., & Tolbert, P.S. (2009). From Pabst to Pepsi: The deinstituionalization of social practices and the
creation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54(4), 635– 667.
Jenkins, J.C. (1977). Radical transformation of organizational goals. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22(4), 568–586.
Khan, F.R., & Koshul, B.B. (2011). Lenin in Allah’s court: Iqbal’s critique of Western capitalism and the opening up of the
postcolonial imagination in critical management studies. Organization, 18(3), 303– 322.
King, M.D., & Haveman, H.A. (2008). Antislavery in America: The press, the pulpit, and the rise of antislavery societies.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 53(3), 492– 528.
Nelson, R.E. (1989). Organization-environment isomorphism, rejection, and substitution in Brazilian Protestantism.
Organization Studies, 10(2), 207– 224.
Nelson, R.E. (1993). Authority, organization, and societal context in multinational churches. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 38(4), 653 – 682.
Proffitt, W.T., & Spicer, A. (2006). Shaping the shareholder activism agenda: Institutional investors and global social
issues. Strategic Organization, 4(2), 165– 190.
Robertson, A. (1969). Penal policy and social change. Human Relations, 22(6), 547 – 563.
Smith, E.A. (1957). Bureaucratic organization: Selective or saturative. Administrative Science Quarterly, 2(3), 361– 375.
2. The strategy and Coghlan, D. (1987). Corporate strategy in Catholic religious orders. Long Range Planning, 20 (1), 44 – 51.
performance of Hussey, D.E. (1974). Corporate planning for a church. Long Range Planning, 7(2), 61 – 64.
religious organizations King, M., & Smith, D.K. (1982). Planning the deployment of clergy. Long Range Planning, 15(2), 104–111.
(n ¼ 9) McGrath, P. (2005). Thinking differently about knowledge-intensive firms: Insights from early mediaeval Irish
monasticism. Organization, 12(4), 549– 566.
Miller, K.D. (2002). Competitive strategies of religious organizations. Strategic Management Journal, 23(5), 435–456.
Odom, R.Y., & Boxx, W.R. (1988). Environment, planning processes, and organizational performance of churches.
Strategic Management Journal 9(2), 197– 205.

Pearce II, J.A., Fritz, D.A., & Davis, P.S. (2010). Entrepreneurial orientation and the performance of religious
congregations as predicted by rational choice theory. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 34(1), 219– 248.
Wasdell, D. (1980). Long range planning and the church. Long Range Planning, 13(3), 99 – 108.
Webb, R.J. (1974). Organizational effectiveness and the voluntary organization. Academy of Management Journal, 17(4),
663 – 677.
3. Organizational change Bartunek, J.M. (1984). Changing interpretive schemes and organizational restructuring: The example of a religious order.
(n ¼ 7) Administrative Science Quarterly, 29(3), 355– 372.
Bartunek, J., & Franzak, F. (1988). The effects of organizational restructuring on terms of reference and cooperation.
Journal of Management, 14(4), 579– 592.
Bartunek, J.M., & Ringuest, J.L. (1989). Enacting new perspectives through work activities during organizational reform.
Journal of Management Studies, 26(6), 541– 560.
Ludwig, D.C. (1993). Adapting to a declining environment: Lessons from a religious order. Organization Science, 4(3),
41 – 56.
Kohl, J.P. (1984). Strategies for growth: Intervention in a church. Long Range Planning, 17 (6),
Religion and Organization

76 – 81.
Mintzberg, H., & Westley, F. (1992). Cycles of organizational change. Strategic Management Journal, 13(S2), 39 – 59.
Plowman, D.A., Baker, L.T., Beck, T.E., Kulkarni, M., Solansky, S.T., & Travis, D.V. (2007). Radical change accidentally:
The emergence and amplification of small change. Academy of Management Journal, 50(3), 515– 543.
4. Organizational culture Angus, L.B. (1993). Masculinity and women teachers at Christian Brothers College. Organization Studies, 14(2), 235– 260.
(n ¼ 2) Sorensen, B.M. (2010). St. Paul’s conversion: The aesthetic organization of labour. Organization Studies, 31(3), 307– 326.
5. Power, authority and Dietrich, D. (1981). Holocaust as public policy: The Third Reich. Human Relations, 34(6), 445– 462.
discrimination (n ¼ 10) Ghumann,S., & Jackson, L. (2010). The downside of religious attire: the Muslim headscarf and expectations of obtaining
employment. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(1), 4 – 23.
Hinings, C.R., & Bryman, A. (1974). Size and the administrative component in churches. Human Relations, 27(5), 457– 475.
99 †
Katz, E. & Zloczower, A. (1961). Ethnic continuity in an Israeli town. Human Relations, 14(4), 293– 308.
Table 2 Breakdown of Papers in the Main Management Journals that Include a Focus on Religion by Subject Category (Continued)
100
†
Kleiner, R.J., Tuckman, J. & Lavell, M. (1959). Mental disorder and status based on religious affiliation. Human Relations,
12(3), 273 – 276.
Lauer, R.H. (1973). Organizational punishment: Punitive relations in a voluntary association—a minister in a Protestant
church. Human Relations, 26(2): 189–202.
Satow, R.L. (1975). Value-rational authority and professional organizations: Weber’s missing type. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 20(4), 526 – 531.
Watson, J. (1950). Some social and psychological situations related to change in attitude. Human Relations, 3(1), 15 – 56.
Weima, J. (1965). Authoritarianism, religious conservatism, and sociocentric attitudes in Roman Catholic groups. Human
Relations, 18(3): 231 – 239.
Wilken, P.H. (1971). Size of organizations and member participation in church congregations. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 16(2), 173 – 179.
6. Religion and Anson, O., Carmel, S., Bonneh, D.Y., Levenson, A., & Maoz, B. (1990). Recent life events, religiosity, and health: An
individual behavior in individual or collective effect. Human Relations, 43(11), 1051–1066.
organizations (n ¼ 11) Chusmir, L.H., & Koberg, C.S. (1988). Religion and attitudes towards work: A new look at an old question. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 9(3), 251–262.
Drakopoulou Dodd, S., & Spearman, P.T. (1998). Religion and enterprise: An introductory explanation. Entrepreneurship
Theory & Practice, 23(Fall), 71 –86.
Friedlander, F. (1975). Emerging and contemporary lifestyles: An inter-generational issue. Human Relations, 28(4)
329 – 347.
Furnham, A. (1997). The half full or half empty glass: The views of the economic optimist vs. pessimist. Human Relations,
50(2), 197 – 209.
Jones Jr., H.B. (1997). The Protestant ethic: Weber’s model and the empirical literature Human Relations, 50(7), 757– 778.
Laumann, E.O., & Rapoport, R.N. (1968). The institutional effect on career achievements of technologists: A multiple
classification analysis. Human Relations, 21(3), 227– 239.
Nielsen, E., & Edwards, J. (1982). Perceived feminine role orientation and self-concept Human Relations, 35(7),
547 – 558.
Reilly, M.E. (1978). A case study of role conflict: Roman Catholic priests. Human Relations, 31(1), 77 – 90.
Sagie, A., & Elizur, D. (1996). The structure of personal values: A conical representation of multiple life ideas. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 17(S1), 573– 586.
Senger, J. (1970). The religious manager. Academy of Management Journal, 13(2), 179– 196.
7. Business ethics (n ¼ 2) Boling, T.E. (1978). The management ethics “crisis”: An organizational perspective. Academy of Management Review,
3(2), 360 – 365.
Bell, E., Taylor, S., & Driscoll, C. (forthcoming). Varieties of organizational soul: The ethics of belief in organizations.
Organization.
8. Comparative studies Ajiferuke, M., & Boddewyn, J. (1970). Socioeconomic indicators in comparative management. Administrative Science
(n ¼ 8) Quarterly, 15(4), 453 – 458.
Dow, D., & Karunaratna, A. (2006). Developing a multidimensional instrument to measure psychic distance stimuli.
Journal of International Business Studies, 37(5), 578– 602.
Greif, A. (1996). The study of organizations and evolving organizational forms through history: Reflections from the late

