Institutional Leadership: Past, Present, And Future

How institutions constrain or enable leadership: Denominational influences on megachurch pastors (or “who does what? Predicting pastor’s probability of publishing”)

Marvin Washington

Karen D. W. Patterson

Harry J. Van Buren III

1 Institutions and their impact on how organizational work is carried out have been addressed from a number of perspectives, including how institutions are created

(MacGuire, Hardy and Lawrence, 2004) how they are reinforced (DiMaggio and Powell,

1983), and how they are altered (Greenwood, Suddaby and Hinings, 2002). We argue that one under-developed part of understanding institutions is the role of the institutional leader.

It has been 50 years since Selznick published his seminal work Leadership in

Administration. Many scholars have credited this work with ushering in discussions of institutions as “organizations infused with value.” However, not only did Selznick describe how organizations become institutions, he also described the characteristics of leaders of these organizations. After, describing what Selznick means by institution, as opposed to organization, he returns to his primary objective of describing the role of institutional leaders in this process. “Most of this essay will be devoted to identifying and analyzing the chief functions of institutional leadership (pg 22).” The institutional leader’s task is “the promotion and protection of values (pg 28)”.

By bringing institutional leadership back to the forefront of institutional analysis, we argue that institutional leadership might be the reconciliation between the first wave of institutional analysis which were more interested in a deterministic view of institutionalized action (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and the calls for a more agentic view of institutions (Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997). Recently, authors have been calling attention to a middle ground of institutionalized action; institutional work (Lawrence and

Suddaby, 2006). By institutional work, the concern is on how institutions maintain their status and legitimacy in the face of their own institutionalized environment. We argue

2 that the institutional leader’s role in maintaining the legitimacy of their institutions warrants renewed attention. In his chapter in the edited volume on institutional work,

Kraatz suggest that the “concept of institutional ledership would thus appear to link quite well with the more contemporary concept of institutional work…(however) this linkage remains a latent and largely undeveloped one (Kraatz, 2009: 59)”

Our goal in this paper is to examine how institutional leaders maintain the values inherent in their institution in the face of changing field-level and institutional-level pressure. After theorizing this aspect of institutional leaders, we then empirically analyze how pastors of megachurches develop and co-opt practices to maintain the values of their institution. Our main questions of interest are how what type of institutional leader will enact a specific set of discursive strategies designed to better maintain the institution they lead. We examine this question by drawing upon a case study of the rise of the “megachurch” (Thumma, 1996). As we note below, while the mega-church is not a new phenomenon, the sudden increase in the number of megachurches has had consequences for the pastors that lead these institutions. The institutional work that reflects these changes is the other main area of interest, as individuals enact a variety of practices to better connect to their growing congregations.

Institutional Work

Institutional work is the "purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions" (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006, pg.

215). This does not refer to the processes by which institutions influence action but how institutions are reproduced, through specific, even individual, practices and processes. As

3 these processes and practices change, they reproduce and redefine the institutional claims to an organizational field. These processes may take place purposely, as in the case of institutional entrepreneurs (DiMaggio, 1988; MacGuire, Hardy and Lawrence, 2004), may co-evolve with the institutions and supporting logics themselves (Clemens, 1993;

Haveman and Rao, 1997), or may follow the introduction of logics as a response to the higher level changes that have already infiltrated the existing field (Suddaby and

Greenwood, 2005). “Thus, a significant part of the promise of institutional work as a research area is to establish a broader vision of agency in relationship to institutions, one that avoids depicting actors either as “cultural dopes” trapped by institutional arrangements, or as hypermuscular institutional entrepreneurs (Lawrence, Suddaby, and

Leca, 2009, pg. 1)”.

Writing about the three different types of institutional work, creating, maintaining, and disrupting, Lawrence, Suddaby and Leca argue that maintaining institutions “has received relatively little empirical or theoretical attention (2009: 8)”. Within this focus on institutional work, we are examining the actions that institutional leaders take to maintain and respond to institutional challenges. Our project addresses questions posed by institutional work researchers as they argue that institutional scholars need to examine activities as opposed to accomplishments. Specifically, Lawrence, et al. (2009) suggest that there are some neglected questions in the institutional work tradition such as

“understanding which actors are more likely to engage in institutional work, what factors might support or hinder that work (independent of its success or failure), why certain actors engage in institutional work while others in similar contexts do not, and what practices constitute the range of ways in which actors work to create institutions

4 (Lawrence, et al, 2009, pg. 10)”.

Institutional leadership: Who is doing the work

Most scholars know of Selznick’s work Leadership in Administration as providing the famous definition of institutions as organizations “infused with value.”

However, this is a secondary concern with his work. Selznick’s primary objective in

Leadership in Administration is to understand the behaviors and characteristics of those who lead institutions and how these behaviors are different than the behaviors of those who lead organizations. In Selznick’s own words “The argument of this essay is quite simply stated: The executive becomes a statesman as he makes the transition from administrative management to institutional leadership” (pg. 4). This leads to his discussion of institutionalization as a process; organizations become institutions over time. The degree of institutionalization depends upon the potential conflict between the leader’s goals and group’s goals; the more precise an organization’s goals and the more specialized and technical its operations, the slower the institutionalization process. Thus, to institutionalize an organization is to “infuse with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand (pg. 17).” This “infuse with value” statement is closely connected with an organization’s concern with self-maintenance (the organization’s desire to maintain its existence beyond the technical requirements of the organization).

