Managing organizational legitimacies in times of institutional change- a case of humanitarian development NGOs in Pakistan

Abstract

The aim of this study is to generate an in-depth understanding for the existence and causes of legitimacy concerns of NGOs in the complex Humanitarian Development Field (HDF) in Pakistan. NGOs are found short on delivering both the agenda of humanitarian relief and mainstream development. Beyond failure of delivery the acceptance of these entities is otherwise also low in a Muslim Pakhtun backyard of the world. Yet the NGO sector has shown boom post 9/11 to ultimately find itself implicated by the State in Pakistan post 2013 on various pretexts. What necessitates the State to oppose NGOs in a region that needs multiple players to fight underdevelopment and conflict? The leading question this research addresses is thus, why NGO legitimacies are declining in the region.

 

Empirically rooted in three cases (local NGOs), this qualitative research abducts causal mechanisms of the incidence of decreased NGOs’ legitimacy through examining reality at three levels under a Critical Realist methodology. Firstly, at the empirical level are increased events of coercion, regulative constraints, operational obstruction, and intimidation of NGOs. Secondly, at the actual level are the three identified mechanisms that explains why NGOs face marginalization including the ‘purported’ anti-state stance, commercialization of the institution of HDF and NGOs therein, and the opacity and corruption that NGOs structures increasingly embed. These mechanisms work in a complex context that has been explained as three discrete phases of humanitarian crisis in the study region post 9/11. Thirdly, at the real level, NGOs face legitimacy crisis in large part because of a shift in institutional norms of humanitarianism and developmentalism both globally and nationally.

 

Research outcomes reveal, foremost, that legitimacy crisis may be traced to the existence of multiple institutional logics (of humanitarianism and developmentalism) ingrained in HDF with both positive and detrimental consequences for NGOs. It is demonstrated that competing logics has been a source of under development of NGOs, and consequently that of the underdevelopment of the institutional environments in which they operate. At the 3 same time, a positive spinoff of competing logics has been recorded as NGOs are gradually turning into sustainable organizations to suggest that logics multiplicity force organizations to course correction and embeddedness in newer institutional orders.

 

However this course correction of NGOs as made manifest through their strategies is just a small fraction of NGOs response to their alienation. In line with Neo-institutional theory, NGOs adopt a variety of other responses to the sometimes contradictory logics of HDF. Evidence reveals that NGOs show agency, despite institutional disdain and coercive procedures, in gaining different forms of legitimacies at the meso level of organization-field interaction. Particularly important are the NGOs quest for attaining normative/regulative, cognitive, and output legitimacies. Faced with multiple normative, cultural, religious, and practical impediments, it is both intriguing and fascinating to see small relief NGOs survive and mold into ‘development’ organizations in an environment hostile to their existence.

 

The contributions of the study are three-fold: a) an analytical frame combining Institutional theory and critical realism to explain how field-level institutional changes affect organizations in both beneficial and detrimental ways, b) a theoretical contribution focusing on four insights on NGOs structures viz, temporality of legitimacy challenge, legitimacy fatigue, emergence of an entrepreneurial streak amongst NGOs, and a possible beginning of NGOs playing institutional entrepreneurs in HDF to give it newer institutional outlook.; and c) a practitioner focused emancipatory contribution where NGOs as social actors need to ensure a higher level of agency awareness to overcome the challenges of decreased legitimacies and play their due role in development of the region.

 

The research addresses a glaring research gap in humanitarian development chain by focusing on the lower most tiers of local NGOs who are a critical conduit between donors and beneficiaries in crisis environments

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