The intra-organizational dynamics of social innovation adaptation: Grameen Bank goes to China

23.10.2025 12:00 – 13:00

MANAGEMENT BROWN BAG SEMINAR

ABSTRACT

A central challenge for organizations seeking to scalea social innovation involves adapting the innovation to accommodate heterogenouslocal contexts while retaining the core principles that enable it toeffectively address a social problem. Because employees often disagree over whetherand how an innovation should be adapted, intra-organizational dynamics arelikely to shape the adaptation process, but how they do so remains poorlyunderstood. To investigate this process, we conducted a seven-yearqualitative, inductive case study of the implementation of the Grameen Bank microcreditmodel in China. Employees of Grameen China faced persistent challenges inimplementing the Grameen model when borrowers rejected or deviated from it.Frustrated by these interactions, many employees abandoned the model’sprinciples, precipitating an organizational crisis. In contrast, a fewemployees adapted work practices in ways that preserved the model’s principles,an approach that ultimately reshaped the attitudes and behaviors of borrowers,fellow employees, and the founder, facilitating scaling of the Grameen Bank microcreditmodel across China. Building on our findings, we develop a process modelexplaining how social innovation adaptation emerges within an organizationacross three stages: adaptation divergence, adaptation balancing, andadaptation formalization, which evolve over time and across individual, group,and organizational levels.

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Bâtiment: Uni Mail

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