How the West was Won: The De-institutionalization of Child-Labor in

Pakistan’s Soccer Ball Industry∗

Farzad R. Khan
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Suleman Dawood School of Business
Lahore, Pakistan
Email: farzad@lums.edu.pk

Kamal A. Munir∗∗
University of Cambridge
Judge Business School
Cambridge, CB2 1AG
Email: K.munir@jbs.cam.ac.uk

December 7, 2005

[Working Paper]

∗
We would like to thank Ahmad Azhar for his research assistance. We would also like to thank the
Suleman Dawood School of Business at the Lahore University of Management Sciences for hosting
Kamal Munir for the duration of this research project.
∗∗
Authors’ names are in alphabetical order. Please direct all correspondence to Kamal Munir.
 HOW THE WEST WAS WON: THE DE-INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF
CHILD-LABOUR IN PAKISTAN’S SOCCER BALL INDUSTRY

Abstract

Organizational fields in developing countries often experience diffusion of practices

that, while novel for them, are highly institutionalized in the West. Studying such
instances of change, which involve both non-isomorphic and isomorphic elements,
sheds new light on the role of institutional entrepreneurs and highlights the crucial
importance of identifying and incorporating the unintended consequences of
institutional change into our analyses. Specifically, our study of the campaign to
eliminate child labour in Pakistan’s soccer ball manufacturing industry reveals how
institutional entrepreneurs mediated between the powerless and the powerful. It also
highlights how, in the wake of this universally acknowledged success story, bigger
problems were created for many weak members of the field, especially women.

KEY WORDS: INSTITUTIONAL THEORY; CHILD LABOUR;

INSTITUTIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP; PAKISTAN
 INTRODUCTION
Institutional entrepreneurship has recently emerged as an important area of
research within neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Meyer and
Rowan 1977; Scott 1995). In particular, research on institutional entrepreneurship has
enabled some forward movement in face of mounting criticism that institutional
theory cannot explain change (Dacin et al. 2002). A typical criticism of institutional
theory has been that the theory struggles when it comes to explaining how a new
practice acquires the necessary legitimacy in the first instance since organizational
interests as well as task requirements are seen to be institutionally defined and shaped
(Scott 1995; Leblebici et al. 1991).
The concept of institutional entrepreneurship offers a solution to this apparent
paradox (DiMaggio 1988; Dacin et al. 2002; Garud et al. 2002; Maguire et al. 2004).
Armed with ideas that have emerged outside the field (more often than not), and
usually acting in their own interests, institutional entrepreneurs are seen to play a
critical role in introducing and legitimizing new practices in highly institutionalized
fields. They are often distinguished from other field members by their ability to see
beyond the existing institutional beliefs and for their leadership role in identifying
new opportunities, framing issues and infusing new beliefs, norms and values in
institutional structures (Fligstein 1997; Rao et al. 2000). They are also seen to possess
great initiative, as well as “social skills” that allow them to overcome initial resistance
from field members who appear unwilling to change their ways (DiMaggio 1998;
Maguire et al. 2004).
While research on institutional entrepreneurship has greatly advanced our
knowledge of how actors mobilize resources to legitimize new practices or ideas, the
available insights still represent, at best, a partial understanding of the process of
institutional change and the role of institutional entrepreneurs within it. In particular,
for those steeped in the reality of developing countries, this research leaves much to
be said about the nature of institutional change. With rapid globalization, the vast
majority of the world’s population living in developing countries increasingly finds
itself on the receiving end with regard to ‘legitimate’ ways of doing things. With the
influx of powerful multinationals, and the increasing influence of multilateral
agencies (e.g., the World Bank or IMF) and international bodies such as the WTO,
various segments of their society and economy are frequently pressurized to adopt
new practices and even belief systems. These practices could range all the way from
introducing ‘gender-equity’ in local organizations to institutionalizing ‘democracy’ at
the State level.
Over the last several years, such instances of cross-border diffusion have
become increasingly common and studying the institutionalization process in this
context promises to unveil new, important aspects of institutional change. The stark
power differential between the source of these practices (Western organizations or
society) and the ‘native’ field (workers or citizens of developing countries) along with
the ‘iron curtain’ that lies between the Western audience, for whose benefit many of
these practices are institutionalized in developing countries, and the workers who
adopt them, offers a different context in which to study institutional change and
entrepreneurship.
We explore the diffusion of such ‘legitimate’ practices in Sialkot, an industrial
city of about 0.4 million (Sialkot district, which includes neighboring villages has 2.7
million in habitants) in Pakistan, a country with a per capita income in 2003 of about
$420. Sialkot is home to a cluster of soccer ball manufacturing firms, which between
them manufacture 60-80% of the world’s soccer balls (Cummins 2000: 4 and 27). On
6 April, 1995, CBS broadcast a news documentary on the soccer ball industry in
Sialkot, which included images of children stitching soccer balls in dark and dank
one-room workshops. The CBS report was picked up by the other mass media both in
the US and abroad and on 28 June, 1996 a campaign, known as the Foul Ball
Campaign, was launched to pressurize the soccer ball industry into remedial action.
Finally, on 14th February 1997 in Atlanta Georgia at its annual trade show
‘SuperShow’, the global soccer ball industry announced that it was launching a
project to eliminate child labour from soccer ball manufacturing. The project unfolded
over the next several years orchestrated by the industry in collaboration with their
civil society NGO partners. In this process, industry successfully positioned itself as a
constructive actor working to remove the bane of child labour while keeping the
industry functional for soccer ball manufacture.
While the goal was ultimately achieved, and accolades were showered
internationally on all the ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ that brought about the child
labour elimination project, the whole process resulted in a number of unintended
consequences. These included questionable benefits for the children involved, a
decline in financial returns for the Sialkot industry, feelings of guilt among NGO
workers, and abject misery for the vast majority of women-stitchers and their families.
While all these consequences may have been unintended, they were not unanticipated
for everyone. Many field workers were aware of these developments and questioned
the steps that were taken by the institutional entrepreneurs. However, the process of
institutional entrepreneurship and the parameters within which it had to function
perhaps made these consequences inevitable.
It is this process that we explore in this paper, paying special attention to
unintended consequences of institutional entrepreneurship, which are often
overlooked in institutional theory research. Our findings have important implications
for existing understandings of institutional change processes. In particular, our study
highlights how institutional change processes are often attempts by powerful actors
not only to legitimize a new practice locally but an entire field to its own powerful
stakeholders. It also leads to a clearer appreciation of the role that institutional
entrepreneurs play in ‘diffusing’ practices across borders, as well as the front-stage,
back-stage roles (Goffman 1959) that they play in mediating between different
stakeholders. Finally, it cautions us against focusing solely on the non-isomorphic
aspect of change, as opposed to taking both the isomorphic and non-isomorphic
aspects into consideration.

