Mobile-mission: Technology’s impact on social enterprises logics prioritisations

Abstract

Practitioner literature suggests that mobile financial services can help microfinance organisations increase financial inclusion while maintaining financial sustainability. Plaudits have been grounded in mobile financial services’ technical capabilities. However, basing mobile technology’s benefits for microfinance organisations solely on the technology’s capabilities is too simplistic. Organisations are different, abide to different logics and cultures and subsequently respond to realities associated with mobile technology adaptation differently. This paper emphasises that truly grasping mobile financial services’ opportunities and constraints for microfinance organisations requires an organisational theory lens. Henceforth, this paper quantitatively studies how mobile technology impacts microfinance organisations in Africa, expanding the institutional logics perspective and the affordance lens of technology. The paper’s conclusions contrast practitioner literature’s laudatory comments: Mobile financial services are shown to trigger a decrease in microfinance organisations’ social focus and increase their financial prioritisation, but where organisations’ most dominant logic influence the degree of change. Findings have practical importance but also add to organisational theory. Microfinance organisations are hybrid organisations that combine multiple logics in their business models. Existing literature has focused on the nature of organisational hybridity and recognised its prevalence and antecedents. That work has explored trade-offs and tensions originating from organisational hybridity, researched strategies to mitigate tensions, and hypothesised what contextual factors create trade-offs. However, technology’s impacts on hybrid organisations, their logics prioritisations and hybrid business models has not gained adequate attention, where this paper’s empirical conclusions address this oversight.