This dissertation is about the legitimation processes of organizations, and the implications of these processes for policy outcomes. Microfinance organizations are an example of development assistance organizations enacting a new policy approach to an old problem---persistent poverty in the developing world. As a new organizational form, microfinance organizations face the difficult demands of gaining and maintaining support from both the public and private sectors without a long record of success from which to draw. This work examines how microfinance organizations face these demands: what steps they take to construct poverty and the poor in ways that are compelling to potential donors, how they deal with conflicting demands to be economically efficient and socially empowering, how the organizational interpretations of poverty and the poor shape their practices, and how those practices succeed and fail at achieving the organizational and policy goals of "alleviating poverty.";Three theoretical frameworks are employed to analyze the discourse and practices of microfinance organizations. The broad discourse is first analyzed using semiotic analysis as a way to uncover the meaning underlying the many repeated denotations found in microfinance language. The discourse is further unpacked using institutional theory to examine how microfinance is behaving as an "institutional entrepreneur"---how it is aligning with, and then departing from, existing cultural institutions to establish its legitimacy. The final analysis uses structuration theory, specifically a resourcing perspective, to investigate what types of frameworks are being energized by the culture and structure of microfinance.;These analyses help us see that when organizational processes of legitimation are reductive---when they emphasize simplification rather than context, and replication rather than innovation---organizational practices are constrained and negative, unintended outcomes may be produced, In the case of microfinance, the processes of legitimation---including the heavy reliance on neoliberalism and the simplified story of poverty---have had consequences for the actions microfinance organizations are able and likely to take, and therefore what outcomes they can achieve. By aligning with neoliberalism, microfinance organizations have made it less possible to align with other institutions, such as humanitarianism or environmentalism, while retaining their legitimacy.
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