When Ethics Become Strategy: Dominant Logic Shifts in a Kazakhstani Tourism Firm

Abstract

Dominant logic helps organizations simplify decision-making, but during extreme shocks, it may also constrain adaptation. Although prior work explains how firms respond to turbulence, we still know little about how dominant logic is handled as crises unfold in emerging-market service settings. Addressing this gap, we conduct an inductive, theory-building study drawing on ethnographic observation, 21 semi-structured interviews, archival documents and netnographic data collected between 2020 and 2022. Our analysis traces how a Kazakhstani tourism firm reconsidered its long-standing assumptions during overlapping public-health and political disruptions. Rather than entering the study with predefined categories, we found—through inductive coding—that three interconnected shifts gradually took shape: a deepening emphasis on values and care, a renewed responsiveness to clients’ evolving needs and a broadening integration of digital tools into service routines. Together, these shifts illuminate a process through which a firm’s dominant logic is reoriented in real time. The study contributes to research on dominant logic and crisis response by theorizing how value-laden, relational and digital practices can emerge as mutually reinforcing mechanisms that support organizational resilience in uncertain, resource-constrained service contexts.