Institutional Logics within Faith-Based Aid

This book investigates what faith means in the actual day-to-day practice of faith-based NGOs working in the development, humanitarian, and advocacy sectors.

Faith-based organisations play an extremely prominent role in international aid and development, operating within the same sphere as organisations without an explicit religious affiliation. This book uses the case study of a UK-based Christian faith-based organisation to develop an analytic tool using institutional logics. Through exploration of how various institutional logics are manifested and negotiated across organisational practice, the book describes how the ‘telos,’ or objective, of the corporate logic (to sustain the organisation) interacts with the telos of the religious logic (namely, to worship God). The book demonstrates that since organisational practices must ultimately work to sustain the organisation, at the organisational level faith is restricted to certain spaces and forms, while at the individual level faith is dominant and active.

Bringing a fresh perspective to discussions of religion and development by highlighting how faith influences development at the organisational level, this book will be an important read for researchers working on global development.