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURS

At a high level of abstraction, institutional life, according to many theorists,
proceeds in the form of periods of continuity interspersed with episodes of change
often triggered by external shocks (Munir and Jones 2004). The understanding is that
in periods of stability the regulatory, normative and cognitive institutions that govern
peoples’ lives form part of their unreflected-upon, taken-for-granted, worlds (Beckert
1999; DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Scott 1995). When change occurs, people are led
to re-evaluate their options and act in an entrepreneurial fashion. This may lead to
discrete episodes of intense activity in which institutions are transformed although not
necessarily all at the same time (Hoffman, 1999).
When we reduce the level of abstraction, we are confronted with the problem
of why and how change takes place in highly institutionalized fields. Given that
everything in a field is taken-for-granted, how does it occur to people to do things
differently (DiMaggio 1988; Leblebici et al 1991)? In recent years, several theorists
have sought to address this issue. One important conclusion of this research is that the
impetus for change often comes from outside the field (Meyer, Brooks, and Goes,
1990; Greenwood et al. 2002). Greenwood et al ‘distil’ a model of institutional
change from the literature (Greenwood et al, 2002: 60). According to this model, the
first stage of institutional change involves the destabilization of established practices
by events (Hoffman and Ocasio 2001) or ‘jolts’ (Meyer et al, 1990). According to
Greenwood et al (2002), jolts may take the form of social upheaval, technological
disruptions, competitive discontinuities, or regulatory change. Following a ‘jolt’, new
players enter the field, and deinstitutionalization of established practices begins. This
is followed by first ‘preinstitutionalization’ and then ‘theorization,’ a process in which
actors justify the new innovation or why the existing one must be retained. Finally,
widespread diffusion and institutionalization of the new practice follow.
Increasingly, institutionalisation in general, and ‘theorization’ in particular is
seen by scholars to be undertaken by institutional entrepreneurs (Maguire et al. 2004;
Greenwood et al 2002; Lawrence et al. 2002). Institutional entrepreneurs may be
acting for a public cause or in an effort to build their own interests into the
institutional rules (Meyer and Rowan 1977). In either case, they come across as
visionaries with initiative and the ability to identify and mobilize the resources needed
to bring about institutional change. We have seen instances of institutional
entrepreneurship that have led to the acceptance of new technologies (Hargadon and
Douglas 2001; Munir and Phillips 2005), technological standards (Garud et al. 2002),
particular policies or environmental practices (Hoffman and Ocasio 1999; Hillman
and Hitt 1999), or the creation of a new institution (DiMaggio 1991) among other
things.
In most of these cases, we see field members, or would-be adopters, as being
constrained by their existing understandings and thus unable to evaluate these options
in a positive light. We also see these alternative paths being summarily dismissed by
powerful incumbents (Munir 2004; Christensen 1977; Garud et al. 2002). It is only
through a collective mobilization efforts spearheaded by institutional entrepreneurs
that a shift in meaning surrounding particular entrenched practices comes about
allowing field members to make sense of the new proposed practices.