medieval family firm. Industrial and Corporate Change, 5(2), 473– 502.
Niles, F.S. (1999). Towards a cross-cultural understanding of work-related beliefs. Human Relations, 52(7), 855– 867.
Parboteeah, K.P., Hoegl, M., & Cullen, J. (2009). Religious dimensions and work obligation: A country institutional profile
model. Human Relations, 62(1), 119– 148.
Sagy, S., Orr, E., & Bar-On, D. (1999). Individualism and collectivism in Israeli society: Comparing religious and secular
high-school students. Human Relations, 52(3), 327– 348.
Schiffman, L.G., Dillon, W.R., & Ngumah, F.E. (1981). The influence of subcultural and personality factors on consumer
acculturation. Journal of International Business Studies, 12(2), 137–143.
Tang, L., & Koveos, P.E. (2008). A framework to update Hofstede’s cultural value indices: economic dynamics and
institutional stability. Journal of International Business Studies, 39, 1045– 1063.
†
Cairns, E., & Mercer, G.W. (1984). Social Identity in Northern Ireland. Human Relations, 37 (12), 1095– 1102.
101
Table 2 Breakdown of Papers in the Main Management Journals that Include a Focus on Religion by Subject Category (Continued)
102
†
9. Religion and social Essers, C., & Benschop, Y. (2009). Muslim businesswomen doing boundary work: The negotiation of Islam, gender and
identity (n ¼ 10) ethnicity in entrepreneurial contexts. Human Relations, 62 (3), 403– 423.
Gutierrez, B., Howard-Grenville, J., & Scully, M., (2010). The faithful rise up: Split identification and an unlikely change
effort. Academy of Management Journal, 53(4), 673– 699.
Hall, D.T., & Schneider, B. (1972). Correlates of organizational identification as a function of career pattern and
organizational type. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(3), 340– 350.
Herriott, P., & Scott-Jackson, W. (2002). Globalization, social identities and employment British Journal of Management,
13(2), 249 – 257.
Hofman, J. (1982). Social identity and the readiness for social relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Human
Relations, 35(9), 727 – 741.
Mael, F., & Ashforth, B.E. (1992). Alumni and their alma mater: A partial test of the reformulated model of organizational
identification. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13(2), 103– 123.
Maoz, I., Bar-On, D., Bekermann, Z., & Jaber-Massarwa, S. (2004). Learning about “good enough” through “bad enough”:
A story of a planned dialogue between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Human Relations, 57(9), 1075– 1101.
Maoz, I., Steinberg, S., Bar-On, D., & Fakhereldeen, M. (2002). The dialogue between the “Self” and the “Other”: A
process analysis of Palestinian-Jewish encounters in Israel. Human Relations, 55(8), 931– 962.
Weaver, G.R., & Agle, B.R. (2002). Religiosity and ethical behavior in organizations: A symbolic interactionist perspective.
The Academy of Management Review, 27(1) 77 – 97.
10. Workplace Bell, E., & Taylor, S. (2003). The elevation of work: Pastoral power and the new age work ethic. Organization, 10(2), 329–
spirituality (n ¼ 9) 349.
Bell, E., & Taylor, S. (2004). “From outward bound to inward bound”: The prophetic voices and discursive practices of
spiritual management development. Human Relations, 57(4) 439–466.
Boyle, M .V., & Healy, J. (2003). Balancing mysterium and onus: Doing spiritual work with an emotion-laden
organizational context. Organization, 10(2), 351– 373.
Cash, K., & Gray, G. (2000). A framework for accommodating religion and spirituality in the workplace. Academy of
Management Executive, 14 (3), 124– 133.
Cullen, J.G. (2009). How to sell your soul and still get into Heaven: Steven Covey’s epiphany-inducing technology of
effective selfhood. Human Relations, 62(8), 1231– 1254.
Driver, M., (2005). From empty speech to full speech? Reconceptualizing spirituality in organizations based on a
psychoanalytically-grounded understanding of the self. Human Relations, 58(9), 1091– 1110.
Fry, L., & Kriger, M. (2009). Towards a theory of being-centred leadership: Multiple levels of being as context for effective
leadership. Human Relations, 62(11), 1167– 1696.
Lynn, M.L., Naughton, M.J., & VanderVeen, S. (2011). Connecting religion and work: Patterns and influences of work-
faith integration. Human Relations, 64(5), 675– 701.
Zaidman, N., Goldstein-Gidoni, O., & Nehemya, I. (2009). From temples to organizations: The introduction and
packaging of spirituality. Organization, 16(4), 597– 62.
11. Religious ideas in Ackers, P., & Preston, D. (1997). Born again? The ethics and efficacy of the conversion experience in contemporary
secular contexts (n ¼ 6) management development. Journal of Management Studies, 34(5), 677– 701.

Finch-Lees, T., Mabey, C., & Liefooghe, A. (2005). “In the name of capability”: A critical discursive evaluation of
competency-based management development. Human Relations, 58(9), 1185– 1222.
Gabriel, Y. (1997). Meeting God: When organizational members come face to face with
the supreme leader. Human Relations, 50(4), 315– 342.
Hall, D.T., & Chandler, D.E. (2005). Psychological success: When the career is a calling. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 26(2), 155 – 176.
Shenkar, O. (1996). The firm as a total institution: Reflections on the Chinese state enterprise. Organization Studies, 17(6),
885 – 907.
Wilson, F. (1992). Language, technology, gender, and power. Human Relations, 45(9), 883– 904.
12. Not classified (n ¼ 2) Bartunek, J., (2006). The Christmas gift: A story of dialectics. Organization Studies, 27(12), 1875– 1894.
†
Cooper R. (2007). Organs of process: Rethinking human organization. Organization Studies, 28(10), 1547– 1573.
103
Temperance Movement, was able to successfully challenge the legitimacy of

alcohol consumption in the United States in the late nineteenth century,
which had the effect of undermining breweries and promoting the soft
drinks industry. In another interesting paper, King and Haveman (2008)
study the emergence of the organized anti-slavery movement in the late eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries. They found that the relationship between
religious organizations and the antislavery movement varied according to theo-
logical orientation: “this-wordly churches” (those concerned with redeeming
society as well as redeeming souls) supported the development of the antislav-
ery movement while “other-worldly churches” (those with an overriding focus

on individual salvation) sought to weaken it. The idea that religious organiz-
ations may play influential and sometimes unnoticed roles in social movements
and social change is reinforced by Proffitt and Spicer (2006). Through an
analysis of shareholder activism with respect to key global social issues span-
ning 35 years, these authors show that religious organizations were behind
around 60% of the more than 2000 shareholder proposals in the US on
topics relating to international human rights and labor standards. It was
only when religious organizations had successfully legitimated these issues
that public pension funds began to take them seriously. This is consistent
with insights from the sociology of religion, which has shown that religious
groups and organizations may be “crucibles of social movements” (Zald &
McCarthy, 1998, p. 24).
Just three papers draw mainly on ideas from new institutional theory.
Nelson (1989) examined the responses of Brazilian Protestant churches in
200 communities to environmental pressures. On the basis of his analysis,
he argued against the assertion—dominant in the literature at the time—that
organizations in a field generally become more similar (or isomorphic) when
faced with a given set of institutional circumstances. In doing so, he identified
two “non-isomorphic responses”. The first is rejection; in the context of
Nelson’s study, a “deviant religion” (i.e. Protestantism) may begin as a sym-
bolic revolt against a dominant religious order (i.e. Catholicism).10 The
second is substitution, with the Protestant Church providing an alternative
to the Catholic Church for people who, for a variety of reasons, are not able
to practice Catholicism.
In a later paper, Nelson (1993) again seeks to undermine the assumption
that isomorphism is a ubiquitous feature of organizational life. This time he
draws on Weber’s tripartite classification of legitimate authority—rational-
legal, traditional, and charismatic—to examine the relationship between
authority type, the institutional environment, and organizational outcomes.
In doing so, he studied three multinational churches (the Christian Congre-
gations, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints) in the US and Brazil, with each church assumed to represent
one of Weber’s ideal-typical forms of authority. He found that the three
churches adopted radically differing organizational forms and exhibited

markedly different performance levels within countries, and that the same
denominations exhibited markedly differing performance levels between
nations.
Creed, DeJordy, and Lok (2010) draw on institutional ideas to explore the
microdynamics of institutional change. Specifically, they examine how gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) ministers who belong to two Protes-
tant denominations in the United States cope with the institutional contradic-
tion they experience between their membership of the church and their
membership of the GLBT community. Their study is especially interesting

because it describes how people, whose identities are apparently inconsistent
with the religious organizations to which they belong, can initiate institutional
change from apparently marginal positions. They also show that these actors
are neither the “cultural dopes” nor the “hyper-muscular institutional entre-
preneurs” (p. 1337) who dominate much of the recent new institutional
theory literature. Given the prominence of new institutional theory within
the management literature and the rich empirical contexts that religious organ-
izations offer, it is perhaps surprising that there has not been more empirical
work in management that has sought to use an institutional lens to study reli-
gion and organization.
The Strategy and Performance of Religious Organizations

