This thesis examines what shapes digital technology adoption in faith based organizations (FBOs) in Sweden, where minority FBOs operate under public scrutiny and reputational risk while majority organizations work from a more secure institutional position.

The study uses a qualitative multiple-case design (Yin, 2018) with six semi-structured interviews: four Muslim minority FBOs and two organizations within the majority Christian tradition. These are supplemented by a comparative digital footprint analysis of four civil society organizations and two expert field conversations. The material is analyzed through Framework Analysis (Gale et al., 2013) and pattern matching against the TOE framework (Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1990), institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and legitimacy theory (Suchman, 1995).

Adoption is shaped at three layers. Technology, organizational capacity, and the institutional environment all matter, and digital capacity follows whether technical responsibility is a defined role rather than organizational size. Institutional pressure and legitimacy then separate the two groups. Three findings extend the frameworks. Coercive pressure runs in three concurrent forms: direct regulatory, privatized (banks, platforms, discretionary funders), and anticipated (built on what has happened to peer organizations). Three of the four minority organizations actively avoid public funding to escape its conditions, settling their technology choices before any tool is considered. A fourth, affective form of legitimacy work, internalized uncertainty about belonging, sits beneath the strategic legitimacy Suchman describes and is absent in both majority cases.