The Influence of Established Ideas in Emerging Development Organisations: Gender Equality and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

This article explores how ideas and practices may find their way into and entail significant changes in organisations as these enter into new fields and are increasingly confronted with dominant normative frameworks. Drawing on sociological institutional perspectives, I conceptualise three analytical processes occurring as ideas find their way into development organisations: i) emergence; ii) international negotiation and consensus production; and iii) external negotiation and appropriation. I then empirically explore these processes through a case study of how ideas and practices on gender equality and women’s empowerment have entered into and been made workable in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.