The nine papers grouped under this heading are all concerned with the stra-
tegic management of religious organizations and the implications for organiz-
ational effectiveness. Implicit in a number of these papers is the notion that
religious organizations are in competition for resources and members. As
noted, this taps into a longstanding debate in the sociology of religion stretch-
ing back to Durkheim, who argued that faiths with a monopoly position are in
a much stronger position than those operating in a multi-faith environment,
because competition between faiths inevitably undermines the claims of each
of them. Finke and Stark (1998) as well as other rational choice theorists
offer an opposing view, claiming to show empirically that religious partici-
pation in the US is highest in cities where competition between faiths is stron-
gest, a claim that was challenged by, among others, Chaves and Gorski (2001),
and Voas, Olson, and Crockett (2002).
Building on these discussions, Miller (2002) examines religious production
and competition, drawing on economic and institutional theory to build a fra-
mework for examining “the sources of sustainable competitive advantage
among religious organizations” (p. 435). For Miller, rivalry is an intrinsic
feature of religious organization. This rivalry is often overt, particularly in
the case of proselytizing organizations, and can be extremely intense, most
obviously in contexts where there is an absence of regulation. He
conceptualizes religious organizations’ competitive advantage as being rooted

in three core strands: (1) the credibility of the commitment of the founders
and their movement’s perceived legitimacy; (2) the organization’s ability to
secure organizational resources that are rare and inimitable; and (3) the
ability to build a differentiated strategy that allows the organization to tap
into unique customer segments.
In another significant paper, Pearce, Fritz, and Davis (2010) link RCT and
the concept of entrepreneurial orientation to examine whether there is a
relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and organizational perform-
ance. Entrepreneurial orientation is an organization-level construct that com-

prises a number of distinct but related kinds of behavior—innovativeness,
proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, risk-taking, and autonomy—which
have been shown to increase for-profit firm performance and resource acqui-
sition in some circumstances (Lumpkin & Dess, 2001). Using a sample of 250
religious organizations in five different markets, the authors found an entrepre-
neurial orientation to be associated positively with performance. The authors
conclude that an entrepreneurial orientation “can be a source of competitive
advantage or strategic renewal for local organizational units of larger religious
denominations” (p. 240).
McGrath (2005) takes quite a different tack. By examining the practices and
strategies adopted by early medieval Irish monastic communities and attempt-
ing to show their relevance for contemporary knowledge-intensive firms
(KIFs), the author seeks to show that an understanding of contemporary
firm effectiveness requires the adoption of multiple lenses, and that singular
perspectives are inadequate. While McGrath does not seek to present Irish
monastic communities as models that “contemporary KIFs or other types of
firms need to aspire towards or copy”, he does assert that his work is insightful
because historical analysis can encourage management researchers to think
about the present in different ways.
The appropriateness of conceptualizing religious organizations in terms of
strategy, competitiveness, and competitive advantage may be viewed with
skepticism by some scholars. However, Miller (2002, p. 450) notes that
while “critics may view this [perspective on religious organizations] as a
crass, even irreverent, portrayal of religion. A more constructive view recog-
nizes that all organizations—sacred or secular—require resources”. I concur
with Miller that insights from the strategy literature, including the resource-
based view (RBV), entrepreneurial orientation, and the knowledge-based
view, have the potential to provide significant steps forward in our under-
standing of religious organizations. A particular advantage of these
approaches is that they provide a stronger theoretical basis than RCT in soci-
ology for considering why some religious organizations attract more followers
and resources than others. I discuss this point more fully in the section on
directions for future research.
Organizational Change
It is interesting that, while relatively small in overall numbers (n¼7), several
of the management papers on religion that have arguably had the greatest
visibility and influence focus on organizational change. These papers
include three by Jean Bartunek, the organizational scholar whose work on
religion is perhaps the most well-known. The empirical setting for all three
papers is an organizational restructuring in an international women’s
Roman Catholic religious order, which involved the creation of a single
national province in the US to replace five existing provinces. While the
empirical setting is the same, the data used in each paper are different.
Bartunek (1984) shows how organizational members’ shared interpretive
schemes were altered as the structure of the order changed. In a second
paper, Bartunek and Franzak (1988) explore how changes in organization
structure affect frames of reference and cooperation. More specifically, the
authors set out to examine the extent to which the merger of the five pro-
vinces into a single province had succeeded in changing organizational
members’ understanding of key concepts, and the extent to which the
merger had succeeded in promoting cooperation between different groups
in the order. In a third paper, Bartunek and Ringuest (1989) focus on the
effects of organizational change on lower level organizational members.
They found that different groups in the organization had varying experiences
of the change process, with some developing new interpretive schemes and
others retaining the existing ones. Interestingly, lower level members who,
through their work, developed and enacted new interpretive schemes were
less likely to be appointed to organizational committees and more likely to
leave the order. Those members who enacted new interpretive schemes and
who remained in the order came to view themselves as less important in
the eyes of organizational leaders, but more influential in the order as a
whole.
The way that Bartunek and her co-authors treat their empirical context is
interesting; the religious setting is in many ways downplayed, with the focus
on the organizational dynamics associated with the restructuring of the
order. Two of the papers have sections that directly address the implications
of the setting in which the research took place. For example, Bartunek and
Ringuest note that religious orders differ from other work settings with
respect to their identity dynamics and the role of the environment. But
“rather than minimizing. . . [the study’s] applicability to other settings”, the
authors argue that the context of a religious order highlights “the value of
researchers attending to some aspects of transformation that have not yet
received very much attention” (p. 556). This statement neatly captures the
potential of studying religious organizations. Not only do we learn about
particular organizational forms that have seldom been subject to systematic
analysis by organization theorists, but there is also the potential to gain fresh
perspectives on the study of organizations in general.
In addition to the work of Bartunek and her co-authors, there are other
important papers that examine religious organizations and change. For
instance, Mintzberg and Westley (1992) developed a model of change based
on different types of cycle. Intriguingly, in order to illustrate their model
they used “cases in world religion”. According to the authors, all organiz-
ations experience circumstances in which their existence is threatened, but
“what distinguishes the world religions is that they have found ways to
sustain themselves through these changes” (p. 52). This arguably makes
them particularly interesting settings through which to study change. In
doing so, they draw parallels between the strategies of the Catholic Church
in thirteenth century Italy and IBM (both of which sought to control and
isolate change in a strategy they term “enclaving”), the Protestant church in
eighteenth century North America and Hewlett Packard (both of which
sought to respond to change by encouraging a pluralism in points of view
in a strategy they term “cloning”), and early Buddhism in India and the
Body Shop (both of which sought to maintain the intensity of charismatic lea-
dership into the later stages of organizational development in a strategy
termed “uprooting”). In developing these arguments, the authors show crea-
tively the link between religious organizations and contemporary manage-
ment practices.
A more recent paper by Plowman et al. (2007) also makes important theor-
etical contributions to the literature on change. Drawing on a compelling single
case study, the authors question dominant perspectives which have tended to
classify change as (1) episodic or continuous (e.g. Weick & Quinn, 1999) or (2)
convergent or radical (e.g. Tushman and Romanelli, 1985). The authors
examine how a small and apparently minor change—in this case, the decision
of a group of young people who belonged to a church in the Southwest of the
US to offer hot breakfasts to homeless people each Sunday morning—can be
amplified by small subsequent actions, leading to unplanned radical change.
The actions in question involved one of the volunteers (a physician) who
served food on Sunday mornings deciding to offer free medical advice,
which in turn led to a wave of full-scale medical, dental and orbital clinics
based at the church, which in turn precipitated funding to provide job training,
legal assistance, and other support services for homeless people, which in turn
led to homeless people joining the church and radically altering its culture,
creating tensions and conflict in the process.
Like much of the change literature in management, these papers emphasize
the complexity of organizational change and the difficulties of managing it pur-
posefully. But by focusing on a very different context, that of religious organ-
izations, they shift our attention to aspects of the change process which, though
present, may be less visible in a for-profit context.
Organizational Culture
It is perhaps surprising given both its central place in management theory
and its obvious relevance to religious organizations that organizational
culture hardly features at all in this review, with just two papers on the
topic. In one of the papers, Angus (1993) uses an ethnographic study of a
Catholic boys’ school in a provincial Australian city to explore the construc-
tion of “masculine subjectivities” (p. 235) in the school and of women tea-
chers’ experiences of the organization’s coercive, physical, competitive,
individualistic culture. He notes that the school’s culture, and more specifi-
cally its “gender regime” (p. 253), is internalized in a complex manner by

