The Protestants’ Dilemma: When Cultural Mismatches Shape Deliberate Action

Abstract

Drawing from an ethnographic study and 63 interviews of Protestant professionals in the workplace, this article develops a conceptualization of how a cultural mismatch—defined here as a moral conflict between actors’ beliefs and values and their contextual norms and practices—catalyzes actors to strategically and deliberately shape future lines of action. In this study, a range of Protestant executives, professionals, and workers in China experience a cultural mismatch and respond in a number of ways. This study builds on accounts of culture in action to argue that when actors’ values and beliefs conflict with their organizational context, such cultural mismatches can shape action in not only unconscious, automatic ways or as post hoc justifications, as much of the extant scholarship has emphasized, but can also deliberately shape future lines of irrational, strategic, and creative action.