What Makes Resource Provision an Effective Means of Poverty Alleviation? A Resourcing Perspective

TL;DR: In this paper , the authors identify a new category of schemas related not to use but to access, which they refer to as access schemas, as shared understandings regarding who can appropriately access potential resources and find that different social groups have distinct schemas regarding access, and identify three mechanisms (precedence, complementarity, and scaffolding) that shape the way that access schema are enacted in resource-scarce settings.

Abstract: Adequately addressing the grand challenge of poverty requires addressing resource scarcity. However, efforts to provide resources as a means of poverty alleviation have met with mixed success. We explore what makes resource provision effective as a means of poverty alleviation. We adopt a resourcing perspective, which focuses on the relationship between potential resources and schemas, or shared understandings, that shape how resources are used. Consistent with prior research, we find that schemas shape how resources are used in practice. However, we also find that who can access the resources is as consequential as how they are used. In exploring this issue, we identify a new category of schemas related not to use but to access, which we refer to as access schemas. We define access schemas as shared understandings regarding who can appropriately access potential resources. We find that different social groups have distinct schemas regarding access, and we identify three mechanisms—precedence, complementarity, and scaffolding—that shape the way that access schemas are enacted in resource-scarce settings. Our study contributes to the literature on grand challenges by clarifying the link between resource provision and resource use. We also contribute to the literature on resourcing by uncovering mechanisms that shape schema enactment in the presence of conflicting access schemas held by different social groups.