Isomorphic and Non-Isomorphic Elements of Change

All this research has been of tremendous help in understanding the role
institutional entrepreneurs play in the construction of new fields, development of new
institutions, and the transformation of existing ones. However, the available insights
still represent, at best, a partial understanding of the institutional change process and
the role of institutional entrepreneurs within it. This is not least because the context of
most studies has been relatively homogenous. Most studies, for instance, have been
entirely based in developed western countries. The institutional entrepreneurs, their
stakeholders, and potential adopters all tend to be based in a field that is closely knit
in terms of inter-action, language, class and geography. Even when the institutional
entrepreneurs are powerful, success is still largely contingent on the responses of r
the potential adopters. Finally, the focus is almost always on the legitimisation of a
novel practice or innovation and the sense-making struggle of potential adopters
through which such a practice or innovation is legitimated (Friedland and Alford
1991; Barley and Tolbert 1997; Hargadon and Douglas 2001).
Instances where a practice, which is already legitimate in a particular field, is
transplanted in another, while studied elsewhere (Kaufman and Patterson 2005;
Strang and Soule 1998; Guillen, 2001) have typically evaded the attention of
institutional theory researchers. This is unfortunate because studying such instances of
change promises to reveal a host of new insights about the process of institutional
change around the world and the role of institutional entrepreneurs in it. To begin
with, it shifts our attention from the non-isomorphic aspect of change and forces us to
acknowledge the importance of isomorphic aspect of change as well. In other words,
not only must the institutional entrepreneurs legitimise a novel practice in a given
field, they must do it in a way, which is acceptable to powerful stakeholders outside
the field.
Indeed, appreciating the isomorphic dimension of non-isomorphic change
gives us insight into processes of implementing the latter. Implementing ‘gender
equity’ in say Pakistani organizations, may constitute isomorphism from an American
perspective, the ‘home’ field, but represents non-isomorphic change for the workers
in those Pakistani organizations, the ‘host’ field. In such a case, focusing solely on the
dynamics of non-isomorphic change in the ‘host’ field obscures how they are
influenced by the home field. Those interested in bringing gender equity to Pakistani
organizations need to frame the practice in a way that works at both the ‘home’ and
‘host’ field levels which may entail multiple framings. For example, gender equity
could be framed in terms of women’s rights for American stakeholders but articulated
as a measure of economic development for Pakistani audience.
 Highlighting the existence of multiple fields and the dual nature of
institutional change (isomorphic and non-isomorphic) entailed by them allows us to
conceive that the institutional entrepreneurs involved in institutionalizing a particular
set of practices across fields may not have complete freedom as to defining the
problem or selecting the means through which it is to be fixed. Moreover, rather than
acting entirely in their own interests, we may see institutional entrepreneurs (these
may be international donor agencies, local non-governmental agencies or other
stakeholders) acting either as agents or collaborators of other powerful actors (e.g.,
multinational corporations or the state).
Note that in contrast to what we find in most institutional entrepreneurship
studies, there are two different constituencies here. First, there is a powerful
constituency (the public of a Western country, or the market of a multinational’s
product) whose preferences generally lead to the initiation of the institutional change
process. Second, there is the less powerful constituency, which must change in
accordance with the preferences of the more powerful constituency. Apart from
engineering acceptance of a set of practices in the less powerful field, institutional
entrepreneurs in such circumstances have the additional role of mediating between the
two constituencies.
Such dynamics have rarely been explored in the institutional literature
(Mizruchi and Fein 1999). For example, Zelizer’s (1978) seminal study of the creation
of the insurance industry, Hargadon and Douglas’s (2001) study of the diffusion of
Edison’s system of electricity, or Munir and Phillips’ (2005) exploration of the
diffusion of popular photography, are all about generating acceptance in a single
constituency which has power to reject the innovation. Situating institutional
entrepreneurship across fields, especially those located in countries at different
development levels, reveals other important, yet understudied dynamics of change.
Attempts to institutionalize a particular practice without having the option to ‘mould’
it too much will inevitably lead to unintended consequences, which may, in future be
treated as new problems or issues. Unintended consequences are a critical part of any
change process, and often turn out to be more significant than the intended ones
(Mintzberg and McHugh, 1985; Grey 2005), yet in studies of institutional change,
they have not been given adequate attention by researchers.
Finally, the realization that institutional entrepreneurs often represent
institutional actors whose interests transcend field boundaries alerts us to the
possibility that the objective of institutional entrepreneurship may not only be to
legitimize the new practice to the host field, but to legitimize some aspect of this field
to the members of the ‘donor’ field. For example, when the United States introduces
‘democracy’ to a third world country, it is often done to legitimize the US’s own
dealings with that country to its public1. Similarly, when multinational corporations
implement particular practices such as gender equity in developing countries, it is
often to ensure that the legitimacy accorded to the firm by the lucrative Western
market is not questioned on the basis of its practices elsewhere.
Perez-Aleman (2005) has argued that there is no basis to simply assume that
institutional practices diffuse across fields simply through isomorphism (DiMaggio
and Powell, 1991; Guler, Guillen and Macpherson, 2002). In her work on the
diffusion of international quality standards in the Nicaraguan dairy industry, she has
powerfully shown, that for developing countries, the shift to new practices involves a
far more profound and complex process than the concept of isomorphism suggests.
Practices are nested in deeply entrenched social norms as well as in regimes of
economic dependency. Individuals, or organizations, do not simply submit to a new
practice however legitimate it may be in a different context (Perez-Aleman 2005).
These are the dynamics that we explore in our study of Sialkot’s soccer ball
industry. If institutions do not spread across borders though the sheer power of
legitimacy, then how do they? More specifically, what is the role of institutional
entrepreneurs in these instances of change? Given that this type of change is both
isomorphic and non-isomorphic, how do institutional entrepreneurs reconcile their
role in spreading a particular practice, as it is, with adapting it to fit multiple socio-
economic and political orders?

