Regime pressures and organizational forms of community-based sustainability initiatives

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We explore how applying for and maintaining a legal form of organization exposes community-based initiatives (CBIs) to pressures with the potential to shape them. Using grounded theory and the multi-level perspective, we found that there are two types of pressures through which regimes influence CBIs associated with legal forms of organization: resource dependence and coercive isomorphism. These pressures come in the form of barriers which push and prevent CBIs in the process of acquiring and maintaining a legal organizational form. CBIs resist and work to overcome the pressures using social capital, internal agreements, citizen financing, and umbrella organizations. This knowledge contributes to the understanding of how regimes resist and create barriers to innovations, how CBIs cope with this regime resistance, and has implications for the design of instruments for purposeful transitions.