Scaling up of social enterprise to fill institutional voids: a case study of CBHI in rural India

Abstract

Weak or absent institutional arrangements to deliver public good like health or education in the developing countries, known as institutional voids, tend to adversely affect the capabilities of the underprivileged populations to access these goods. Social entrepreneurs are actors whose primary aim is to create mechanisms for enhancing the social values, hence offering a potential solution to fill the institutional voids. However, only a few initiatives scale up their services and most of them remain restricted as a small localized endeavour. This study examines how social entrepreneurs scale up their initiatives by creating new institutional arrangements to fill the voids. Through a case study of a social enterprise in rural areas of Karnataka (India), we attempt to explain the process of crafting of new institutional arrangements.