New roles birthed by organizational inclusion initiatives present an interesting puzzle. On the one hand, they hold the promise to foster inclusion objectives more directly through their formalization in the organizational structure. On the other hand, they tend to be ambiguous as to what occupants are expected to do and how to reconcile this with existing organizational goals and processes. Therefore, they create a burden for their occupants to create a role identity that legitimizes who they are and what they do. To address this puzzle, we draw on a qualitative study of early occupants of the newly created role of lady officer within the Indian military. We find that their role identity construction involved negotiating an optimal balance between professional and inclusion-informed identities through discursive and embodied identity work. Role occupants’ identity work initially emphasized elements of their professional identity and subsequently infused elements of departure informed by their views of the role. In doing so, they sought to shape interpretations of the role and craft a sense of role legitimacy. Our key contribution lies in developing an emergent theory of identity construction by occupants of inclusion-focused roles, illustrating their efforts to craft a role identity and a sense of legitimacy for their role and themselves in it amid challenges posed by role ambiguity and by societal and organizational tensions.

We examine the resource mobilization efforts undertaken by a social venture to organize the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games and bring about a change in social attitudes towards the cause of learning and intellectual disabilities. In contrast to previously advanced views of social ventures as powerless actors, we find instead that they are able to leverage the visibility afforded by large-scale events to create positions of mutual dependence, which allow them to access broad support bases and assert themselves in relationships with external parties. Specifically, we find that resource mobilization involves six distinct tactics rooted in the softer forms of power, namely, attraction and inducement. The use of these soft-power tactics depends upon the social venture’s goal at different moments of the relationship with its partners and the level of support available from each external party. Our elaborated theory highlights both the role and limitations of soft power in mobilizing resources and managing relationships.