Do the means justify the ends? Entrepreneurs’ moral legitimacy in religious networks

We build theory on how religious entrepreneurs construct and sustain moral legitimacy when profit-seeking is morally contested within their religious network. Examining Evangelical Christian entrepreneurs in Scotland, we use institutional complexity to analyse how profit-faith tensions arise in everyday venture building. Our analysis identifies three strategies through which entrepreneurs render profit-making morally acceptable within religious networks: (1) stewardship framing of profit, (2) selective generosity, and (3) strategic evangelism. While these strategies enable entrepreneurs to sustain moral legitimacy, they are constrained by boundary conditions that intensify scrutiny, in particular, resource scarcity and time constraints. We theorize moral legitimation as a multi-site evaluative process in which profit is judged across entrepreneurs’ motives (why profit is generated), means (how profit is generated), and ends (when tensions become most acute).