Institutional Entrepreneurship in Action: Translating Community Colleges Across India

Initiated in 1995, community college in India grew from a grassroots movement into a national policy priority. Rather than achieve stability as a cohesive system, three distinct but overlapping community college models developed. To begin to understand the forces shaping this unexpectedly fragmented landscape, I conducted an embedded case study focused on how advocates defined what it means to be a community college in India. Over one year of data collection, I conducted interviews with 99 advocates and practitioners at 35 community colleges, government offices, and higher education facilities in 7 states. Guided by interwoven concepts from institutional theory – translation, institutional entrepreneurship, and an institutional logics perspective – I find that all three models focus on preparing marginalized students for employment aligned with a national priority on skill development and a global trend of promoting community colleges as a tool for economic and educational justice. Yet, the ultimate form, function, and field position of community colleges remain in flux. A desire to “make skills aspirational” coupled with a national “degree obsession” led advocates into what I call recognition chasing – a process focused on securing community colleges a formal place within higher education through regulatory support. Guided by a perceived need for government recognition, an interdependent network of advocates initiated each successive model by promoting a globally acceptable yet locally differentiated vision for the community college. Translation was a continually responsive process at the organizational and system level, which resulted in three distinct but overlapping models championed by new advocates offering new opportunities for recognition. Strategies to achieve legitimacy were generally top down and based on personal relationships to help overcome challenges associated with the centralized and individual-centric bureaucracy that controlled higher education. Advocates offered desirable frames, mobilized allies, and developed standards and norms, but the ability to influence community college policy was largely concentrated within a small group of people and organizations. What I call coercive cooperation came to define each community college model by providing minimal but controlling oversight through selection processes, the creation of guidelines, and hosting workshops to disseminate information to practitioners. As a result, the role of personal relationships was elevated above the need for collaborative problem solving in the field building stage. Advocates’ actions were both constrained and enabled by a shifting constellation of the community, state, market, professional, and religious logics influencing community college development. Given the complex resource environment with competing demands for action, logic seeking, or aggressively pursuing the influence of multiple logics on community college development, was necessary. For a grassroots movement to gain regulatory backing and desirable market outcomes, in a bureaucratic emerging economy, advocates actively engaged in logic seeking to secure legitimacy for a new organizational arrangement. They doggedly chased government backing, courted relationships with industry partners, and shaped the curriculum to meet specific employer needs based on professional standards. Ultimately, logic seeking was not an attempt to resolve or mitigate complexity; instead it was the active pursuit of complexity. Findings have broad implications for theory, practice, policy, and research. It is important to understand the interconnected forces shaping the development of community colleges in India, because without careful attention to policy and practice, community colleges in India may serve to reinforce the inequitable social system they are intended to disrupt.PHDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138634/1/grossj_1.pd

Transformation and power in a multiorganizational partnership: a case study.

Transformation and power in a multiorganizational partnership: A case study One of the challenges for multiorganizational partnerships is the inability of agencies involved to address or even be prepared to address issues of power. Power relations in partnerships are a neglected area in the literature (e.g. Hastings, 1999; Huxham and Vangen, 2005; Marsh and Murie, 1997; Martin, 1999). This case study contributes to this debate through an insider's perspective in the context of the author's experience working as a partnership manager and researcher. This was neither a neutral nor an objective engagement as I played an active part in the unfolding story as a powerful, reflexive actor. My inquiry addresses the issue of power in relation to transformation processes. Specifically set within an action inquiry strategy, the research focuses on the emergent nature of partnership transformation and the ways in which power manifested itself and influenced the Partnership's development. Partnerships open up opportunities for political activity through a reframing of activity in a domain, and whilst this can be positive in forging new relationships and generating new ideas, it can also have potentially negative effects for partnership transformation. The thesis offers a syntactical approach using first-, second-, and third-person voices in order to explicate a real partnership's transformation processes and power issues and to enhance validity through triangulation and integration of these perspectives. In the first-person the thesis concludes that greater recognition should be given to the critical role, competences and development needs of partnership professionals and particularly partnership managers as boundary spanners. In the second-person the inquiry claims that more attention could usefully be focused on intra-partnership conflict as a means of improving partnership effectiveness. In the third-person voice the study concludes that remedial action may be necessary to resolve shadows of the past that may continue to blight partnership transformation and that the under-resourcing of partnerships is a critical issue for partnerships

Cross-sectoral Partnerships in Real-Life: A case study of the Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in Ethiopia

