Small Groups as Context for Institutional Entrepreneurship: An Exploration of the Emergence of Commercial Microfinance in Bolivia

Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on inhabited institutions. It argues that institutional entrepreneurship, as most social action, is not an individual-bounded endeavor, at the hands of isolated individuals, but a group-bounded one, at the hands of social individuals inhabiting groups which motivate, inspire, and enable their engagement. The inhabited group-bounded conceptualization offered helps to overcome voluntaristic biases and atemporalism plaguing much micro research on institutional entrepreneurship. The paper builds on a qualitative case study of the emergence of commercial microfinance in Bolivia.