pupils. The internalization of gender stereotypes was part of the “hidden
curriculum” (p. 253) of the school, but was reinforced through more
formal practices and indeed the academic curriculum itself. Several
women teachers sought to contest aspects of the school’s culture, and suc-
ceeded in developing more productive and supportive relationships with stu-
dents, at least in their own classes. But the struggle was not an easy one, as it
involved challenging the norms and practices rooted in a particular form of
Catholicism.
Sorensen’s (2010) paper is focused on organizational aesthetics rather than
culture per se, and compares two versions of the Conversion of Saint Paul by
Caravaggio (the Italian Renaissance painter) with two contemporary forms
of organization. The first version of the painting was rejected by the Catholic
Church, while the second was accepted. The two versions provide “radically
different interpretations of what conversion can accomplish” (p. 308). Soren-
sen’s argument is designed to highlight how aesthetic artifacts are used both
for the purposes of control and serve “as a locus of resistance and a means
of escape” (p. 308).
These two papers hint strongly at the promise of the concept of organiz-
ational culture in the study of religion. However, one of the papers is almost
20 years old, and neither explicitly taps into the so-called “second wave”
(Dacin & Weber, 2007, p. 742) of cultural analysis in organization studies;
the more recent literature on the topic emphasizes the potential of culture as
both a resource and a constraint on behavior, as well as the relationship
between an organization’s culture and broader social processes. Given the idio-
syncratic nature, and indeed the sheer strength in terms of social control, of the
cultures that characterize many religious organizations, this is clearly an area
that is ripe for further investigation.
Power, Authority, and Discrimination

Ten of the papers were categorized as being concerned with power, authority,
or discrimination, although several of the articles in other categories, most
notably organizational change and organizational culture, are also of course
concerned to a large extent with aspects of power and control. Two key insights
can be drawn from this group of papers.
First, the exercise of authority and control pose distinct problems in the
context of religious organizations. For example, in an important study of
Church of England and Methodist churches in England, Hinings and
Bryman (1974) argue that, in contrast to for-profit firms, religious organiz-
ations may need to increase the proportion of administrative staff as they
grow in order to exert effective control. This is explained by (1) organizational
complexity, defined by the number of different tasks performed, which is high
in religious organizations11 and (2) the spatial dynamics of religious organiz-

ations, with tasks allocated on a geographical basis, which reduces the scope
to generate administrative efficiencies. The authors conclude that religious
organizations “may operate within constraints over which they have little or
no control, and with belief systems that do not put a great stress on ‘rationality’
or ‘efficiency’” (p. 474).
In addition, Wilken (1971) argues that religious organizations face particu-
lar difficulties when seeking to control and encourage the participation of their
members (i.e. their congregations), because they cannot turn to the financial
incentives used in utilitarian organizations or the physical sanctions used
in coercive organizations. These problems are likely to increase as the size of
the congregation increases. Partly because of the challenges of control outlined
by Hinings and Bryman and by Wilken, ideological norms, rather than formal
rules or sanctions, constitute a particularly strong basis of control in religious
organizations. Indeed, the ability of organizational leaders to ensure
compliance from followers depends, in part, on the extent to which the
content of the instructions is consistent with the goals of the ideology
(Satow, 1975).
A second key insight from this group of papers is that members of religious
faiths may be discriminated against on the grounds of their religion. This might
be because of their religious attire which makes them stand out, leading to dis-
crimination in the workplace as in the case of Muslim women in the United
States (Ghumman & Jackson, 2010). Or it might be because of deliberate
attempts by the state or other powerful actors to vilify and demonize a particu-
lar religious group, as was the case in the Third Reich, leading ultimately to
state-sanctioned mass murder (Dietrich, 1981). Discrimination can also have
less obvious implications for members of religious faiths. For example,
Kleiner, Tuckman, and Lavell (1959) show that the “frustration” that emanates
from discrimination may manifest itself in increased mental health problems.
However, social attitudes toward particular religious groups are not static, and
social interaction between different groups may play an important role in ame-
liorating discrimination (Watson, 1950). Clearly, these papers only scratch the
surface of the issues relating to power, authority, and discrimination in the
context of religion.
Religion and Individual Behavior in Organizations

This group of papers, as well as those considered in the sections that follow on
business ethics, comparative studies, religion and social identity, and work-
place spirituality, have a more micro focus and could be classified broadly as
belonging to the field of organizational behavior. The 11 papers that form
part of this section are concerned in a general sense with the relationship
between religious beliefs and individual values, attitudes, and behavior in
organizations, although in some of them (Friedlander, 1975; Furnham, 1997;
Nielsen & Edwards, 1982; Sagie & Elizur, 1996) religion is just one of several
variables examined.
The intellectual roots of this work can be traced to Weber (1904 –5/1965),
who, as noted above, posited that each religion has its own belief system (or
“ethic”) that is linked to particular forms of behavior. In this respect, the
papers offer mixed evidence about the influence of religion on behavior.
Some found no clear effect. For example, Chusmir and Koberg (1988) explored
the relationship between (1) religious affiliation and (2) religious conviction,
and different work-related attitudes including motivation, job satisfaction,
and organizational commitment. They concluded that there are no significant
relationships between either religious affiliation or religious conviction and any
of the work-related attitudes that they studied. Interestingly, they did find a
relationship between religious conviction and organizational rank, with man-
agerial staff holding less strong religious convictions than non-managerial staff.
They also found that Protestants are more likely to score highly on the Protes-
tant work ethic measure that they used, and that people who do not belong to a
religion have a higher need for power than Catholics, Protestants, or “affiliates
of Eastern religions” (p. 251).
Drakapoulou Dodd, and Seaman (1998) examined the relationship between
religious beliefs and entrepreneurial behavior in the UK. The authors found
that entrepreneurs were not more or less likely to hold religious beliefs than
salaried employees, and that the presence or absence of religious beliefs had
no effect on the performance of the entrepreneurs’ ventures. They concluded
that: “The very clear empirical finding of this short empirical study is that
British entrepreneurs, however defined, show neither more or less religious
propensity than their counterparts in the wage and salary sector” (p. 81).
By contrast Senger (1970), in the first paper with a focus on religion to be
published in the Academy of Management Journal, did find a relationship
between religious beliefs and work-related attitudes and behavior. He
measured the extent to which a sample of US managers was religious, and com-
pared this score with a range of organizational and biographical data. Perhaps
counter-intuitively, the study concluded that religious managers were less con-
cerned with “doing satisfying work” and “becoming a whole person”, leading
the author to assert that they were “less self-actualizing” (p. 186). While
religious managers were more likely to be rated highly with respect to all-round
competence, they were less likely to be promoted to very senior positions (cf.
Laumann & Rapoport, 1968). On the basis of his findings, Senger speculates
that religious managers will have a positive effect on the workplace because
they are likely to pursue their socially oriented goals while at work, improving
the working conditions of all organizational members. Other researchers found
relationships between religious beliefs and role orientation (Nielsen &
Edwards, 1982), lifestyle (Friedlander, 1975), and optimism (Furnham, 1997).
The upshot is that the management literature does not offer a clear picture
of the effects of religious beliefs on individual values, attitudes, or behavior in