Cross-Sectoral partnerships constitute an increasingly practiced yet less understood phenomenon. The mechanisms are studied through different disciplines in quite disparate manners, which has led to a lack of holistic understanding of how they function in real-life. Especially, their embeddedness in national contexts in developing countries has been less explored. This study sets out to generate an in-depth understanding of how actors interact in and around cross-sectoral partnership mechanisms in developing country settings. To this end, it undertakes a case study of the Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in Ethiopia. The study draws on the critical realism research paradigm, whereby it actively seeks to unravel the causal, contextual factors that underlie observed ways of interactions between actors. In this regard, the study deploys a guiding theoretical framework that directs the focus of the study towards understanding the interplay between actors’ agency and the 2-layered context of interaction, which is represented by the CCM’s regulatory frameworks and the deeper frames of reference in the Ethiopian setting. This qualitative study employed multiple methods of data collection including in-depth interviews with 43 policy makers, non-participant observation, and document review. The data is analysed through the thematic analysis method whereby themes are developed both apriori in view of the theoretical framework of the study and through identification and interpretation of emerging themes from the data. The findings reveal the contextual and process related factors that influence interactions between actors in and around the CCM in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the findings of the study expose the power relationships that underlie observed ways of interactions in the setting. By combining the context and process-orientated perspectives, the study offers a holistic account of how cross-sectoral interactions occur in a developing country setting. The analytical logics offered by the study, in terms of how the contextual and process related factors influence cross-sectoral interactions, provide testable propositions for future studies of cross-sectoral partnerships in developing country settings

Transnational Governance Interactions: A Critical Review of the Legal Literature

Overlaps and interactions among diverse legal rules, actors and orders have long preoccupied legal scholars. This preoccupation has intensified in recent years as transnational efforts to regulate business have proliferated. This proliferation has led to increasingly frequent and intense interactions among transnational regulatory actors and programs. These transnational business governance interactions (TBGI) are the subject of an emerging interdisciplinary research agenda. This paper situates the TBGI research agenda in the broader field of transnational legal theory by presenting a critical review of the ways in which legal scholars have addressed the phenomenon of governance interactions. Legal scholars frequently recognize the importance of transnational governance interactions, but their accounts are tentative and incomplete for the most part. Scholars bring varying — often sharply divergent — theoretical, methodological and normative perspectives to bear on the issue. Some scholars focus on rule formation, others on monitoring or adjudication. Some investigate cooperation and convergence, others conflict and competition. Some examine interactions within a particular organization or program, others among programs or even between entire normative orders. Some emphasize description or explanation, others evaluation or prescription. In short, while understanding intersections among the multiple sites, scales and instances of law is a central concern of transnational legal scholarship, the picture that emerges is incomplete and fragmented

Transformation and power in a multiorganizational partnership : a case study

Transformation and power in a multiorganizational partnership: A case study One of the challenges for multiorganizational partnerships is the inability of agencies involved to address or even be prepared to address issues of power. Power relations in partnerships are a neglected area in the literature (e.g. Hastings, 1999; Huxham and Vangen, 2005; Marsh and Murie, 1997; Martin, 1999). This case study contributes to this debate through an insider's perspective in the context of the author's experience working as a partnership manager and researcher. This was neither a neutral nor an objective engagement as I played an active part in the unfolding story as a powerful, reflexive actor. My inquiry addresses the issue of power in relation to transformation processes. Specifically set within an action inquiry strategy, the research focuses on the emergent nature of partnership transformation and the ways in which power manifested itself and influenced the Partnership's development. Partnerships open up opportunities for political activity through a reframing of activity in a domain, and whilst this can be positive in forging new relationships and generating new ideas, it can also have potentially negative effects for partnership transformation. The thesis offers a syntactical approach using first-, second-, and third-person voices in order to explicate a real partnership's transformation processes and power issues and to enhance validity through triangulation and integration of these perspectives. In the first-person the thesis concludes that greater recognition should be given to the critical role, competences and development needs of partnership professionals and particularly partnership managers as boundary spanners. In the second-person the inquiry claims that more attention could usefully be focused on intra-partnership conflict as a means of improving partnership effectiveness. In the third-person voice the study concludes that remedial action may be necessary to resolve shadows of the past that may continue to blight partnership transformation and that the under-resourcing of partnerships is a critical issue for partnerships.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The impact of institutional reforms on poverty and inequality in Tanzania

