Working together, to do good with business

Abstract

In previous years, business-like approaches are adopted within NGO’s. Due to a reduction in donations and chances that this approach brings to solve development problems. However, such approaches might cause tensions between departments operating in different fields (social-focus and business-focus). Organizations, who deal with social and business fields, can be described as hybrids: an organization with different logics. The intuitional Logics approach is a useful theoretic lens to look at such organizations. In this case study, Amref, a hybrid that combines social and business logics, is researched. Amref is an NGO that provides health care and makes a social impact in the communities in Africa. Interactions could play a role when balancing the logics between departments within NGO’s like Amref. Therefore, in this research, the research will focus on the question: How do interactions between departments within Amref Health Africa in Netherlands and Kenya play a role in coping with different logics. The qualitative interpretative research, with 16 interviews, which provides insights into the interpretations of employees from different departments. The 5 observations were important in this research to provide insights into how employees between different departments interact. The results of this research are the following: when logics are in play in an NGO like Amref, the interactions assist in blending the logics more easily and contribute to changes of mismatches in the organization. Two spaces can be defined where this happens, namely interaction around tensions between departments and in a (project) collaborations. These results, among other things, adds to the literature of “spaces of negotiation” because it identified more places were these spaces occur. Also, this research detected a collaborative environment where the logics are blended easily. Limitations of this research were the absence of personal contact with the respondents, because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the short amount of time to capture the concept of hybridization. Future research, among other things, should focus on the latter, by conducting longitudinal research. In that way, long term changes that occur from multiple interactions could be captured.