organizations. Nor does it tap directly into work in other social sciences that
distinguishes more concretely between five core dimensions of individual reli-
giosity (Stark & Glock, 1968): (1) the experiential dimension (individual reli-
gious feelings concerning communication with a divine power); (2) the
ideological dimension (beliefs about the nature of the divine); (3) the intellec-
tual dimension (knowledge about particular doctrines); (4) the ritual dimen-
sion (individual religious practices); and (5) the consequential dimension
(the connection between non-religious and religious beliefs, experiences, and
practices). While these dimensions are not uncontested (Bréchon, 2007), enga-
ging meaningfully with them may provide management researchers with an
important opportunity to move work in this area forward. Specifically, under-
standing more about how individual religiosity affects behavior has the poten-
tial to shed light on a range of key issues in management including leadership,
power and politics, and decision-making.
Business Ethics
Closely related to the previous section on religion and individual behavior in
organizations is the topic of business ethics. Only two papers—Boling (1978)
and Bell, Taylor, and Driscoll (forthcoming)—were placed in this category,
although Weaver and Agle (2002), discussed below, could also have been
included. Bowling’s paper argues that the dominant “theistic” approach to
business ethics, which focuses on Judeo-Christian morality, is inadequate in
the context of complex modern corporations, and calls instead for “cooperative
ethical contracts” (p. 363) in which firms devote as much energy to developing
and enforcing ethical codes as they do to effective production and
management.
Writing from a critical management perspective, Bell et al. (forthcoming)
also suggest that current conceptions of business ethics, which in the US are
rooted partly in cultural traditions that stem from “inspirational religion”
(p. 3), are inadequate because they do not encourage organizational members
to question critically the norms and practices that they encounter. They
argue that the nineteenth century philosopher, psychologist, and physician
William James’ idea of a “sick” organizational soul has the potential to provide
“a more robust ethical framework” for businesses because it encourages an
“ethical skepticism” in organizational activities (p. 1).
While my review has only identified a small number of papers pertaining to
religion and business ethics in the mainstream management journals, a signifi-
cant literature on this topic does exist in the specialist business ethics and ethics
journals, most notably Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly.
At the core of this work is the question of whether people who hold religious
beliefs are more or less likely to behave ethically than people who do not hold
such beliefs. As one might expect, there is evidence to support both positions
(see Rashid & Ibrahim 2008 for a review). While this debate has a somewhat
sterile feel to it, the role of particular individuals and organizations in precipi-
tating the recent global financial crisis has again fixed a spotlight firmly on
ethical behavior in corporations, and developing a more nuanced understand-
ing of the role of religion in this context certainly seems an issue deserving of
attention in the leading management journals. It is also important to note that
the study of ethics in organizations need not only relate to corporations but
may apply equally to religious organizations. For example, an edited collection
of papers by Bartunek, Hinsdale, and Keenan (2006) explores “Church ethics in
its organizational context”, and considers the ethical issues raised by the sex
abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
Comparative Studies
Eight papers adopted what can be termed a comparative perspective, looking at
religion as aspects of different national cultures and the effects on (mostly indi-
vidual) behavior. For example, in a study that sought to “update” Hofstede’s
(1980) cultural dimensions framework, Tang and Koveos (2008) found that
religion has an important effect on individualism and uncertainty avoidance
in a given country, while Schiffman, Dillon, and Ngumah (1981) sought to
show, somewhat unconvincingly in practice, that there are “meaningful per-
sonality differences” (p. 142) between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.
Niles (1999) conducted a study designed to compare the meaning of work in
Christian Australia and Buddhist Sri Lanka. He found no significant difference
in how people perceived work in either country. However, he did find that Sri
Lankans are more strongly committed to hard work, but that Australians have
a stronger belief in the link between hard work and workplace success. In a par-
ticularly interesting paper, Parboteeah, Hoegl, and Cullen (2009) draw on Kos-
tova’s (1999) study of country institutional profiles to show that there are
positive relationships between some aspects of religion and the norms sur-
rounding work obligation. The researchers also found negative relationships
between countries characterized by “state religion”—where the government
regulates religion by, for instance, appointing religious leaders and collecting
taxes for religious organizations—and work obligation. While religion tended

to be only one of a number of variables examined in these studies, this research
does represent an important contribution because it suggests that religion can
have significant behavioral effects upon individuals in different national set-
tings. This resonates with work in social psychology which suggests that
while the basic psychological dimensions of religion are consistent across cul-
tures, these may “differ in content, salience, and the ways they are intercon-
nected or emphasized” (Saroglou, 2011, p. 1320).12
Religion and Social Identity

Ten articles are concerned with social identity and identification. Most notably,
Weaver and Agle (2002) developed a theoretical argument which posited that
when religious role expectations are “internalized as a religious self-identity”
(p. 77), they have a bearing on the extent to which individuals are likely to
behave ethically. However, this relationship is moderated by the extent to
which (1) religion is salient to individual identity, and (2) individuals are
motivated to participate in religion by intrinsic factors such as a belief that it
is “true” or extrinsic factors such as the social networking opportunities it
brings.
In another important paper, Gutierrez, Howard-Grenville, and Scully
(2010) show how a movement inside the Catholic church—Voice of the Faith-
ful (VOTF)—enabled Catholics to manage their social identity in the wake of
the sexual abuse crisis. Specifically, VOTF helped members to craft a “split
identification” which allowed them to remain deeply committed spiritually
to the church (i.e. to identify with its normative components) while rejecting
the governance of the church (i.e. “disidentifying” with its organizational com-
ponents). This study is especially interesting because it sheds light on the
microfoundations of social identification, and represents a departure from
the top-down analyses that tend to dominate the literature.
Three of the papers (Hofman, 1982; Maoz, Bar-On, Bekermann, & Jaber-
Massarwa, 2004; Maoz, Steinberg, Bar-On, & Fakhereldeen, 2002) examined
the relations between Palestinians and Jewish people in Israel. They showed
that religion is one, but not the only, way that individuals from both groups
constructed their senses of self, and their identities vis-à-vis others. In a
similar vein, Cairns and Mercer (1984) also draw on social identity theory in
a study designed to explore the extent to which religion shaped the identities
of people in Northern Ireland. The authors found that religion (Catholic or
Protestant) was the most significant way that respondents categorized their
identities. They concluded that religious social identities, rather than political
ones, underpinned the conflict between unionists and republicans in Northern
Ireland.
What comes through from these papers is that religion matters for identity.
However, there is a very large literature on social identity in the context of reli-
gious organizations in sociology and social psychology (see Greil & Davidman,
2007 and Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010), and this represents a
crowded space for management researchers to enter. An area where manage-
ment scholars arguably have greater potential to make a distinctive contri-
bution concerns the role of religious identity in secular organizations. For
example, exploring the relationship between individuals’ religious identity
and their professional identity, the tensions and contradictions that may
exist between them, and the processes through which they are reconciled,
has the potential to make an important contribution.
Workplace Spirituality
The topic of workplace spirituality (including related ideas such as spiritual lea-
dership and spiritual management development (SMD)) featured relatively
prominently, with nine papers pertaining to this subject in the journals that
formed the focus of my review. There has, of course, been an explosion of
work on this topic in other disciplines and other parts of the management lit-
erature, and there are specialist journals—such as Journal of Management
Spirituality and Religion, and Journal of Spirituality Leadership and Manage-
ment—devoted to various aspects of workplace spirituality (see Ashforth &
Pratt, 2003, and Liu & Robertson, 2011 for reviews). As a concept, spirituality
has its roots in psychology. As noted below, there is little agreement in the
management literature on what spirituality is or how to define it, but based
on a synthesis of the literature Ashforth and Pratt (2003) posit that spirituality
comprises three core dimensions: (1) transcendence of the self (i.e. a belief that
one is connected to other people, ideas, nature, or some kind of “higher
power”); (2) holism and harmony (i.e. the integration of different aspects of
one’s self into a coherent and symbiotic conception of the self); and (3)
growth (i.e. a clear sense of what one is seeking to become and what one
needs to do to achieve self-actualization).
With regard to the scholarship on workplace spirituality in the main-
stream literature, some authors strongly support both the practice of spiritual
management and the need for greater scholarly inquiry into the topic.
Fry and Kriger (2009), for instance, argue that “being-centered leadership
has the potential to provide a truly dynamic, multi-level contingency
theory of leadership that indicates where and how the highest levels of
self-actualization can be lived” (p. 1690). In a similar vein, Cash and Gray
(2000) posit that accommodating spirituality in the workplace can help
employees find meaning in their lives. Others offer a different view. Most
notably, Bell and Taylor (2004, p. 439) warn against the dangers of SMD,
arguing that “by defining managerial identity in terms of the inner self
and placing responsibility on the individual, SMD is isolated from possible

