Mission accomplished? Organizational identity work in response to mission success
通过比较两家爱尔兰和平建设组织，研究非营利组织在完成部分或全部使命后如何重塑身份，发现使命成功反而导致成员和捐赠者疏离，引发身份模糊性，进而催化组织身份工作。
How do nonprofit organizations reinvent their identities after they have accomplished all or part of their missions? This comparative case study of two Irish peacebuilding organizations explores what happens when their raison d’etre is fundamentally challenged. A successful peace process in Northern Ireland resulted in reduced support for peacebuilding organizations and a perception of mission accomplished. Conventional literature on nonprofit organizations portrays mission success as positive. We show that mission success paradoxically threatens the very existence of the organization as it may lead to member and donor dissociation. We find that mission success leads to identity ambiguity, which catalyses organizational identity work including different rhetorical strategies of self–other talk. We develop a process model illustrating competitive versus integrative approaches to organizational identity work to understand nonprofits adapting to mission success. We draw out lessons for practitioners. Focusing on a renewed mission that is consistent with the organization’s history is more important than finding a quick financial fix. Social purpose organizations can efficiently and effectively be redeployed to address new challenges, rather than recreating new organizations each time.