Organizational Innovation

Abstract

The waning utility of popular church-sect typologies requires a new and more flexible framework for studying religious organizations and innovation therein. Here, we posit that religion’s shape and change is best observed through a more nuanced examination of the social sources of innovation – including external environments, entrepreneurialism, social movements, and social networks – and measured via transformations in leadership, membership, and structure. Sociologists of religion thinking about organizations would do well to frame their conversations less in terms of narrow typologies and more in terms of the conditions that give rise to new behaviors, that increase the likelihood of innovation, and that ultimately impact the diffusion of innovation.