Toward a conceptual framework for religious logics on institutional complexity: a lesson from 'mission drift' in Evangelical Christian social entrepreneurs in Ethiopia

Social enterprises (SEs) have played a significant role in providing an alternative way to charitable development aid for poverty reduction in the developing countries over the last few decades. Ethiopia, a post-socialist... [ view full abstract ]

Social enterprises (SEs) have played a significant role in providing an alternative way to charitable development aid for poverty reduction in the developing countries over the last few decades. Ethiopia, a post-socialist country, is one of exemplary fields where the social entrepreneurial approach has been increasingly adopted by local entrepreneurs to leverage the potential of world’s most rapidly growing economy. Evangelical Christians, one of the fastest growing religious groups in Ethiopia, have tapped into this opportunity to establish faith-based SEs (FBSEs) to address social problems. However, they are not immune to the risk of diverging from their original purpose – mission drift – not only in social and business objectives, but also in spiritual objective of FBSEs. Existing research mainly examines the hybridity of SEs that incorporate competing institutional logics of charity and business (Battilana & Lee 2014), and yet no attention has been paid to FBSEs that have religious identity and their practices that might have theoretical and practical implications for how SEs would address mission drift by incorporating the logic of faith.

This research first addresses the question through examining theoretical underpinning of neo-institutional logics (Thornton et al. 2012) for hybrid organizations (Pache & Santos 2013), aiming to capture theoretical framework to identify where logic of religion locates in the argument on hybrid organizations. Then, literatures on faith-based organizations (FBOs) were reviewed to grasp a typology of FBOs as a frame of reference to FBSEs and the role of faith in the management of organizations (Bradley 2009). Having identified the intersection between organizational studies and sociology of religion and thereby established an analytical framework for FBSEs, the paper employs qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews with 13 social entrepreneurs associated with Evangelical Christian church in Ethiopia.

One of the major finding is the complex feature of mission drift that FBSEs in Ethiopia are facing under the weak implementation of regulatory and institutional framework for commercial activities. Unlike industrialized western countries with favorable conditions for business operation, various institutional constraints which give rise to ethical concerns for hybrid organizations are identified such as the increasing cases of fraud and corrupted behavior within and outside FBSEs. However, as Spear (2010) suggested, religiously affiliated organizations tend to pursue entrepreneurial work even under difficult condition, because they have an advantage of utilizing much deeper relationship among the family of shared faith and values than secular organizations. The interview results show that FBSEs tend to incorporate the logic of family and community into producing a repertoire of organizational structures and processes by which the members of SEs build practical strategies toward mission drift, as already affirmed by (Swidler 1986).

While developing governance mechanisms proves to be effective as a preventive measure toward mission drift (Young 2012), the paper argues that it would rather be important for FBSEs to rely on mutual trust and relationship to seek the maximization of locally available resources, particularly under severe shortage of regulatory and legal system for doing business. As social entrepreneurship approach can be “more likely to occur where there are significant socioeconomic, cultural, or environmental problems,” as Dacin et al. (2010) proposed, the discussion on governance mechanisms should include “the domain of faith” (Ware et al. 2016) to draw practical insight into the roles of FBSEs in the developing countries like in Ethiopia where there is still a heavy political influence by local autocratic post-socialist government. 

References 

Battilana, Julie & Lee, Matthew 2014 ‘Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing – Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises’ The Academy of Management Annals 8/1:397–441

Bradley, Tamsin 2009 ‘A call for clarification and critical analysis of the work of faith-based development organizations (FBDO)’ Progress in Development Studies 9/2:101–114

Dacin, P; Dacin, M & Matear, M 2010 ‘Social entrepreneurship: Why we don’t need a new theory and how we move forward from here’ Academy of Management Perspectives 24/3:37–57

Pache, Anne-Claire & Santos, Filipe 2013 ‘Inside the hybrid organization: Selective coupling as a response to competing institutional logics’ Academy of Management Journal 56/4:972–1001

Spear, Roger 2010 ‘Religion and Social Entrepreneurship’ in K Hockerts, J Mair, & J Robinson eds. 2010 Values and opportunities in social entrepreneurship Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Swidler, Ann 1986 ‘Culture in action: Symbols and strategies’ American sociological review:273–286

Thornton, Patricia H; Ocasio, William & Lounsbury, Michael 2012 The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process OUP Oxford

Ware, Vicki-Ann; Ware, Anthony & Clarke, Matthew 2016 ‘Domains of faith impact: how “faith” is perceived to shape faith-based international development organisations’ Development in Practice 26/3:321–333

Young, Dennis R 2012 ‘The state of theory and research on social enterprises’ in B Gidron & Y Hasenfeld eds. 2012 Social enterprises: an organizational perspective Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 19–46