METHODS
In this study, we chose a qualitative case study research design. This was in
keeping with standard research practice that investigates open and exploratory
questions like the ones posed here (Eisenhardt 1989; Yin 1989). In addition, following
Lawrence et al. (2002), a qualitative methodology was chosen because it would allow
us to gather rich data from a highly fertile research site with complex dynamics.

1
When President Clinton came to Pakistan in 2000, he declined to publicly shake hands with its
military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on the pretext that Musharraf had overthrown a democratically
elected government. A few years later, after Gen. Musharraf had appointed himself ‘elected’ president,
through a thoroughly rigged referendum, the US had no qualms in dealing with him.
Indeed, had we not used an exploratory methodology, many of the issues that form the
bedrock for our theoretical insights would have evaded us. In the paragraphs below,
we very briefly describe the research site.

Research Site: Sialkot soccer ball industry

Prior to 1995, when the wrath of international media descended on Pakistan’s
soccer ball industry located in the city of Sialkot, the industry rarely attracted the
notice of the international community. Though the majority of the world’s soccer
balls were produced there, with leading international brands (e.g., Nike and Adidas)
sourcing almost exclusively from there, Western consumers were mostly unaware of
this city (Cummins 2000: 4 and 27). Sialkot’s soccer ball production was organized
on a quasi cottage-based and factory system. Panels (i.e., the individual hexagons and
pentagon shaped pieces that comprise a soccer ball) were prepared in the factories but
then through an elaboration chain of subcontractors were taken to the 1600 odd
villages surrounding Sialkot where they were stitched together mostly in homes. An
insignificant number of balls were stitched in shacks called workshops that were
owned by the subcontractors (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan [HRCP] 1995;
Raasta Development Consultants 1996). Figure 1 below depicts the soccer ball supply
chain.

Figure 1 Here

Estimates varied greatly as to how many people were employed in this

industry. For example, an International Labour Organization (ILO) study estimated
the soccer ball work force in 1995 to be around 100,000 (Awan 1996: 5). A corporate
publication put the figure at 75,000 (Saga Sports 1998). The stitching workforce
estimates similarly vary from a low of just over 30,000 (International Monitoring
Association for Child Labour [IMAC] 2003) to a high of 65,000 (Awan 1996: 5).2
Similar ambiguity surrounded the number of women who were part of the
stitching workforce. Still, estimates varied from 30% to 58% of the total stitching

2
The discrepancy in various figures was due to a) the informal nature of the work which made accurate
counts difficult and b) the part-time and ‘flexible’ nature of the contracting work. In a World Cup year,
more hands are brought into the industry to meet the additional demand and, thus, the figure swells to
the maximum of the range indicated above. Similarly, in a downturn year, the number seems to
gravitate towards the lower end of the spectrum.
workforce (Save the Children 2000; IMAC 2003). The rest was divided almost
equally among adult male stitchers and children. While it was difficult to be precise
about the number of children - the great majority of children helped their parents at
home, who in turn got paid for the number of soccer balls rather than hours worked –
an ILO estimate places the number of children at about 15,000 (Husselbee 2001: 133;
ILO 1999).