Rao (2002) also identifies strong individuals as “evangelists” for a practice, alluding to the significance of a singular powerful actor who drives the legitimation of a practice much like a religion or ideology. Rao’s terminology most aptly signifies an important component of institutional leadership at the individual level, specifically, the

5 strong adherence to a set of principles that drive the actions of the individual. These pieces (among others) serve to identify and construct the external version of an institutional leader – an individual who utilizes institutional supporting mechanisms and existing governance mechanisms and cognitive frameworks to alter power arrangements through explicit institutional strategies.

In a recently published dissertation, Patterson (2007) extends the idea of institutional leader as evangelists in her examination of D. D. Palmer and his efforts to establish the chiropractic medicine. She examined how Palmer created Palmer

Chiropractic College, and other educational and associational organizations, to gain legitimacy for chiropractic medicine. Her work shows the link between the founding of chiropractic colleges and professional associations and the growing support and cognitive legitimacy of chiropractic medicine.Kraatz and Moore’s (2002) study examines the role of leadership migration in the institutional changes of liberal arts college education. They argued that except for a few theoretical statements about the role of leadership in institutional change and the rare empirical exception (Hirsch, 1986; Leblebici, Salancik,

Copay and King, 1991), the role of leadership in institutional change has been neglected over the past 40 years. Drawing from Selznick’s statement that a critical component of institutionalization is the selection of leaders from a homogeneous pool of candidates,

Kraatz and Moore examine three mechanisms of how leadership changes lead to institutional change: 1) knowledge transfer and interorganizational learning; 2) introduction of new mental models and assumptions; and 3) attenuation or replacement of institutional values (2002: 123). Kraatz and Moore find support for their hypotheses regarding the factors that allow leadership migration to impact organizational change.

6 Other scholars have also contributed to a better understanding of institutional leadership. In a study examining the role of CEO’s, Tengblad (2004) builds upon

Selznick’s conception of the institutional leader by defining the role of the CEO as managing internal and external expectations. In a replication of work by Carlson

(Carlson, 1951), Tengblad observed eight CEOs for a total of 159 days. He directly followed CEOs around for 26 days (more than 300 hours) and had the CEOs conduct self-recordings of themselves for 133 days. Tengblad focused his study on understanding how CEOs handled financial expectations. One of his key findings was the increasing use of organizational culture as a management and communication tool. “Messages about the desired state of affairs (formulate, for instance, as ‘ten commandments’,

‘cornerstones’, ‘business mission’ or ‘corporate vision’) were transmitted through booklets and brochures in most companies. During the observations, the CEOs made numerous efforts to spread these messages” (Tengblad, 2004: 592). Tengblad argued that the CEOs in his study often resorted to using the mission of the organization as a way of communicating the financial expectations. The CEOs did not just want to paint a “rosy picture” but wanted to demonstrate that they were doing all they could to improve their financial outlook. Internally, Tengblad found that the CEOs used a variety of assessments to evaluate the senior managers. These assessments created a “carrot and stick” (pg. 596) approach to managing internal expectations. Similar to Selznick’s original conclusions,

Tengblad concluded that the CEOs in his study spent enormous energy in managing the external expectations of their organizations. However, this management process did not automatically lead to changes to the organization.

7 The role of stories and text in institutional maintenance

Selznick describes one task of institutional leadership that helps in the institutionalization process as “the elaboration of socially integrating myths (pg 151)”.

These myths are used to help “infuse day-to-day behavior with long-run meaning and purpose (pg. 151)”. It is clear that institutional leaders play an active role in developing the vision and mission of the organization. However, while some scholars view the vision setting process as a strategic or organizational function (Boal and Schultz, 2007;

Nutt and Backoff, 1997), from an institutional perspective, vision setting is also inherently political. Organizational visions give rise to stories, myths, and ceremonies

(Meyer and Rowan, 1977) they enable the organization to remember the “good old days” or to reinforce some key values of the organization (Bolman and Deal, 2003). Gregory

Berry (2001) notes, “Stories are a fundamental way through which we understand the world….By understanding the stories of organizations, we can claim partial understanding of the reasons behind visible behavior” (p. 59). As such the exchange of stories, rather than merely routines, allows participants to develop a new “collective story” through which they can become a social learning system. Stories are thus an important part of establishing internal consistency. Balancing the past, present, and future through storytelling is an essential skill for institutional leaders who hope to promote it. It is in the creating, telling, and retelling of key stories by institutional leaders that the past, the present, and the future of the organization are connected.

The enduring values, expectations, and responsibilities that maintaining coherence produces for the organization—and which are manifested in its vision—show the opportunity that institutional leadership has in defining an organization’s approach to

8 future circumstances. Although all individual members are “coauthors” of an organization’s life story (Czarniawska, 1997, p. 14), powerful individuals, such as institutional leaders, can produce narratives for which the rest of the organization is more of a passive audience. Control over storytelling and the way members interpret an organization’s path over time allows control over the vision formation process, and should significantly influence the character and effectiveness of organizational mission.

Although many individuals may possess experience relevant to the development and evaluation of past mental models of the organization, institutional leaders have a unique position from which to influence this critical feedback mechanism in the vision formation process. Leader background and experience from the past is influential in developing descriptive mental models and leader experience with those models as they confront the demands of current organizational situations influence prescriptive mental models.

An institutional leader’s own life story, thus, enters into the vision formation process along with the life story of the organization itself and its members. The requirement for coherence in both organizational and leader life stories means that a institutional leader imparts much of their own meaning and sense-making onto the organization; actions and events are interpreted through the lenses of thematic and causal coherence in the context of the histories of both the organization and the institutional leader. For example, when Jack Welch was the head of General Electric, he taught a course on Leadership and Values seven times a year to high-potential middle managers.