critique and transformed from a potentially enlightening into a potentially
repressive project”.
There appear to be three main problems with the scholarship on workplace
spirituality (Liu & Robertson, 2011). One is that much of the existing literature
is descriptive, drawing only superficially on theory, and consequently it is
limited in its explanatory power. Another is the ambiguity about the nature
of the concept of spirituality itself. Perhaps the most significant ambiguity con-
cerns the role of religion. For many scholars, religious beliefs are central to
spirituality (e.g. Lynn, Naughton, & VanderVeen, 2011), but for others spiri-
tuality and religion need not be connected. Indeed, Ashforth and Pratt’s
(2003) three dimensions of spirituality may be viewed independent of religion.
Third, empirical work on spirituality has often lacked rigor. This is linked in
part to the ambiguity surrounding the concept, and the clear challenges of
measuring something so intangible. There is simply no reliable or agreed
upon way of examining spirituality, which may be one of the reasons that it
has not featured in the major journals. The upshot is that while there is
clearly a need to build a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship
between religion and work, it is far from clear that workplace spirituality and
related concepts provide an effective conceptual vehicle for doing so.
Religious Ideas in Secular Contexts

Finally, six of the papers focused on how religious ideas and practices may be
used in secular contexts. Hall and Chandler (2005) consider the original notion
of a calling as something rooted in religious experience, and extend and recon-
ceptualize it as a secular experience. Rather than coming from God or some
higher being, the source of a secular calling comes from within an individual.
Rather than serving a specific community, a secular calling may serve the self as
well as or instead of a specific community. Rather than identifying the calling
through prayer, a secular calling may be identified through introspection and
reflection, or through interaction with others. And rather than seeking
meaning through enacting God’s will, meaning in a secular calling may
come from the fulfillment of personal desires and ambitions. In another
notable paper, Ackers and Preston (1997) argue that a “religious tone has
seeped into the discourse of contemporary management development”
(p. 677). He illustrates his argument using the idea of conversion and of
radical personal change from evangelical Christianity, comparing “the
pastor” with “the manager”. These arguments are echoed by Finch-Lees,
Mabey, and Liefooghe (2005) and from an employees’ perspective by Gabriel
(1997). In the practitioner literature, religious ideas are sometimes invoked
implicitly, as in the case of Peters and Waterman (1982), but may also be
invoked explicitly as in the case of Kunde’s (2000) book Corporate Religion.
In a similar vein, Wilson (1992) shows how women are marginalized in organ-
izations through the use of various discourses, including discourses character-
ized by religious metaphors rooted in the Christian faith, some of which are
evangelical in nature, while the religious order is one of four organizational
forms that Shenkar (1996) uses to illustrate the organization of Chinese
state-owned enterprises.
The central point to be gleaned from all of these papers is that religious
ideas and practices may seep powerfully into other types of organization, par-
ticularly those that place strong demands on their members. These papers are
important, because they call into question the neat distinction between reli-
gious and secular organizational forms. It other words, it could be regarded
as undermining the continued relevance of Durkheim’s insight that the
sacred is best understood in contrast to the profane, and Weber’s idea that
the rise of legal-rational authority is a corollary of religious secularization. I
turn again to the role of religious ideas and practices in secular organizations
towards the end of the following section.
Religion and Organization: Possible Directions for Future Research

In reviewing the management literature on religion, I briefly highlighted some
topics where future research might be merited. In truth, the limited nature of
the management literature with respect to the themes outlined above suggests
that most hold promise. In this section, I focus on those areas that I consider to
hold the greatest potential for management scholars. I have concentrated
mainly on theoretical domains that form core elements of organizational scho-
larship, because examining these domains in the context of religion—which
has such richness and diversity of organizational forms—arguably has signifi-
cant potential to extend them by opening up fundamentally new insights and
ways of theorizing, thereby making an especially important contribution. My
suggestions are not intended to constitute an exhaustive list. I would also
point to two papers that outline directions for future research in the sociology
of religion, and which highlight some interesting areas with relevance for man-
agement research. Specifically, Demerath and Schmitt (1998) point to bureauc-
racy, decision-making, power, new institutional theory, and organizational
culture as offering particular promise, while Smith (2008) focuses on beliefs,
bodies, genetics, emotions, ecological context, elites, Islam, cross-national reli-
gions, and communism.13
New Institutional Theory

As noted, a number of sociologists of religion and religious organizations
have drawn on new institutional theory (e.g. Chaves, 1996; Wilde et al.,
2010). However, it is striking that these scholars tend to rely on a relatively
limited repertoire of institutional concepts, most notably diffusion, iso-

morphism, and legitimacy. Certainly, there has been less engagement with
the conceptual tools that underpin recent work in the organizational
version of new institutional theory, such as institutional logics (Greenwood,
Diaz, Li, & Lorente, 2010), institutional entrepreneurship (Maguire, Hardy,
& Lawrence, 2004), institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), and
translation (Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008), or with the scholarship that has
sought to rediscover the microfoundations of institutions (Barley, 2008).
This suggests there is a significant opportunity for organizational theorists
to reconfigure institutional analyses of religion in the context of religious

and secular organizations, as well as to extend organizational institutionalism
by exploring institutional ideas in a novel context. For example, the rise of
new religious movements offers fertile ground to examine the role of
agency in the creation and legitimation of new forms of organization with
the capacity to exert a remarkably powerful influence over their members.
Conversely, the deep-rooted taken-for-grantedness of some religious
organizations raises interesting issues from an institutional perspective
(Demerath & Schmitt, 1998) and poses a distinct set of challenges for organ-
izations, as has been shown in the case of the Catholic Church (Seidler &
Meyer, 1989).
Perhaps the most exciting opportunity to extend institutional analysis
involves a focus on the logic of religion, one of six meta-institutions at the
core of new institutional theory (Thornton, 2004), which to the best of my
knowledge has not been systematically examined within organizational institu-
tionalism. In this respect, institutional theory’s growing interest in institutional
complexity—“situations where organizations experience a multiplexity of
different pressures from a plurality of institutional logics” (Greenwood,
Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta, & Lounsbury, 2011, p. 357)—offers particular
promise. A recent review of the institutional complexity literature by Green-
wood et al. (2011) highlights that the existing scholarship is characterized by
two key shortcomings: (1) a preoccupation with a limited range of institutional
logics, and (2) an assumption that where organizations are affected by two or
more logics, these logics are inevitably incompatible.
A focus on the logic of religion would expand the range of logics examined
in institutional theory, and might also undermine the notion of incompatibility
between logics. Certainly, it would be very interesting to examine how different
organizational forms engage with the logic of religion. For example, faith-based
businesses have a long history of combining the logic of the market with the
logic of religion. Much of the British confectionary industry (including
Cadbury, Fry’s, and Rowntree’s) was established by Quakers who explicitly
drew on their religious principles in the organization of their ventures, and
more recently an increasing number of corporations in the US appear to be
characterizing themselves as faith-based,14 with some firms beginning
businesses meetings with prayer even employing “corporate chaplains” in the

