This thesis is a case study investigation of the institutional relations of a South African educational NGO. The literature on NGOs indicates that as institutions they can be problematic. They face three key issues, accountability, partnership and empowerment, which provide them with both institutional coherence as well as institutional contradiction. Most of the existing analysis of NGOs is descriptive and little of it attempts to place an analysis of these key issues within a larger institutional environment. This thesis attempts to do so using the framework of institutional theory. Institutional theory, as articulated by Scott and others, is used to analyze an NGO in order to understand them both from an internal perspective (based on the social constructions of the institutional participants) and an external perspective (based on the environment in which the NGO was situated). According to this theory, institutions are comprised of three inter-penetrated dimensions, the regulative, normative, and cognitive. The analysis of these dimensions was accomplished using the concepts of continuity and dissonance. The findings of the study are that while there was relatively high continuity in this institution, related to a large extent to a project of social transformation in South Africa, there was also significant dissonance. The NGO faced contested accountability, tensions around partnership, and contradictions in terms of empowerment. The implications of these conclusions for South African education and NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa are explored as are the contributions of the study to institutional theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/6220 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Sauder, Robert. |
| Contributors | Maclure, Richard, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 266 p. |
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