In addition, courses were taught by the vice-chairman and the CFO. In fact, corporate leaders taught 60% of the senior-level courses, with Welch often standing in front of the group (Greiner, 2002).

9 In the most recent treatment of establishing a link between institutional leadership and institutional work, Kraatz proposes seven types of institutional work that institutional leaders might perform. Two of these types of work apply to our context. First, Kraatz suggest that institutional leaders engage in ongoing and highly consequential symbolic exchanges with different elements of their environment (Kraatz, 2009). Kraatz, argument is that while a study of the role of symbols is not in and of itself novel, given the heterogeneous nature of the institutional environment institutional leaders are a part of, the creation and management of these symbols become vitally important. Also, creating symbols in this context goes beyond pure a simple classification of institutional rule- following or strategic / instrumental. Institutional leaders in this context can get into as much trouble “by offering the right symbol to the wrong audienc, by sending inconsistent symbols, and / or by making a gesture that commits the organization to an unwanted course of action over the long term (Kraatz, 2009: 75)”. The second suggestion by

Kraatz is that institutional leaders make value commitments in order to win trust and sustain cooperation among institutional constituencies. Here, Kraatz builds on Selznick’s suggestion that commitment is the price institutional leaders pay in exchange for trust and cooperation. Part of Selznick’s concerns with institutional leadership deals expressly with ideas of integrity and trust. “Leaders may have a genuine need to make moral and emotional displays of commitment in order to create social cohesion and solve the collective action problems that exist in such settings (Kraatz, 2009: 77)”.

Drawing from the work in institutional theory, we argue that institutional leaders perform two tasks to gain external legitimacy for their institution. First, institutional leaders use supporting mechanisms (Washington & Ventresca, 2004) that help to maintain

10 their existence and sustain the acceptance and use of the practice. They can either create new support mechanism that are new creations in and of themselves (such as websites or blogs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries) or utilize existing mechanisms that have been proven sources of support for other perspectives or practices (such as higher education or professional or trade associations). These supporting mechanisms commonly take the form of state or normative support for particular practices. Drawing from Scott’s three pillars of institutionalism, these practices could be the development of an association, interest group, or lobbying group to impact the normative or regulative aspects of the environment

The second process recalls the major contribution of Berger and Luckman (1966) in that institutional leaders strive for widespread social acceptance for their organization.

New practices or organizational forms are often contested and surrounded by significant conflict. They can be opposed or even stigmatized by the status quo (Hudson, 2008).

This aspect provides boundaries to tease apart how an organization might have established supporting mechanisms yet never gain wide-spread social acceptance

(prostitution, drug use, alternative medicine and same-sex marriage would be existing examples of such institutions).

The challenge for institutional leaders in their quest to maintain legitimacy is to avoid the traps of becoming a Celebrity CEO (Rindova, Pollack, & Hayward, 2004).

While institutional leader’s aims might be noble, the more successful an institutional leader, the more this person might be written about in the media and become a person of celebrity. Recent research has termed this phenomena “Celebrity CEO” (Wade, Porac,

Pollack, and Graffin, 2006). While research has shown that having a celebrity CEO does

11 provide short-term economic benefits to the firm, overtime the relationship between CEO celebrity status and firm performance is negative (Wade, Porac, Pollack, and Graffin,

2006).

Empirical Setting and Research Design

The empirical setting where on the institutional work of institutional leaders is the rise of the “mega-churches” particularly in the US but also in other countries such as

South Korea and Australia. Ironically, while early institutional scholars have argued that religion would be a place (similar to law firms, schools, and health care) where institutional processes would matter most (Scott & Meyer, 1991), they have not received similar research focus as the other settings. “(F)or the most part, management researchers have stubbornly refused to engage meaningfully with religion and religious forms of organization” (Tracey, 2012: 2).

The United States is a great laboratory to study religion and religious institutions: there are numerous home-grown faiths (e.g. Christian Science, The Church of Jesus

Christ of Latter-Day Saints [Mormons], Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, Seventh-Day

Adventists) as well as many new immigrant religions (Warf & Winsberg, 2010). In this respect the US is quite different from other countries at a similar stage of economic development: “by almost every measure, the United States is the most religious rich nation in the world. Indeed, it is the only religious rich nation in the world…Americans are more religious than other wealthy, educated peoples because they live in a more open religious market, with more churches and great variety of religious perspectives competing for their devotion. With more options, Americans have blossomed into great

12 consumers of religion” (Kohut & Stokes, 2006: 103). Churches in the US are for many people their most important civic organization. Churches also promote civic virtues, community and charitable service, and organizational skills such as volunteer work and fundraising experiences (Kohut & Stokes, 2006). Religious affiliation creates social connectedness and dense social networks that allow church members to develop skills and to generate social capital. This is especially important in newly created communities; here it is the case that “in the rapidly growing suburbs and exurbs in which most megachurches are located, these ties are central to many people’s overall happiness and quality of life” (Warf & Winsberg, 2010: 36). While the number of traditional/mainline churches has consistently declined since the 1960s (Pew Research Center, 2007), in that same time, the number of megachurches has grown.

