A peopled view of institutional work: The emergence of Commercial microfinance in Bolivia

This paper reports on a study of why actors engage in institutional work conducted in the empirical context of the emergence of commercial microfinance in Bolivia. Most researchers have addressed this question exploring the objective circumstances that allow actors to adopt new practices even when their intentions, actions, and rationality are conditioned by institutional scripts. In contrast, this paper asks why actors exposed to similar objective circumstances engage in different forms of institutional work. It argues that actors decide to preserve, change, or erode institutional scripts because of tensions engendered as they incarnate these scripts in their practice. It contributes to the emergent inhabited view on institutions with a conceptualization of why actors engage in institutional work that articulates that how people do things together (instead of simply what they do) crucially frames their decision making. The conceptualization offered abandons false dualities of institutional actors as either dopes or heroic entrepreneurs for actors as people. From this perspective, actors' decision making is framed by interests that do not necessarily precede but can also emerge with their acting, and it is modulated by relational dynamics (trust, reputation, social distance, and status competition) generated through a history of social interactions.