Despite increasing recognition that paradoxes should be sustained and protected in organizations, little is known about how commitment to an organization with a paradoxical mission is maintained. Here, we use a cultural toolkit lens to study how organizational members work through paradoxes at the heart of their organization’s mission. Using data from a two year ethnographically informed study at Forestry England, we induce a process model of sustaining members’ commitment to an organization with a paradoxical mission. Our findings unpack the role of the organization’s cultural frames, identity, and scripts to sustain a workable certainty. This research reorientates inquiries from specific practices employed by leaders to navigate tensions, or the individual sensemaking processes that organizational members engage in, to how organizational members work through paradox to sustain commitment to an organization with a paradoxical mission.
