The Shield of Purpose: Legitimizing Marketization in Nonprofit Welfare Organizations
研究挪威一家非营利福利组织如何在市场化扩张中，通过“目的之盾”这一话语策略，既合法化市场导向的调整，又发展其规范身份，调和传统与功利身份的张力。
Once being independent pioneers, nonprofit welfare organizations now face marketization as they compete with commercial actors in delivering services within the welfare state. This development has been described as “becoming business-like,” which implies a tension between the traditional normative identity and the more recent utilitarian identity of nonprofits. We question this polarization by analyzing a case study of a Norwegian nonprofit that is expanding in processes of increased marketization, asking how nonprofits internally legitimize marketization. Central to our theoretical contribution is the concept of The Shield of Purpose that serves as a strategic discursive resource through which the organization legitimizes its market-oriented adaptations while simultaneously developing its normative identity. This concept illustrates the organization’s ambidextrous use of its foundational diaconal purpose as both a defense against mission drift and a mechanism for integration with market pressures.