Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

While institutional theory has a long history in the domain of organizational behavior, institutional logics are now widely used in addressing issues of interest in the organizational behavior area. Institutional logics dictate the decisions regarding the adaptation of competing means and ends in double bottom line businesses like microfinance. However, the impact of institutional logics remains under-theorized especially with regards to the influence of conflicting institutional logics on managerial identity creation processes. This thesis traces the process of identity creation as a result of the sensemaking process of employees in the presence of conflicting logics. The identities enacted in this manner in turn affect organizational citizenship behavior in certain ways. The thesis also links logics, sense-making processes, and managerial identities in a manner that individual responses to conflicting logics can be studied. It also explains variations in managerial identities by considering the contingent effects of intrinsic and extrinsic goals of an individual to the sense-making process. Results show that conflicting logics in the microfinance industry do result in separate practices. These practices are interpreted differently by employees depending on their personal goals. Moreover, the type of interpretation affects the utilitarian or normative identity creation of the employee. Finally, the study finds that utilitarian employees are low on civic virtue as compared to normative employees. The study empirically contributes to the literature by offering evidence of the causal chain of events which links the macro level institutional logics to the micro level employee civic virtue behavior.

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