Abstract:

Organizational rituals are often portrayed as unifying practices that reproduce shared meanings and stabilize organizational order. Yet people also encounter contradictions that originate beyond the organization—between socio-cultural norms, gendered expectations, and market logics—and it remains unclear how ritual participation helps them act within, rather than simply submit to, such tensions. This paper examines professional conferences as organizational rituals and asks: How do organizational rituals shape individuals’ agency to navigate socio-cultural tensions in their work lives, especially under authoritative normative constraint?

We address this question through a longitudinal ethnographic study (2017–2022) of “Ezer” (pseudonym), an annual business-conference series created by and for Jewish ultra-Orthodox businesswomen (JUBW) in Israel. The study draws on observations of five conferences and supplementary observations in the organizer’s offices, 60 semi-structured interviews (20 organizers and 40 participants, sampled for maximum variation and contrasted across newcomers and veterans), and extensive archival materials (programs, emails, slide decks, and promotional documents). Using an interpretive, iterative coding approach, we traced how participants interpreted tensions, enacted ritual practices, and collectively expanded what became permissible or doable.

Findings show that the conferences surface three recurring tensions that structure JUBW’s professional lives: collectivist obedience versus individual distinctiveness, spirituality versus instrumental profit-seeking, and religious corporeal modesty versus the hedonistic associations of business success. Across three recurrent ritual sequences—entrance/opening, the program body, and the climactic festive meal—participants mobilize three ritual mechanisms to hold these contradictions in workable coexistence. First, blurring juxtaposes religious visibility with professional self-authorship through spatial and symbolic performances, enabling agency for individual distinctiveness while maintaining recognizable belonging. Second, justification translates business ambition into morally legitimate religious language and obligations, enabling agency to pursue business success without framing growth as spiritual deviance. Third, suspension temporarily brackets everyday surveillance and self-sacrificial gender norms through collective embodied celebration, enabling agency to “take” care and pleasure as beneficiaries rather than perpetual givers. Importantly, these mechanisms do not resolve tensions; they create time-bounded, socially sanctioned prioritizations that make otherwise contested actions legitimate.

Theoretically, we develop a multi-layered model of ritual navigation that links (a) situated interpretations of tension, (b) modes of enactment (symbolic-spatial, discursive, embodied), and (c) mechanisms of engagement (blurring, justification, suspension). We further introduce “ritualized agency” to capture how coordinated ritual participation generates context-specific collective capacities oriented toward different arenas of everyday life (community, business, family), illuminating the gendered workings of rituals in conservative religious settings and how repeated enactments may support incremental change over time.

Please choose your submission type: Full Paper

Primary Track: Gender in Management

Keywords: Cross-cultural issues in gender and management;Gender diversity and inclusion policies and practices;Gender and entrepreneurship

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Prof Varda Wasserman