“By the latest count, there are approximately 1,200 protestant churches with weekly attendance of at least 2,000 people (Thumma, 2005) and by every account these very large churches have proliferated in recent decades (Chaves, 329: 2006)”. We view megachurches as an institution in a field with other largely entrepreneurial institutions such as tent revivals, small “street corner” churches, as well as other institutions such as denominations, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Women’s Christian

Temperance Union (WCTU), parachurch organizations, and other similar organizational types. To analyze megachurches we draw upon Selznick’s concept of organizations as institutions, as opposed to other approaches that might define institutions as a “more or less taken-for granted repetitive social behavior that is underpinned by normative systems and cognitive understandings that give meaning to social exchange and thus enable self- reproducing social order” (Greenwood, Oliver, Sahlin, & Suddaby, 2008: 4–5) or as

13 “mechanisms of stability and social reproduction” (Suddaby & Viale, 2011: 424). We follow Selznick’s approach, as examining institutions as organizations focuses attention on what institutions do and who actually leads them. We further posit that such an approach better captures the dynamism of megachurches than alternative theoretical frames. What makes the megachurch movement even more fascinating is that while there has been a rise in the number of megachurches, overall participation in churches and the growth in the number of churches have declined since the 1960s (Pew Research Center,

2010). “In practice, these dramatically out-sized (and often wealthy) congregations represent a new aspect of religious life in the United States and are already having a profound impact on the way in which Americans worship” (Karnes, McIntosh, Morris, &

Pearson-Merkowitz, 2007: 261).

In an overview of this phenomenon, Chaves (2006) offer many contending reasons for the rise of this phenomenon. They range (as one could imagine) from institutional entrepreneurs “attuned to post-1970 society and culture (339)” to changing demands of “the unchurched (337)”. While one could argue that the mega-church is not a new organizational form--there were large churches in the pre-civil war days (Chaves,

2006)—the speed at which they are developing does lead most scholars to argue that they represent a significant change to the institutional of religion; sort of a “marriage between the institutional church and the tent revival (Chaves, 2006: 340)”. One dominant explanation is that as we have become more comfortable with big box stores--Wal-Mart,

Best buy, Home Depot--we have similarly come to expect church to look the same way.

In addition to the notion of the megachurch as an institution, the megachurch is also influenced by broader institutions, which in religious language are called

14 denominations. A denomination focuses on the interpretation and production of a specific religious belief system. Affiliated congregations draw upon their denominations to create or to shape their statements of belief, which in the main are mission statements. While many can think of the typical Protestant denominations of Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran,

Methodist, or Presbyterian, from our own research, of the 1,400 or so megachurches in the US, over 60 different denominations are represented.

Denominations are often—but not always—categorized based on a fundamentalist to liberal continuum (Smith, 1990). Smith and Faris (2005) found that denominational memberships are stratified based on socioeconomic differences, and the “socioeconomic inequality evident in the American religious system appears to be patterned by theology, race and ethnicity, and liturgical style” (102). However, denominations have often split and emerged based on other historical factors, including nineteenth-century debates about slavery (Woodbury & Smith, 1998) and the practical need to organize expansion as the

United States grew geographically (Loetscher, 1963).

Our theoretical research question is why do different institutional leaders adopt some maintenance practices and not others? The specific practice that we examine is the growing and changing phenomenon of pastors of mega-churches not only writing religious books, but also writing religious books that are becoming best sellers. “With the capacity to leverage effectively the organizational resources and technological tools of our time—through educational programs, pastoral associations, and a wealth of materials

(including best-sellers such as Rick Warren’s (2002) The Purpose-Driven Life)—these churches are in a position to alter the social economic, and political circumstances of the communities in with they reside” (Karnes et al, 2007: 261). We think this represents the

15 movement of church leaders to see themselves not just as spiritual leaders, but also as organizational leaders who have life lessons for the spiritual person as well as the non- spiritual person. In addition, we believe that the extended scope for publications from mega-church pastors represents recognition of the agency inherent in organizations, but not always addressed from the perspective of religion logics (Chaves, 2006).

Pastors of Megachurches

Very few churches start off as megachurches. For example, “the first meeting of

Lakewood Church was held in a converted feed store on the outskirts of Houston on

Mother’s Day, 1959” (www.lakewood.cc/pages/new-here/our-history.aspx) is the beginning of the story of Lakewood Church. Founded by John and Dodie Osteen, the church grew to over 10,000 members when John died in 1999 and his son Joel Osteen became head pastor. With over 43,000 attending one of its weekly services, Lakewood

Church is the largest megachurch in the US. Now located in the former home of the

Houston Rockets National Basketball Association team, Lakewood Church spent $75 million to renovate the former basketball arena. It pays $2.1 million in annual rent to the city and offers three English services and one Spanish service each week. The church, with a seating capacity of 16,000, has a family life center, bookstore and a café.

Southern California offers a number of megachurch stories of its own. For example, “on Easter of 1980, Saddleback Valley Community Church held its very first public service and 205 people, most of who had never been to church, showed up”

(http://saddleback.com/aboutsaddlebak/history). Saddleback Church, led by Rick Warren, has become another megachurch with an average weekly attendance of more than 22,000.

16 Size matters in myriad ways for congregations: “We assume that by the time a church has reached this general size, it will have made changes to its organizational structure, staffing, and leadership patterns; programmatic offerings; worship forms; and physical plant that give it the full range of megachurch characteristics we use as definitive of the phenomenon” (Thumma & Travis, 2007: XXI). The style of worship is “characterized by contemporary praise music, led by a worship team, accompanied by orchestra, drums, and electric guitars and augmented by state-of-the-art sound systems and huge projection screens” (Thumma & Travis, 2007: 27). Megachurches have “removed every obstacle that keeps people from coming to the Christian church. Plus, they give people a feeling of anonymity. And that is particularly important to those who have been hurt or burned out in smaller churches” (Axtman, 2003).

