An Investigation into coping in NGOs in Third World countries

Abstract

What actors do in practice has been the prime concern for strategy as practice scholars which has led them to focus on the micro-activities and the daily doings of actors involved in strategy work. Strategy and strategizing is understood to comprise of these micro-activities in practice. Strategizing is therefore conceptualized as a situated activity wherein the situation itself lends meaning to the micro-activities of actors and the artefacts they use. While SAP literature focuses on micro-activities, Chia & Holt (2006) argue that such kind of micro-activities do not occur as isolated episodes but on closer look, these activities are manifestations of regularized micro-practices which the actor draws upon to cope with particular situations. These regularized practices or pre-dispositions serve as the mediating link between the macro sociohistorical context in which the actor is located and the micro doings in particular contexts of their daily enactments. These pre-dispositions are reproduced by actors, each time they draw upon it to act in a particular instance, ensuring the stability and persistence of structures (as patterns of dispositions) over time. Context, both in its particularity and its macro-social historicity, is therefore an indivisible part of the actor's existence which is internalized within the actor. While the authors acknowledge the significance of the notion of context, implicit in the notion of context is a singularity (or continuity) of history, which continues into the present through the reproduction of pre-dispositions internalized within the actor that provides the tropes to cope with the day to day situations. Reproduction of pre-dispositions and the stability of structures requires the continuity of a consistent and unbroken progression of history to which the pre-dispositions can be traced. However, macro-social histories around the world have not been characterized by stability; rather fissures and fractures have been significant. In this thesis, I problematize this notion of continuity of an unbroken history implicit thus far in the conceptualization of the macro-social embedding of the context and seek to develop the notion of situated action in societies/economies in transition. Transition economies have been identified in the strategy literature as those economies which have undergone a shift from central planning to market based competition as the basis of organization of major economic activities. Peng (2003) explains that even with the establishment of newer institutional structures, the deep structures of the older institutions continue in informal customs, traditions etc. While the notion of transition therefore implies the simultaneity of the old and the newer structures as an abiding characteristic of such contexts, Whittington (2016) places emphasis on the role of human activity in the persistence of institutional continuity through their adoption, non-adoption or partial adoption etc. The deep structures of these older institutions persist and continue into the present at the micro-activity level in habits, doings, routines etc. in pockets and spaces. Consequently, even with the onset of newer institutions, the pre-existing set does not disappear completely leading to the incomplete diffusion of the newer practices in the deep recesses of the socio-economic space. While the above section problematizes the notion of singularity of history and therefore emphasizes on continuity of multiple histories, yet the relationship between multiple sets of institutions and the practices it spawns has not been explored in the strategy-as-practice literature. I dig further into the inter-relationship between multiple institutions and dwell on the question of how it may shape actors and their coping practices embedded within the fissured historical landscape of postcolonial India.