When institutional change outruns the change agent: The contested terrain of entrepreneurial microfinance for those in poverty

Abstract

We argue that institutional change moves through stages punctuated by recurring attempts to formally redefine the boundaries and logics of organizational fields that institutional entrepreneurs initially establish. With a grounded theory model, we demonstrate that institutional change in microfinance started with dominant development logic, shifted to market logic, and got stuck in a conflict over regulatory logic. We show how the role of the entrepreneur can change markedly over time while the institutional change process continues unabated. We present institutional entrepreneurship as an evolving phenomenon and suggest that the interplay between institutional entrepreneurs and established organizational fields is highly nuanced.