However, critics argue that megachurches have a “consumer mentality, meaning they begin with the individual and not with God and are thus accused of inverting the faith” (Thumma & Travis, 2007: 98). In this line of analysis, the cost of “removing every obstacle that prevents people from coming to the Christian church” is a kind of lowest- common-denominator approach to church in which the distinctive elements of Christian worship and witness are subsumed to fulfilling market expectations. Other critics compare “McChurches” to Wal-Mart (Liu, 2003; Symonds, 2005), citing their secular, if highly successful, homogenized, and unapologetic business models that succeed at the expense of smaller congregations. The business magazine Forbes has referred to megapastors as “essentially CEOs who successfully address many of the same issues that challenge their business brethren” (Buss, 2007). Megachurches, viewed in this way, are critiqued for having a consumerist approach to theology that is absent of the rigor and

17 sacrifice often demanded by traditional churches, while simultaneously servicing as havens for a moral community craving for purpose in an increasingly secularized society

(Twitchell, 2004; Warf & Winsberg, 2010).

***insert table 1 about here***

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics on the pastors of the largest 20 protestant churches as measured by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research Database on

Megachurches. As indicated by the data, the top 20 churches are very large (average church membership of 20,000). Many of these churches have satellite churches or multiple campuses. Out of these 20 pastors, 17 have authored at least one book, 5 have authored a self-proclaimed best seller, and 3 have authored a New York Times best seller.

In addition, most of these pastors have their own website (for example, Joel Osteen has www.joelosteen.com; he is pastor of Lakewood Church, which is www.lakewood.cc) on which they sell their books directly. On the uses of other social media technologies

(Facebook, Twitter, blog), virtually all pastors used these technologies.

This consistent output of discourse complements numerous book publications by these same pastors. In fact, many of the largest megachurches are led by people who have also penned bestsellers. Out of the broader set of megachurch pastors, we have identified

19 pastors that have self-identified their published books as bestsellers. One such pastor,

Reverend T. D. Jakes, whose church “The Potter’s House” has over 30,000 members, has written over 30 books. We find the co-evolution of megachurches and pastors’ writings to be a fruitful area of research to explore institutional maintenance and improvisation and modifying strategies (Battilana & D’Aunno, 2009). Furthermore, many of the authors have a wide breadth of subjects that they write about, from the intuitive topics of religion

18 and self-help to the less obvious topics of organization and leadership. In fact many of the bestsellers have several commonalities with more traditional business literature, including motivation, change and leadership concepts. For example, books such as Courageous

Leadership by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, IL, contains topics such as “The Power of Vision,” “Developing Emerging Leaders,” and

“The Sources of Decision Making.” But these business topics are not limited to books that happen to be focused on traditional business topics. In Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to

Living at Your Full Potential, by Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, the author includes chapters on having a vision, developing strategic goals, and setting appropriate expectations. In fact, among the pastors of the top 10 largest megachurches in the United States, six of them have books with topics that include traditional business concepts.

Another example of the information provided in books that speak to business rather than religious logic is the book by bestselling author, Joel Osteen, called Be a

People Builder. As noted previously, Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood church in

Houston, Texas, which boasts a non-denominational congregation of more than 43,000 people. This title and the information contained in the book itself are indicative of leadership, organizational behavior, human resources, or numerous other business topics.

Another example of the inclusion of organizational language is Rick Warren’s The

Purpose Driven Life. Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in California, which has a membership of more than 30,000 people. His best-seller not only discussed spiritual truths, but also discussed strategies for individuals with regard to how they can become more effective in other parts of their lives.

19 ***insert table 2 here****

In examining these texts, we found an overwhelming number had language that supported both a spiritual or religious logic as well as a professional or business logic.

Many of the books were intended as teaching manuals meant to provide guidance to pastors or other church leaders. T.D. Jakes’ bestseller, Reposition Yourself: Living Life

Without Limits, discusses goal-setting, careers, financial management and even branding.

Ed Young’s book, Sexperiment, tries to address the notion that sexual relationships and

God do not mix. Jentezen Franklin has books on subjects ranging from fasting principles to how to be the person you want to be. What we find interesting is that most of the megachurch book authors come from very large non-denominational churches. This echoes the theory that megachurches are created largely in response to a need for community, not just religion. Further, the larger the megachurch, the greater the likelihood and need for the megachurch pastor to engage in personal branding as a means of building the megachurch—especially as non-denominational megachurches do not benefit from the built-in legitimacy offered by established denominations.

Hypothesis development

Drawing from insights on institutional leaders and the megachurch literature, we argue that there are some defining characteristics of megachurches that would lead them to write books as a way of connecting to their membership. The first hypothesis deals with the leader of the church. One of the key insights from Selznick’s work is that similar to how organizations become institutions as they become “infused with value”, so to does the leader of an organization become an institutional leader once he “assumes

20 personal responsibility for the well-being of the organizational “whole” identifying himself with it, and reconceptualizign himself as its steward (Kraatz, 2009: 64). Given that there is variation among the tenures of pastors of churches, we argue that this personal responsibility characteristic would be mostly closely affiliated with the founder of the church. As such, our first hypothesis is:

Hypothesis 1: Founders of megachurches are more likely to write books than non- founders

Our second hypothesis connects to insights from institutional theory. Scott’s

(1991) work on institutional theory suggest three pillars, regulatory, normative, and cultural cognitive. From this work, Washington and Ventresca (2005) argued that instutional pillars are not only constraints, but might also be supporting mechanisms as the pillars provide templates for action. Combining this insight, we argue that if a pastor is wanting to connect to their growing congregation, they would use practices that they already know. Similar to Kraatz and Moore’s (2002) study predicting that presidents that had some familiarity with adopting professional programs in their previous position would be more likely to adopt professional programs in their new position, we argue that pastors that have and experience with books—specifically their value as a communication and commitment tool—would be more likely to engage in the practice of writing one. One way a pastor can obtain this experience is by having a level of higher education. There are no formal degree requirements to becoming a pastor. However, having a university degree would expose a pastor to the utility of reading books as a way

21 of communicating, learning, and consolidating insights and wisdom. This leads to our second hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Pastors that have a university degree are more likely to write a book that pastors that do not have a university degree.