workplace.15 It would be fascinating to explore the extent to which commercial
decisions in these businesses are refracted through the logic of religion. Islamic
banks represent another type of organization that combines elements of the
logics of the market and religion. But how does the logic of religion affect
the commercial practices of borrowing and lending? Even more intriguing is
the case of Islamic microfinance that combines elements of the logics of the
market, religion, and social welfare. It would be very exciting to study the
relationship between these three logics and the implications for organizational
practices and local communities. The upshot is that religion clearly offers a
variety of opportunities for researchers seeking to push thinking forward in
institutional theory in general and institutional logics in particular.
Organizational Identity
Social identity is a core concept in the sociology of religion and religious organ-
izations. However, the notion of organizational identity is much less promi-
nent. Certainly, the papers that I came across which use the term only touch
on the topic in passing (e.g. Chaves, 1996); for the most part, the sociology
of religion focuses on religious, national, and cultural identities. Organizational
identity is a concept that has become a central part of organization theory, with
an increasing number of papers occupying the pages of the major management
journals. It was striking, however, that not a single paper on religion in the 21
management journals that I reviewed had an organizational identity framing
(although a few were concerned with organizational identification). Religious
organizations tend to have very strong identities, and therefore offer an inter-
esting empirical context in which to study the concept. In addition, there have
been recent calls to explore the macro dimensions of organizational identity
(e.g. Gioia, Price, Hamilton, & Thomas, 2010), and religious organizations
appear to offer particular promise in this respect because they are so intimately
tied to broader socio-political processes (Hammond & Machacek, 2011). More
broadly, given that some religious organizations are characterized by stable
identities over long periods while many new religious organizations and move-
ments craft distinctive organizational identities over short periods, religious
organizations also appear to offer fertile ground for broaching the division
between the social constructivist and social actor perspectives on organiz-
ational identity (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006).
Religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs)—“a unique hybrid of
religious beliefs and socio-political activism” (Berger, 2003, p. 16)—represent
an especially interesting organizational form that could be used to explore
and shed new light on these issues. Intriguingly, many RNGOs have sought
to play down their religious roots, in part because they believe that their reli-
gious affiliations may impede their ability to achieve their social and political
objectives. A number of incidents have fuelled their concerns. For example, in

2000, political and religious leaders in Pakistan campaigned aggressively
against Western NGOs, which they accused of promoting Christianity, in an
attempt to force them out of the country (Khan, 2000). The implications of
dynamics such as these for the organizational identity of RNGOs are neatly
captured in a study by Berger (2003, p. 21), who asked representatives of a
sample of NGOs the following question: “Are you a religious NGO”?
Answers included: “more secular than religious. . . but Jewish”; “non-denomi-
national supporting Judeo-Christian principles”; and “faith-based working in a
secular way”. Berger’s analysis suggests that the study of RNGOs may be par-
ticularly suited to examining the relationship between identity, image, and
reputation, which has been the focus of much debate in organization theory
(Brown, Dacin, Pratt, & Whetten, 2006).
Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities

Earlier, I noted how the application of RCT to religion—also known as religious
competition theory—has become one of the dominant perspectives in the soci-
ology of religious organizations. From a strategic management perspective,
RCT offers a relatively simplistic view of organizational performance. Here, the
RBV and related work on dynamics capabilities appear to provide a more soph-
isticated way of understanding the relative performance of religious organiz-
ations, but one which is also consistent with the underlying microeconomic
assumptions of RCT. The RBV is concerned with understanding how a firm’s
resource configurations allow it to build a competitive advantage (Barney,
1991; Wernerfelt, 1984). From this perspective, competitive advantage is
rooted in firms’ abilities to construct a resource base that allows them to serve cus-
tomer preferences more effectively than competitors. Dynamic capabilities—“the
firm’s ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competen-
cies to address rapidly changing environments” (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997,
p. 516)—extend RBV arguments by incorporating the role of context. One of
the papers discussed above, Miller (2002), uses the RBV to build a theoretical
model of competitive advantage in the context of religious organizations. This
represents an extremely valuable contribution, yet it has not been extensively
cited or elaborated upon in either the sociology of religion or strategic
management.
It would be fascinating to develop Miller’s arguments further, perhaps
incorporating aspects of dynamic capabilities, and to explore them empirically.
For example, churches in the UK, most notably the Church of England, have
experienced a long period of decline stretching back many decades and most
have struggled to halt falling attendances. Yet, one group of churches has
bucked the trend in recent years: the evangelical churches.16 An analysis of
the dynamic capabilities that has enabled the evangelical churches to thrive,
at least in relative terms, in a place that for some scholars is a “post-Christian”

country (Gilbert, 1980) would form a compelling piece of research. In addition
to providing a more nuanced theoretical perspective for understanding the
comparative performance of religious organizations, this would afford the
opportunity to extend the RBV and dynamic capabilities by examining these
perspectives in a very different kind of setting.
Entrepreneurship
In my review, I found only three papers directly concerned with entrepreneur-

ship (Drakopoulou Dodd & Spearman 1998; Essers & Benschop, 2009; Pearce
et al., 2010). However, I believe there to be significant potential to connect
scholarship on entrepreneurship with religion. Most obviously, it has
become apparent that a significant proportion of social entrepreneurial activity
is initiated by religious organizations, or by individuals acting because of their
religious faith (Spear, 2007). For example, Mondragon in Spain has been
labeled the most successful social enterprise in the world and employs more
than 80,000 people. It was founded by Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarreta, a
young Catholic priest who established the first Mondragon co-operative in
1959, and who wanted to promote community development in ways consistent
with Catholic social teaching. Similarly, one of the most high-profile social
enterprises in the UK, the Bromley By Bow Centre, was founded by Andrew
Mawson, a Church of England Minister who sought to use the church to
help regenerate the local community and revitalize the church itself. In
doing so, he stripped the pews out of the church so that the building could
be used for a variety of community purposes and thus better serve local
needs. Despite the prominent roles of certain religious individuals and organ-
izations in the global social enterprise movement, the relationship between
religious beliefs and social entrepreneurship has seldom been explored, and
this represents an untapped opportunity.
A second possibility for connecting entrepreneurship and religion is to use
ideas from entrepreneurship in the context of religious “start-ups”. For
example, the concepts of opportunity recognition (Ardichvili, Cardozo, &
Ray, 2003), bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005), and entrepreneurial capabilities
(Alvarez & Busenitz, 2001) could all be used to help understand the factors
underpinning the successful creation of new religious organizations and move-
ments. At the same time, exploring these concepts in the context of religion
offers the possibility of augmenting the theories themselves and broadening
their applicability and scope. A final possibility is to draw on work from the
corporate entrepreneurship literature to better understand the performance
of religious organizations. This offers an alternative but complementary per-
spective to the RBV and dynamic capabilities, discussed above. As noted,
Pearce et al. (2010) combine RCT from the sociology of religion with the
concept of entrepreneurial capabilities in order to examine these issues. In

doing so, they usefully augment the capacity of RCT to explain organizational
performance.
Organizational Control
A fifth area of potential for management scholars with an interest in religion
concerns the concept of organizational control. The notion of control is funda-
mental to organization, and features prominently in early management theory
from Taylor’s scientific management, to the human relations paradigm, to the

