Moral boundaries: how sacred values and cultural tightness influence entrepreneurial action

This study examines how religiously grounded sacred values and cultural tightness shape entrepreneurial action. Scholarship on religious entrepreneurship often emphasizes how practices connected to believed superhuman powers motivate and support entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. We highlight a complementary perspective by theorizing that sacred values work as moral commitments rooted in religious practices that limit the action individuals view as acceptable under uncertainty. We further argue that the influence of sacred values depends on the cultural contexts in which entrepreneurial action is embedded. Using multilevel data from more than 14,000 individuals across 11 countries, we find that sacred values are negatively associated with entrepreneurial action and that this relationship is significantly stronger in culturally tight societies, where strong normative enforcement reinforces the boundaries associated with sacred values. These findings advance the emerging subfield of religious entrepreneurship by demonstrating how religiously grounded sacred values constrain entrepreneurial action and by clarifying how cultural norms shape the force of these constraints.