Our third hypothesis deals with the statesmen part of Selznick’s view of institutional leaders. If an institutional leader’s world revolves around politics “speaking to subordinates’ values and ideas, as well as their interests, and is wise to the importance of rhetoric, culture, and symbols (Kraatz, 2009: 77)”, an institutional leader would use multiple tools to get his message out. In our dataset, we have identified 3 tools that can be used. The first is a personal website. Drawing from our earlier example, some pastors can be found by looking up website of the church (Lakewood church for example), but other pastors can be found by “googling” their name (Joel Osteen). We argue when pastor is using their name to be identified / recognized, he is communicating that he has a message to share above and beyond the message of the church. This tools (his own website) would be a ripe for text dissemination. Thus, we argue:

Hypothesis 3: Pastors that have a website, are more likely to write books than pastors that do not have a website.

Our fourth hypothesis connects to the broader reach of the pastor. While one could argue that if a pastor has a large church, they might be writing books as a way to communicate

22 to the audience that comes to the church every Sunday (or Saturday). We suggest that a different purpose of the book might be to connect to the people that connect with the pastor, but not through a face-to-face audience. Books in this sense is something that people that hear or see the pastor can have so that they can reach a deeper connection.

Thus, we argue:

Hypothesis 4a: Pastors that have a television presence are more likely to a write book than pastors that do not have a television presence.

Hypothesis 4b: Pastors that have a radio presence are more likely to write a book than pastors that do not have a radio presence.

Methodology and Analytical Design

Our work is also shaped by preliminary analysis of over 1400 megachurches in the United States. The Hartford Institution for Religious Research

(http://hirr.hartsem.edu/) tracks data at the congregational and denominational levels.

Relevant to the present analysis, this institution has collected information on all churches with a weekly attendance of more than 2,000 members. To this database, we have consulted numerous websites such as the websites of individual pastors, the websites of the churches themselves as well as other religious databases to identify additional variables of interest..

Our dependent variable of interest is book which denotes that a pastor has written a book after having been pastor of a megachurch. Our first independent variable of

23 interest is founder. Founder receives a 1 if the pastor of the megachurch was the original founder of the church. Our second independent variable of interest is degree. Degree measures of the pastor of the church has at least a 4-year college degree. Our third independent variable of interest is website. Website receives a 1 of the pastor has a website that links directly to the pastor (as opposed to the church), if not, this variable receives a 0. Our third independent variables of interest TV and Radio. TV and Radio measures 1 if the church that the pastor is the leader of broadcasts on Television and the

Radio.

To control against other arguments, we include a measure of race labeled Black.

Black receives a 1 if the pastor identifies as black (based upon reading the biographies of the pastor from their own website, or Wikipedia page) and 0 if we could not determine the race, or the pastor was not black. We also control for 3 different denominational differences. While there are numerous types of denominations (Baptist, Methodist, etc.), some churches are non-demoninational. This means that they do not profess an allegiance to a specific religious body of knowledge. One could argue that being non- demoninational might results in more religious freedom (or less denominational constraint) which might influence a pastor work. Nondenom receives a value of 1 if the church is non-denominational and 0 if not. As opposed to controlling for the more than 63 denominations represented in our database, we used (citation here needed) a generally accepted classification to determine if the denomination is considered evangelical (more charismatic) or mainline (more traditional). If the denomination is considered evangelical or mainline, we coded that church with a 1,otherwise the church was coded with a 0.

Connecting to the historical legacy of some churches, we also coded if the church was

24 considered a historically black church. While many different denominations could be part of this grouping, churches that identified themselves (from reading their websites) as historically black, were coded as a 1, otherwise they were coded 0. Lastly, we controlled for the size of the church with the variable attend. To reflect the range of size in our database, we log the attendance as reported on the Hartford Institution of Religious

Research database.

Using Stata 12, we ran a logistic regression. Table 4 presents our descriptive statistics. Given the large number of variables that were correlated, we ran Variance

Inflation Factors for our variables. For all but the attendance measure, the VIF scores were well below 5. While we kept the attendance measure in our final results, we ran additional analysis with this variable absent and our results stayed the same. Table 4 presents our results.

Results

Model 1 of table 4 presents the results of our control variables. As you can see the larger the church, the more likely a pastor is to have published one book. We also see that race is significant in that black pastors are more likely to have published a book than non- black pastors. Model 1 presents the results of our first hypothesis. In this model, founder is significant, meaning that if a pastor was the founder of the church, they were more likely to write a book. This result supports hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 is presented in model 3. Here there is also support for our hypothesis as Degree is positive and significant. This means that pastors with a college degree are more likely to have published a book than pastors without a college degree. Model 4 presents our findings

25 from our 3rd hypothesis. There is also support for this hypothesis as website is positive and significant. This suggests that pastors that have a website of their own name are more likely to publish a book than pastors that do not have a website of their own name. Model

5 provides the results of our 4th hypothesis. Here we see partial support. Showing your church service on the TV increases the likelihood of you publishing a book, but having your show on the radio does not. Model 6 presents all of the hypotheses together. Here we see that founder, degree and website remain significant (along with the control variables of black and attendance). However, having a television program no longer predicts publishing a book.

