Whereas social entrepreneurs in developed economies operate in the predictable and supportive institutional environment, their counterparts in the developing world often face hostile institutional conditions. This paper sheds some light on how social ventures that operate within the Malawian tourism and hospitality industry use institutional bricolage in order to address institutional constraints they face in pursuit of social value. Using qualitative-based case study approach involving four social founders/ventures, our study highlights the three specific institutional bricolage processes that serve as antecedents of social value creation in a developing country context. It further illuminates the significance of engendering a multilevel analysis of institutional voids. The paper finally provides implications for practice and research.
We examine the demise of a multi-stakeholder network that was launched to promote an inclusive dairy market in Ethiopia to better understand why nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may develop interventions in contexts of poverty that fail to endure after they exit. We identify organizational reflexivity – the capacity to recognize and understand the recursive interplay between an intervention and the local environment – as a key explanatory mechanism for this intervention outcome. Limited reflexivity not only prevented the NGO we studied from properly aligning the intervention with the context (design failures), but also prevented the organization from adjusting its intervention when negative feedback emerged (orchestration failures), which eventually evolved into the demise of the network (maintenance failure). While our study confirms the theoretical premise that NGOs need to contextualize their interventions, we expand current knowledge by highlighting the role of organizational reflexivity in this process. Moreover, by showing how reflexivity deficits can trigger a cascade of failure, especially when intervening in voids where incumbent firms have interests in maintaining the void, our study calls attention to the politicized nature of institutional voids.
In this episode THE VOID hosts the collective timeis.capital which runs an online platform for audio-visual research on self organisation. This project consists of interviews with people who self-organise and the 3D scans of the spaces where they do this — project spaces, antikraak, squats and living rooms. It’s aim is to collect practice-based knowledge and strategies that are produced in the ephemeral landscape of artist-run initiatives — in order to strengthen the non-institutional art world and generate new energy for self-organisation.
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