The Inter-Institutional Interface of Religion and Business

It is frequently asserted that religion enhances the ethical climate of business. This is buttressed by the tacit assumption that religious moral authority is easily combined with and exerted in business, an inter-institutional process I call Engagement. By drawing upon Secularization Theory's societal-level focus on religious authority and the symbolic boundary work surrounding the interface of competing institutional logics, I theorize a broader range of inter-institutional processes including, Disengagement, Co-optation and Adjudication. To exemplify these inter-institutional processes, I engage in qualitative analysis of historic religious magazines from 1927-1931 and 1985-1989 and focus on the religious moral authority directed at the financial market. I discuss how my findings relate to the scholarship on Religion and Business in particular and Business Ethics more broadly.