Post hoc analysis

While our main interests is in analysis which pastor will be likely to publish a book, our database also affords us the opportunity to examine which pastor is more likely to have a book become a best seller. To determine if a book was a best seller, we first started with the pastors who listed either own their own website, or on the church’s website that their book was a best seller. We then corroborated this information looks at lists from the NY Times, and Amazon.com. Our search determined 19 books were indeed best sellers. Table 7 presents the results of our analyes examining what predicts a pastor’s likelihood of writing a best seller. Here we find that some of the variables that predict writing a book, also predict writing a best seller (website, founder, TV, attendance).

Interesting, having a degree is not a predictor, neither is being black.

A second set of post-hoc analysis we conducted were on the number of books written. Of those that have written a book, the average number of books written were 2.7

26 and the maximum number was 200! To examine who writes a lot of books, we ran a regression analysis with our dependent variable being number of books. Model 8 presents those analyses. Here we see that founder, website, TV and Radio predice the number of books written. Interestingly black is a negative predictor, and attendance is not a predictor.

Discussion

The goal of this paper was to examine the institutional work of institutional leaders. We focused this inquiry on the empirical setting of megachurches and the work of writing books. For pastors that are institutional leaders, we argue that writing books is a way of communicating the pastor’s values to their audience in an effort to maintain internal integrity and gain / maintain trust with their members. Our major findings were that pastors that were founders of the church and had a website were more likely to write books. Our intuition is that founders carry an additional set of commitments to the church which results in them being more likely to engage in producing text. We also find support that pastors that come from a background where knowledge is produced and valued (a college education) were also more likely to write books.

Of keen interests to us is that one set of variables were not significant. As you can see from the title, an assumption we had was that the denomination would also have an influence on a pastor’s likelihood of writing books. In this case, we did not find any significant effects of the denomination of the church on a pastor’s likelihood of writing books. Future research could better tease out the denominations to see if indeed there might be an effect.

27 Though not hypothesized, we have an interesting set of findings with regards to best sellers and number of books. It appears that pastors that write a lot of books, also have a website, a TV program and a radio program. This could be views as pastors that have a way to get a message out, create messages to deliver. However, one could also cynically relate this to Leblebici, Salancik, Copay and King’s (1991) study of the radio industry where it was the “snake oil” salesmen on the periphery of the industry who first advertised on the radio. Maybe we have a case where pastors take advantage of their media (website, radio, tv) in an effort to create an audience for their products (in this case books). Future research could also further tease out the relationship between media outlets and book or text production.

Limitations

As with any study, there are some inherent limitations in this one. The biggest is that our data come from self-reported websites. We examined the church’s websites and the pastor’s websites (those that had one) to determine many of our variables. Thus, some pastors might have had a degree, but did not choose to list that information in the biographical information we found on the church’s website. Similarly, some churches might have had a radio or TV program, but did not list that on their website. However, since we are interested in the institutional aspects of work and leadership, we think that if a pastor did not include this information, than it wasn’t institutionally relevant and we would argue, would not be a factor in how they view writing books.

Conclusions

28 Selznick suggests that leading an institution is:

“far more than the capacity to mobilize personal support; it is more than the maintenance of equilibrium through the routine solution of everyday problems; it is the function of the leader-statesman—whether of a nation or a private association—to define the ends of group existence, to design an enterprise distinctively adapted to these ends, and to see that the design becomes a living reality. These tasks are not routine; they call for continuous self-appraisal on the part of the leaders; and they may require only a few critical decisions over a long period of time” (Selznick 1957, p. 37).

The institutional leaders that we examine in this study are pastors of megachurches. Pastors of megachurches continually look for ways to connect with their growing members. Pastors can choose to adopt new practices such as websites or blogs, or utilize connection practices that have been proven sources of support such as television or radio ministry as a means of broadcasting their services.

However, new practices or organizational forms are often contested and surrounded by significant conflict. They can be opposed or even stigmatized by the status quo

(Hudson, 2008). The challenge for the megachurch pastor as they attempt to connect to their members is to avoid the traps of becoming a Celebrity CEO

(Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006). Appearing on TV, radio, or the internet could allow the pastor to connect to her membership, but it also pushes the pastor into the spotlight, which might create unwanted attention (see for example the unwanted attention on Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, which is a Chicago megachurch with over 6,000 members, after a YouTube post that shared his views were brought to light once one of his members—Presidential candidate Barack Obama—was questioned about his pastor’s views). While a pastor’s aims might be noble, the more successful the pastor, the more this person

29 might be written about in the media and become a person of celebrity.

After describing some characteristics of megachurches and providing a description of the types of books pastors publish, we turned our attention to examining which pastor is more likely to write a book. We found that those leaders that founded the institution, had prior experience with the value of writing texts, and had a visible presence were more likely to write a book than those that did not.

We think our results make numerous contributions. Using insights from institutional theory, specifically the concepts of institutional leadership (Selznick, 1957;

Washington et al., 2008), and institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence,

Suddaby, & Leca, 2009), we suggest that pastors of megachurches have adopted the practice of writing books as a way of reaffirming the megachurch organization as an institution. These books not only help a pastor to connect to his internal members, but also help the pastor communicate to an external audience.

