Strategy, culture and institutional logics: a multi-layered view of community investment at a large housing association

Abstract

This project is an ESRC CASE study of one of the largest housing associations in England. The aim of the study was to take a multi-layered view of the organisation to explore its changing identity, by tracking its evolving community investment strategy over a 2 year period as an examination of shifting sub-cultures and driving institutional logics. The underlying theme of a multi-layered approach led to a research design sub-dividing the organisation horizontally and vertically into management strata and functional and geographical sampling points. The focus on ‘strategy, culture, logics and community investment’ was derived from a research cycle which integrated both macro level issues and the organization’s internal agenda reflecting the inherent paradoxes characterising the hybrid third sector of social housing. The thesis builds on earlier work on competing institutional logics in social housing and links this to changing organisations cultures to show how hybridity is enacted over time. The author concludes that a dominant corporate sub-culture, tied into a commercial, customer-driven logic has been displacing more regional, local community cultures derived from the pre-merger organisations. This enactment process is exemplified by the centralisation and consumerisation of CI services depicted in the author’s logics-culture matrix.