Date of Award

Summer 8-31-2025

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Maureen A. Scully

Second Advisor

J. Keith Motley

Third Advisor

Karen Ross

Abstract

This dissertation examines the role of organizations in structuring and sustaining community empowerment. Empowerment has been studied across disciplines, but little attention has been given to the intersection of the organization and community levels. This research reconceptualizes organizational empowerment to include empowerment enacted through organizations, not only within or around them, expanding the term beyond its traditional association with individual autonomy and workplace practices. Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic case study of the Metropolitan Organization for Racial Equity (MORE, a pseudonym), the study investigates how community empowerment is mediated through organizational identity, structure, and practice. Data were gathered over a forty-month period through participant observation. Content analysis relied on iterative coding and was validated through triangulation, member checking, and reflexive methods. Findings reveal that MORE maintains a dual organizational identity: it operates as both a grassroots community organization and an established legacy institution. This dual positionality enables what the findings show to be ‘bidirectional empowerment,’ a process by which empowerment flows upward through embedded, community-based engagement, and downward through institutional legitimacy, history, and influence. These dynamics are both material and symbolic. This work contributes to empowerment scholarship by foregrounding organizations as active vehicles for empowerment. It advances organization studies by conceptualizing outward-facing empowerment at the community level and by characterizing legacy organizations as a distinct organizational form. This study also offers practical insights for mission-driven organizations seeking to amplify collective action through strategic positioning.

Comments

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