The Institutional Work of a Social Enterprise Operating in a Subsistence Marketplace:Using the Business Model as a Market-Shaping Tool

The void between formal and informal institutionalized practices that coexist in subsistence marketplaces can render them inaccessible to subsistence consumer-merchants. We conducted an in-depth auto-ethnographic study of Novo Dia Developments, a social enterprise in Maputo, Mozambique, seeking to make the housing market accessible. Our study extends the extant understanding of the transformation of subsistence marketplaces in two ways. First, our study characterizes the institutional work done by a social enterprise to open up a subsistence marketplace. Second, our study theorizes the business models in use as a mechanism through which institutional work can be organized and performed, by 1) transforming an idea for market change into new market offerings and practices that begin to fill the void, 2) materializing and making visible other institutional voids that need to be filled, and 3) serving as a juncture at which formal and informal institutionalized practices can connect