Organizational Identity: How Theology, Cultural Sustainability and Systems Theory Inform Institutional Thrive-ability

Abstract

The research presented in this thesis addresses the complexities of identity and systems by narrating different pieces of both and how they are at play in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This narration offers a look at how leadership identity is formed, articulated, and performed, and inquires about the thrive-ability of the ELCA based on its current identity performance through Theological Education and the Rostering System.

This research pulls from auto-ethnography, identity scholars, Lutheran theology, and interview analysis to address the following question: If the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America looked into the "mirror of the cross," would the institution need to change? This question is rooted in generating a collective sense of self-awareness and begins to address tensions between identity construction and identity performance by asking what the institution sees in the mirror and wondering if that is the image it wants to see, and even if that is a projection of HOW the institution is becoming and wants to exist in the future? Using an overarching theoretical framework of Sinek’s Golden Circle and Complex Systems Theory, this research offers language to the complexities of identity, identity construction, and identity performance in relation to Emergent-Self Organization in an effort to understand the relational web which brings together individuals, communities, and institutions for, and in, the process of identity construction and performance.