– The purpose of this paper is to present a case of proactive change that occurred in a large organization in Saudi Arabia.
– The paper explains how management actively used religious discourse to institute a stakeholder perspective within the organization.
– The process of change that occurred leads to the development of a successful change process that borrows from legitimacy theory and legitimation in discourse. The findings show the impact of religious discourse on organizational change in the context under study.
– While this change process, grounded in religious discourse, cannot be assumed to work across contexts, future research can uncover what contextual or cultural dimensions facilitate or impede such an approach.
– This study provides an example as to how change agents can engage people within their organizations in the change process through a systematic process of sensemaking that grants moral legitimacy to company's initiatives.
– The paper draws attention to the importance of religious discourse in institutional change, a thing that has rarely been discussed at the firm level.
