2. Resourcing and strategy formation in Community Water Organizations

• In Event: Strategy in nonprofit organizations. Understandings of coherence, future sustainability, and voluntary work.

Abstract

The relationship between resources and strategy has been a central theme in the literature in the field of strategy (Andrews, 1971; Chandler, 1962; Porter,1981); in particular, the Resource-Based View (RBV) has been the most accepted perspective in the field for addressing this relationship (Barney, 1991; Lockett et al., 2009; Wernerfelt, 1984). However, recent literature has raised limitations to this perspective, such as the difficulty in understanding the action of people in resource enablement (Feldman & Worline, 2011), the limited understanding of goal achievement in contexts of scarcity (Sonenshein, 2014) or the predominant development of studies in companies, which hinders its applicability in a variety of organizations, such as nonprofit organizations.
In addition, studies about nonprofit organizations, especially Community Water Organizations (CWO), show the same dynamic. Approaches around resources are mostly centered around project funding or state support, focusing on funding (Tantoh & McKay, 2020) (Kilimo & Nambuswa, 2018); while, the question of strategy is predominantly focused on strategic planning (Sharp, 2020), limiting the analysis to formal processes, and, to a lesser extent, on the emergence of strategic practices. Therefore, this research asks how resource practices have contributed to the formation of strategy in CWO in Antioquia - Colombia.
CWOs are community initiatives that address problems related to water throughout the planet (Igalla et al., 2019), especially in terms of the right to drinking water, improvement of life in the territories and care for nature (Pareja et al., 2022; Serrano et al., 2019). These organizations are currently facing major challenges for their survival and future sustainability, such as functioning in market contexts, the consolidation of processes of individualization of society, and issues related to climate change and water scarcity. These factors make the study of strategy in these organizations a fundamental challenge to understand the processes that make their survival and future sustainability possible.
This research is based on the Resourcing theory, a perspective that recognizes limitations in BVR and proposes alternatives to understand resources in diverse organizations. Resourcing understands resources as the result of daily practices enabled by schemes that people perform at different levels of the organization (Feldman & Worline, 2011). Likewise, this literature evidences a conception of strategy as an emergent practice for the organization's sustained existence (Jarzabkowski et al., 2019; Wiedner et.al, 2017); however, the strategy-resource relationship has been implicitly addressed and is little consolidated in relation to how resourcing practices relate to the emergence of strategy.
To conduct this research, a qualitative study was conducted (Morse, 2003), from a methodological approach of systematization of experiences (Falkembach & Torres, 2015) and elements of the multiple case study for the analysis of information (Stake, 2006). Our findings contribute to the literature on Resourcing by offering insights on how strategy is formed in these organizations and the role of resources in this formation, as well as proposing future lines of research with practical applications for CWOs to strengthen their processes

Author

• Manuel Henao-Restrepo, Ponente