Similar to the explosion of studies that examine sport, healthcare, or internet phenomena as a way of testing various organizational theories (Wolfe et al., 2006), we think that as an empirical setting, megachurches can extend the growing intersection of institutional work and identity (Creed, Dejordy, & Lok, 2010), institutions and emotions

(Voronov & Vince, 2012) and organizational rituals (Dacin, Munir, & Tracey, 2010).

While Creed’s work examined the perceived identity contradiction of being a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender minister, examining megachurches provides a lens into understanding how pastors navigate a new identity of “Protestant Christian” for their mega-congregations. While Dacin, Munir, & Tracey, (2010) examine how rituals and traditions enable institutional maintenance work, megachurches provide an interesting

30 setting to examine the creation, maintenance (and destruction) of extremely institutionalized rituals and traditions. While the conversation connecting emotions to institutions has mostly been conceptual or theoretical, the field of religion provides a fascinating empirical setting to examine how this connection works, is created, and potentially disrupted. Similarly, one dimension where many denominations vary is in the role of emotional expression in the church service. Thus, the variation across denominations might also be a place to explore how different institutional arrangements support or destroy “emotional work.” Lastly, the newness of the megachurch allows researchers to gather longitudinal data to test theories about institutional development and work. We encourage research that fleshes out what we know about this institutional form.

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35 Table 1: Summary Statistics of top 20 mega-churches

Average Size of Church 19954 Number non-demoninational 7 Number Baptist Affiliation 7 Number that have authored a book 17 Number with a self-proclaimed "best seller" 5 Number with New York Times Best Seller 3 Have their own website 8

36 Table 2: Table of books written by pastors of megachurches

37 38 Table 3

Summary statistics of variables in the model

Average / Count STD 669 book 329 founder 0.19 425 degree 0.38 0.13 174 website 0.2 0.11 0.17 189 tv 0.29 0.18 0.55 0.21 60 radio 0.17 0.02 0.28 0.15 0.38 253 black 0.14 0.03 0.1 0.02 0.14 0.06 431 nondenom 0.11 0.12 0.2 0.03 0.14 0.11 0.03 - - - 0.01 - - - - 555 evangelical 0.09 0.08 0.09 3 0.07 0.06 0.01 0.56 - - 0.00 - - - - - 101 mainline 0 0.08 0.06 1 0.07 0.02 0.01 0.19 0.23 - - - - 63 historically black 0.01 0.01 0.03 -0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.15 0.08 0.22 - 0 . - - 0 3729 81 attend 0.39 0.2 0.67 0.21 0.55 0.35 0.11 0.21 0.11 0.06 5 all coefficiens >.05 significant at P>.05

39 Table 4 Mod els pred ictin g whic h char acte ristic s influ ence Past or's likeli hoo d of writi ng a book

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 model 7 M Fou 0.68 o 1 nder 6 *** 0.66 *** 1.12 * 2.92 *** 0.14 0.74 6 0.15 0.56 6 Degr 0.96 - 2 ee 2 *** 0.87 *** 0.15 0.26 0.15 9 0.19 0.68 0.94 Web 3 site 1.09 *** 0.99 *** 1.46 ** 4.9 *** 0.2 0.21 0.54 0.96 0.71 4 TV 5 ** 0.2 1.18 + 3.26 ** 0.24 6 0.27 0.73 1.17 Radi 0.46 - 4 o 2 0.45 1.45 6.25 *** 0.44 9 0.45 1.09 1.66 Blac 0.59 0.58 - - 5 k 0 *** 0 *** 0.6 *** 0.61 *** 0.55 0.59 *** 0.37 1.45 + 0.16 0.16 0.15 0 0 9 0.19 0.16 0.17 0.67 0.8 Non - - - den 0.05 0.03 0.01 0.06 0.33 6 om 0 0 2 0.02 0.04 4 4 0.96 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17 0 0 5 4 0.17 9 0.74 0.9 40 Eva - - - - - ngeli 0.19 0.17 - 0.24 - 0.22 0.07 - 7 cal 0 0 0.22 7 0.19 5 6 0.69 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0 0 0.16 3 0.16 7 0.71 0.85 Main 0.12 0.20 0.13 0.07 0.18 0.02 - 8 line 0 0 7 9 0.15 6 6 0.79 0.25 0.25 0.25 1.17 0 0 0.25 6 0.25 0.56 5 1.33 Hist orica lly blac 0.20 0.18 0.17 0.21 0.16 0.98 - 9 k 0 0 8 9 4 0.16 5 1.07 0.29 0.29 0.28 0.91 0 0 0.29 7 0.29 0.3 4 1.5 Lnat 1.81 1.76 10 tend 0 *** 0 *** 1.17 *** 1.76 *** 1.54 1.04 *** 0.94 * 0.4 0.15 0.15 0.17 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.44 0 0 5 9 2 9 7 0.9 - - - - - Con 16.4 16.1 - 16.1 14.0 - 14.1 11 stant 00 *** 10 10.9 *** 1 *** 8 9.98 *** 2 *** -2.6 1.30 1.33 0 0 1.55 1.34 1.44 1.67 4.03 7.5

log likeli hoo d of F(11 base ------, mod 939. 815. 815. 815. 815. 815. 99.9 12.5 134 el 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 8 3) log likeli ------R- hoo 815. 803. 800. 799. 808. 774. 73.6 Squ d 0 7 0 5 9 9 5 0.09 are Chi Squ 248. are 3 *** 22.6 *** 29.9 *** 30.9 *** 12.1 ** 80.1 *** 52.6 *** degr ees of free dom 6 1 1 1 2 5 11

N=1 355, + p<.1 * p<.0 41 5, ** p<.0 1, *** P<.0 01 Stan dard error s belo w coeff icent s