Surviving the peace : processes of organisational identity work in response to deinstitutionalisation of Irish peacebuilding

Abstract

This research explores how Irish peacebuilding organisations are responding to deinstitutionalisation, the decline of a set of practices and beliefs, by engaging in different patterns of organisational identity work, the self-other negotiation of “who we are” as an organisation. I review the diverse and contradictory literature on organisational survival, before homing in on deinstitutionalisation and organisational identity in order to help explain the observed empirical phenomena and to draw boundaries around the specific theoretical areas which became the focus of this research.