Market Meets Community: Institutional Logics as Strategic Resources for Development Work

Abstract

We investigate how an intermediary organization, PRADAN, introduces and promotes market-based activities in tribal villages as a means to improve the social and economic conditions of rural women and their families in two districts in India. We draw from the literature on institutional logics and focus on the strategies and activities of PRADAN – an NGO working in poor rural areas in Northern India – to show how PRADAN instrumentally used a market logic and a community logic to develop new social structures in these rural communities. Moreover, we show what effect this had on beneficiaries and their families and how difficult it has been to convince rural communities and gain their trust. On the basis of these findings we show how logics can be deployed as a means to alter institutional arrangements. We find that the simultaneous enactment of both community and market logics was critical in the development of new social structures (Self-Help Groups). Finally, we show how the introduction of market-based activities by PRADAN is best understood as an ongoing and staged process that strongly builds on a continuous interplay of multiple logics.