TY - JOUR
T1 - Recycling Stories
T2 - Mantras, Communication, and Organizational Materialization
AU - Brummans, Boris H.J.M.
AU - Hwang, Jennie M.
AU - Cheong, Pauline
N1 - Funding Information:
We kindly thank the Tzu Chi volunteers who allowed us to study their environmental protection activities. In addition, we are grateful to Yochanan Altman, Marianna Fotaki, and Juliette Koning for their expert editorial guidance, as well as to Laure Cabantous, François Cooren, Carole Groleau, and Beth Haslett for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This research was generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (No. 410-2011-0453).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - Religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs) are becoming powerful organizational actors, but how are these organizations enacted through the communicative practices of their members? To address this question, this article offers a conceptual framework for investigating how the terse retelling of an inspirational organizational story, encapsulated in a mantra, contributes to materializing a Buddhist NGO’s ethos and worldview. The value of this framework is subsequently demonstrated through an in-depth naturalistic case study of a mantra’s constitutive force in the enactment of a large international Buddhist NGO that is increasingly focused on environmental protection. By showing how a mantra acts as a textualization, substantiation, and invocation device in mass, social media, and face-to-face communication, this study makes important contributions to the literature on the intersection between religion and organization as well as the communicative constitution of organizations.
AB - Religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs) are becoming powerful organizational actors, but how are these organizations enacted through the communicative practices of their members? To address this question, this article offers a conceptual framework for investigating how the terse retelling of an inspirational organizational story, encapsulated in a mantra, contributes to materializing a Buddhist NGO’s ethos and worldview. The value of this framework is subsequently demonstrated through an in-depth naturalistic case study of a mantra’s constitutive force in the enactment of a large international Buddhist NGO that is increasingly focused on environmental protection. By showing how a mantra acts as a textualization, substantiation, and invocation device in mass, social media, and face-to-face communication, this study makes important contributions to the literature on the intersection between religion and organization as well as the communicative constitution of organizations.
KW - Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation
KW - communicative constitution of organizations
KW - environmental protection
KW - mantra
KW - materiality
KW - materialization
KW - mindful organizing
KW - narrative repetition
KW - organizational discourse
KW - religious non-governmental organizations
KW - terse storytelling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85060913056&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/0170840618819033
DO - 10.1177/0170840618819033
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85060913056
SN - 0170-8406
VL - 41
SP - 103
EP - 126
JO - Organization Studies
JF - Organization Studies
IS - 1
ER -