Poverty is a historical development curse in Tanzania, which has incited extensive institutional reforms and policy changes and received numerous analyses in development research literature. Paradoxically, taking actions to study and alleviate poverty have increased with its continuing severity. A substantial body of research on poverty in the country suggests that, the vast majority of these studies focus on the content rather than the context of poverty alleviation processes. Specifically, the focus has been on: ideas, interests and struggles for resources between political leaders and bureaucrats believed to be taking place at the expense of the poor; ill-informed and unrealistic development policies and strategies; anti-development behaviour and tendencies of the peasants and their alleged conservatism and resistance to modernity, and weak incentive structures of the economy. There is little focus on the character and dynamics of the (historical) institutional context in which these economic conditions, struggles and policy initiatives emerge and take place. Motivated by the disappointing results of anti-poverty initiatives and weaknesses of previous studies, this study uses historical institutional impact analysis guided by institutionalist theory to analyse the problem. The central argument is that the existence and functioning character of institutions are necessary conditions for any human development activity. So, acceptance of the crucial importance of historically oriented institutional context analysis in understanding poverty alleviation initiatives and outcomes is imperative. The study draws on primary and secondary data collected through documentary review and interview methods to explain the ways in which institutional reforms result in an institutional order tolerant of poverty and which create conditions that perpetuate it. It does this by exploring the mode of historical institutional development and by examining the functioning character of the institutional order in respect of poverty alleviation. The study argues that achieving success in poverty alleviation related reforms is dependent on proper understanding of institutional realities of Tanzanian society and the functioning character of the existing institutional order. It proposes a reform process in which institutional legacies and their impact on society become the focus of the reform process itself. The findings indicate that, while reforms and policy changes have taken place and new patterns of behaviour introduced, the logics of institutions central to development and poverty alleviation have not, been fundamentally altered and new patterns of behaviour have simply perpetuated it. Specifically, the findings suggest: first, that institutional reforms pursued by the government are inadequate due to misconception of institutional problems of Tanzanian society; second, that the reforms have created new conditions which perpetuate poverty; and, third, that fundamental character of the functioning of the Tanzanian institutional order will need to change before such anti-poverty measures can hope to succeed. Thus, the study offers a correction to ill-informed poverty analysis by providing an alternative account of the root cause of poverty while insisting that a better understanding of the failure of poverty alleviation requires a strong focus on the historical institutional realties of the country.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Evaluating and Managing the Energy Transition Towards Truly Sustainable University Campuses

This thesis is about the current role of university campuses to contribute to a fair and sustainable transition towards a low-carbon society. The fundamental argument is that there is a serious gap between the aspiration of higher education institutions in relation to sustainability and the current reality. Whilst formally moving towards sustainability within their curricula and resources management, universities are still immersed in all the complexity, the uncertainty, the scarcity of resources and the leading green-washing paradigm of the cities they are in. This thesis uses the Politecnico di Torino as the main case study, compared with universities in Italy, the UK, Japan, and Mexico, to answer the following questions: (1) What are universities doing in their sustainability efforts that has the potential to be measurable and transferable? And (2) How can we evaluate if universities are truly sustainable? This thesis treats university campuses as small cities nested in bigger cities; heterotopies expressing otherness and maintaining reciprocal relationships within the context. It is proposed that the immediate impacts deriving from educating and practising a wiser use of waste, water, energy and the built environment in universities help to create long term effects toward resilient, fair, and environmentally aware communities. Comparable clusters of universities, bottom-up management schemes and transferrable lessons for the wider urban and global practices are presented and discussed across the different case studies. To facilitate the dialogue between the economic, the social and the environmental fields of action, embedded within university’s sustainability metrics and the attempts to operationalise urban resilience determinants in the campus management, this thesis helps in tailoring appropriate assessment methodologies and operative strategies towards truly sustainable university campuses

Social entrepreneurs as network orchestrators: how and why do social entrepreneurs build up and leverage social networks to perform?

Over the last decades, extensive research about the role of networks in venture creation and development in both the sociology- (e.g.,Burt, 2005; Chiesi, 2007) and management- literature (e.g., Hoang & Antoncic, 2003; Maurer & Ebers, 2006) has been produced. However, while social networks have been recognized as crucial elements for the growth of social ventures (e.g., Bradach, 2010; Waitzer & Paul, 2011), there has been identified a lack of theory-motivated papers on how and why the different dimensions and configurations of social networks influence (social) venture performance over time (Aldrich & Kim,2007; Dacin et al., 2010). Filling this gap, this thesis focuses on the dynamic networking patterns of social ventures over the organizational lifecycle. It consists of three major parts: one conceptual paper, and two empirical papers. Drawing from networks-, social capital-, and organizational ecology-approaches (e.g., Hannan & Freeman, 1989; Kim et al., 2006), in the conceptual paper I develop a four-stage typology of network development, contending that selective boundary-spanning can lead to better performance outcomes if aligned with time-contingencies. The second paper, a comparative case study of six social ventures operating in Kenya’s low income context (a setting neglected by management research), uses a qualitative approach to examine how these ventures orchestrated networks. Via the comparison of success-, failure-, and turnaround- cases, I find four core ‘stages’, and identify key characteristics of the respective networks, as well as conditions and mechanisms that help the transition from stage to stage. Having established the importance of social capital and its relation with organizational outcomes, the third paper focuses on the antecedents of social capital. A longitudinal case study in the South African low-income context shows that approaches such as bricolage can be effective in enfranchising the previously disenfranchised on a broader scale