Indigenous Tourism Enterprises and Dignity-Centered Organizing: Opportunities for Human Flourishing

Billions of individuals continue to live in poverty and are denied a life of dignity as organizations continuously explore different organizational forms that generate improved societal outcomes. Recent evidence suggests that only a few organizations are guided by the principle of dignity, a concept that runs deep in every person. These dignity-centered organizations are gaining increasing attention for their tremendous potential for human flourishing. However, what constitutes these organizations remains an underexplored but urgent research area. Thus, Indigenous social enterprises may provide a natural experimental environment to explore such dignity-centered organizations as they regularly blend Indigenous cultural values and Western business practices to create humane organizational forms. Therefore, in this research, we examine how dignity contributes to resolving long-standing injustices and overcoming well-being barriers in Indigenous tourism enterprises; this aim also addresses new elements that are often overlooked as fundamental to dignity-centered organizations. Through the yarning research method and secondary data analysis, results highlight the role of cultural preservation, cultural reaffirmation, and strong, meaningful connections at work as central elements of dignity restoration and human flourishing. This research also addresses gaps in the literature on how Indigenous enterprises manage cultural and commercial imperatives simultaneously, the relationship between cultural objectives and economic opportunities for Indigenous people, and the intersection of indigeneity, entrepreneurship, culture, and knowledge.