Socio-economic value creation in tribal nations: a microcredit investigation

Abstract

Tribal countries in the global south tend to be characterised by social categorization into tribal groups. Some tribal groups often undergo persistent marginalization, given the salience and contestation of tribal identities. These tribal identities may impact how organizations achieve their goals. Exploring the effects of these tribal identities is particularly pertinent to help us understand how organizations navigate tribal contexts. Moreover, this exploration will also enlighten us on how tribal actors undertake identity work to identify with organizations amidst tribalism, socialization, marginalization, and trivialization. This thesis specifically focuses on microfinance institutions (MFIs) that strive to foster gender parity in economic opportunities in tribal contexts. MFIs are chosen for analysis as they have over 70% of their global microcredit portfolio domiciled in tribal nations. Through three distinct but related papers, the thesis seeks to uncover how tribal identities affect MFIs Gender-Based Organizational Goal Achievement, and how tribal identities affect this achievement through identity work carried out by tribal actors.The first paper empirically investigates the relationship between organizational identification and Gender-Based Organizational Goal Achievement in the microfinance ecosystem. The paper also investigates whether tribal identity mediates this relationship. It makes use of Structural Equation Modelling to test data on 376 microfinance institutions across 45 countries, between 2010 and 2018. The paper found low penetration of microfinance products amongst females due to the intensity of tribal identity and the social norms therein. The second paper, through 25 semi-structured interviews, reveals the dynamics through which tribal identities impede the uptake of inclusive programs like microfinance. It was found that inclusive socio-economic value creation in tribal nations is regulated by 3 distinct emerging themes. Such regulation results in the conceptualization of a selective assimilation process of tribal identities undertaken to overcome identity threats and make the most of identity opportunities. The third paper is a conceptual paper, inspired by findings from the first 2 papers, which shows that the social conditions surrounding organizations may indeed impede even the most noble of organizational goals. The paper uses agency theory to offer a novel model of moralized value creation (MVC). The MVC model operationalizes and grounds the aspects of socialization, and morality, that have often been overlooked in management and organization studies theorizing.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Wilson Odhiambo Odek: orcid.org/0000-0003-1981-8534

ORCID for Tapas Mishra: orcid.org/0000-0002-6902-2326

ORCID for Martin Enilov: orcid.org/0000-0002-7671-6975

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