Carnegie school (Dunbar & Statler, 2010). In recent years, however, the notion
of control has become somewhat marginal in the management literature. Reli-
gious organizations face particular challenges with respect to control because
they rely on belief systems the veracity of which cannot be proved. This
implies that the forms of managerial and strategic control that have been the
traditional concern of organization theorists (e.g. Dornbusch & Scott, 1975)
may not be relevant in this context. Instead, it suggests that peer control
(organizational members monitoring one another’s behavior) and identity-
based control (reliance on collective identity to affect member behavior) may
play a particularly important role. These perspectives have been identified as
being important, but poorly understood, mechanisms for control in corpor-
ations (e.g. Loughry, 2010; Van Maanen, 2010). Because of the distinctive
control problems facing religious organizations, exploring peer and identity-
based control in these contexts might highlight the processes underpinning
such mechanisms especially clearly.
The study of control also brings into sharp focus the dark side of religion; it
is apparent that religious organizations may, intentionally or unintentionally,
promote discrimination by emphasizing the welfare of adherents over
members of other faiths. Moreover, while religious organizations may be a
force for good, they may also be places that promote hatred, and twist religious
teaching to suit self-serving ends. For example, some preachers, most notably
in Nigeria and other African counties, continue to exploit vulnerable people by
promising them salvation and deliverance from evil in return for significant
financial rewards.17 And at the time of writing, ultra-Orthodox Jews in the
city of Beit Shemesh are seeking to enforce gender segregation by, inter alia,
pressuring men and women to sit apart on public transportation and harassing
women who are deemed to be dressing inappropriately.18 Understanding the
dynamics that underpin these kinds of behavior may complement and help
to extend research on control, exploitation, and corruption in other types of
organization, including corporations, which has been a particular focus of
attention for critical management scholars (Delbridge, 2010).
I see two additional areas of study to which management researchers inter-
ested in these issues might be especially well-placed to contribute. One is the
literature on greed. While much of the research on greed in economics,

philosophy, and political science has largely ignored religion, Wang and
Murnighan (2011) point to a body of work that considers the morality of
greed, and which incorporates a concern with religious ideas. Although
evolutionary perspectives have suggested that greed may be justifiable in
some circumstances, particularly in the context of extreme resource paucity,
a theistic perspective seeks to make the connection between greed and
immoral or unethical behavior, and suggests that viewing greed as “morally
neutral” is dangerous because it “might encourage people to embrace greed”
(Wang & Murnighan, 2011, p. 292). Examining greed in the context of

religious organizations would add an intriguing twist to social scientific
understanding of the topic because those exhibiting voracity in these settings
belong to organizations that, in all likelihood, take a principled stand
against it. It would therefore be especially interesting to study how greed
within religious organizations is constructed, and the reactions of organiz-
ational members who witness it.
A second area of research to which management scholars might connect is
the literature on organizational misconduct. The spread and consequences of
misconduct have “seen relatively little attention” (Greve, Palmer, & Pozner,
2010, p. 54). As with the social scientific research on greed, however, the
issue of morality is an important aspect of the emerging scholarship on this
topic. Interestingly, Greve et al. (2010) highlight the critical function of
“social control agents” in “demarcating acceptable from unacceptable behav-
ior” (p. 79). Members of religious organizations, and in particular religious
leaders, are often influential social control agents because they play a key
role in conveying a sense of what constitutes behavior that is “right” or
“wrong” in particular social settings. Research that explores the struggle for
meaning in this context has the potential to make a compelling contribution,
and to alter fundamentally our understanding of misconduct.
The Role of the Sacred in Secular Organizations

Finally, exploring the role of religious ideas in secular contexts is an area
where there is significant opportunity for management researchers to extend
their scholarship and generate fresh insights. In sociology “action at the
sacred-secular interface” (Demerath et al., 1998, p. xix) has attracted attention.
For example, Bromley (1998) considers the case of the US direct sales
company Amway, which he describes as a quasi-religious corporation. He
shows how the Amway ideology is “preached at frequent gatherings at
which participants reinforce one another’s commitment to their way of life”
(p. 354), and describes the ceremonies and rituals, often involving testimonials
from successful salespeople offering “encouragement and advice while con-
spicuously displaying their wealth in order to bolster neophytes’ motivation
and commitment” (p. 354). He also gives a compelling account of the process
of conversion to the Amway way of life, and describes the key role of the char-
ismatic leadership that features so prominently in many religious organiz-
ations. The reader is left with a clear sense of how the symbolism and use of
language in the company draws implicitly and explicitly on
organized religion.19
As noted above, the relationship between the sacred and the secular has
received some attention in the management literature. In addition to the
papers previously discussed, Ashforth and Vaidyanath (2002) examine
“work organizations as secular religions” (p. 359), and Harrison, Ashforth,

and Corley (2009) build a theoretical model of sacrilization that explores
how actors at multiple levels “are motivated to construct a sense of the inviol-
able” (p. 225). These are important contributions, but in general, we still have a
relatively rudimentary understanding of the role of the sacred and the
dynamics of sacrilization in secular organizational forms, and their relation-
ship to systems of meaning inside and outside of organizations. In this
regard, there is clearly an opportunity for management researchers to
connect with the recent wave of culture research in organization theory in
which the role of rituals and ceremonies features prominently.
Conclusion
Few management scholars are likely to dispute the profound role of religion
in most economies and societies. Yet, somewhat curiously, religion has been
largely excluded from systematic analysis in the main scholarly journals in
the discipline. It is notable that with the partial exception of Administrative
Science Quarterly, religion hardly features at all in the major journals that
count for tenure at the leading business schools. The picture is also true
for the other main management journals included in my review; only
Human Relations has a substantive number of papers on the topic. In
addition, it is notable that there is an overwhelming focus on Western
Christianity, with relatively little having been written on other religions
and only limited focus on countries outside North America and Europe.
In this article, I have outlined the key debates in the sociology of religion
and religious organizations, which may offer theoretical insights or points
of departure for management scholars with an interest in religion. I have
also reviewed the literature in the mainstream management journals in
order to highlight the existing debates and to show the state of the art.
Finally, I have suggested some directions for future research. These direc-
tions are inevitably based, in part, on my own interests and interpretation
of the literature, but will hopefully help to generate ideas for, and responses
from, management scholars seeking to contribute to this crucial but neg-
lected area of inquiry.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ian Glover and Royston Greenwood for extended comments
on an earlier draft. This work was supported by the Economic and Social
Research Council (grant number 60354).
Endnotes
1. Defining religious organizations is far from straightforward. Indeed, “one is hard-
pressed to think of a characteristic of religious organizations which is nowadays
not also shared by non-religious organizations” (Beckford, 1985, p. 126). While

reluctant to offer a clear-cut definition, I find myself most convinced by Chaves
(1993, p. 149) who asserts that a religious authority structure—“a social structure
that attempts to enforce its order and reach its ends by controlling the access of
individuals to some desired good, where the legitimation of that control includes
some supernatural component, however weak”—constitutes the defining feature
of religious organizations. In addition to “undeniably religious organizations”
(Torry, 2005, p. 16) such as mosques, Christian congregations, synagogues, and
Sikh and Hindu temples, other organizations that are influenced by religious
authority include faith-based charities, NGOs, schools, and universities.
2. McKinnon (2010, p. 33) points out that this has not stopped Stark seeking to
“make Adam Smith a classic sociologist of religion”!
3. See also Marx and Engels (1846/1970).
4. See McKinnon (2010) for a more comprehensive overview of Marx’s work on
religion.
5. See Collins (2007) for a more comprehensive review on Weber’s ideas on religion.
6. See Ramp (2010) for a more comprehensive review of Durkheim’s work on
religion.
7. See Dawson (2011) for a comprehensive critique of church-sect theory.
8. This initial typology has been extensively elaborated upon. For example, Wiese
and Becker (1932) produced a fourfold classification of different kinds of
“church” (the ecclesia, the sect, the denomination, and the cult), while Yinger
(1957) developed a sixfold classification (the universal church, the ecclesia, the
domination, the established sect, the sect, and the cult). For parsimony, I limit
my discussion to the church-sect distinction.
9. While journals such as Long Range Planning and Organization may be less pro-
minent in a North American context, they constitute important outlets for Euro-
pean management researchers.
10. This insight is consistent with church-sect theory as discussed above.
11. Hinings and Bryman note that, in the context of the Church of England, this
places significant pressure on the clergy (see also Lauer, 1973).
12. See Bréchon (2007) for a comprehensive review of the research and the empirical
challenges of comparative study with respect to individual religiosity.
13. See also DiMaggio (1998) for an interesting discussion of how organization theory
could strengthen the social scientific analysis of religion.
14. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=1503742

(accessed 29 December 2011).
15. See, for example, Nimon, Philibert, and Allen’s (2008) study of corporate cha-
plaincy programs.
16. Retrieved from http://newepistles.com/2009/08/13/the-evangelical-church-in-
the-uk-is-on-the-rise/ (accessed 30 December 2011).
17. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindiano
cean/nigeria/3407882/Child-witches-of-Nigeria-seek-refuge.html (accessed 28
December 2011).
18. Retrieved from http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/26/ultra-orthodox-dema

nds-spark-debate-in-israel/ (accessed 28 December 2011).
19. See also Pratt (2000).
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