Identity Conflict Amidst Environmental Change: An Ethnography of a Korean Buddhist Temple

Abstract

AbstractDrawing on a Buddhist context, this study examines how societal‐level environmental changes trigger internal identity conflict within a temple between its traditional identity as a silent meditative space for monks and its emerging identity as an open cultural space for people. It investigates the long‐term adaptive process through which the conflict has been recognized and managed amid the environmental changes. The findings reveal that the identity conflict gradually led to the formation of two subgroups of monks: a sacred meditator group and a cultural service provider group. While this separation created mild tension between the subgroups, it paradoxically enabled the temple to simultaneously seek two opposing goals: spiritual meditation practice and cultural service. Consequently, the temple continues to pursue the traditional way of monastic life, while responding to the changing societal demands on religion. These findings extend our understanding of how organizational identity conflict is recognized, interpreted, and managed in response to environmental changes. In particular, they elucidate the link between identity and institutional processes by showing how organizational members, not necessarily through the leaders' agentic actions, spontaneously and organically cope with identity conflict triggered by external changes.