Data Collection
One of the authors started collecting data for this study from November 2000.
Data collection was completed by October 2003. In this time, three trips were made to
the field (i.e., Sialkot, Pakistan). Main sources of data were interviews and documents
(both primary and secondary).
Interviews were primarily conducted with the staff of the NGOs working on
the soccer ball child labour elimination project at the local site (i.e., Sialkot, Pakistan)
and male and female soccer ball stitchers, including children, who were affected by
the child labour issue and the child labour project that followed in its wake. Over sixty
interview sessions were held with over seventy individuals with the average length of
interviews being about 80 minutes. Ninety percent of the interviewees were NGO
staff and soccer ball stitchers. Of these, half were soccer ball stitchers with three-
fourths of them being women, a difficult group to get access to (especially in a
Muslim country) as we wanted to ascertain the perspectives on the child labour issue
of the most subjugated segment of society involved with this issue and its resolution.
Interviews were recorded by hand verbatim in interview notebooks and later
transcribed into computer readable format (for a breakdown of respondents, see
Appendix A).
Apart from the over four hundred pages of interview notes, the study’s data
also contained over 10,000 pages of documents including a quantitative database of
an NGO containing basic demographic information for about 2000 stitching families.
The documents were derived from a variety of sources, some of which were:
newspaper stories; internal organization documents (emails, faxes, memos, letters,
project evaluation reports, and minutes of meetings); US Department of Labor
hearings; Spanish legal archives; public fact-finding reports and surveys published by
both organizations involved with the project and those that were not; conference
proceedings; popular non-fiction books; academic journals; and transcripts of video
documentaries made about the Sialkot child labour issue. The list does not include the
articles printed from the Internet or the four video documentaries obtained during the
course of this study.

Data Analysis
As per the advice of Yin (1989), all decisions in the data analysis process were
recorded in a notebook to increase the reliability of the study. It acted as a diary,
trying to document the history of the data analysis process, a process that Eisenhardt
calls ‘the most difficult and least codified part’ of building theory from case studies
(1989: 539). All interviews (for a list of the organizations whose representatives were
interviewed, please see Appendix B) were coded to identify the patterns and themes
found in the interview data. About 22 topic/subject themes were identified.
After finishing coding, the rest of the data were sorted and organized.
Documents, including the documentaries, were catalogued with each one being given
a distinctive alpha-numeric number. Following the guidelines of Yin (1989), each
document was read and an annotated bibliography of it was prepared using the
bibliographical software EndNote. All the data were placed in a central location (i.e.,
a filing cabinet) according to their catalogue numbers. This filing cabinet was in effect
a case study database, containing the entire set of information pertaining to the case
study. This was done to increase further the reliability of the study (ibid).
As for validity of our analysis and our interpretations, efforts were made to
ensure that we were working with quality (i.e., accurate) data. This was achieved by
having a robust research design (e.g., trying to obtain perspectives of poor women
soccer ball stitching families and not just the NGO community) and an equally strong
data collection process (e.g.; case study database to increase reliability) (ibid). All this
while we were gaining familiarity with the data to develop a plausibility structure
(Parrish 1997), a sensibility that counsels you as to what appears plausible, to be
correct, and true, that comes from gaining intimacy with the data. We then subjected
our emerging intuitions and insights to rigours of triangulation corroborating them
from multiple sources helped immensely by the rich variation of sources contained in
our data. This was done in an iterative fashion moving between the data and our
understandings while constantly thinking of alternative explanations and testing their
soundness with the data at hand.
INSTITUTIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN CROSS-BORDER DIFFUSION:
A CASE STUDY
In the mid-1990s, disparity between the industrialists and workers in Sialkot
was perhaps at its peak. While the owners sat in gleaming glass buildings, the soccer
ball stitchers led a life of grinding poverty where what Marx called ‘the dull
compulsions of living’ pressed all hands, including children, into stitching soccer
balls to make ends meet. Wages, depending, on a host of factors from the quality of
balls being stitched to the location of the stitcher (whether stitchers were near the
contractor or factories - those further away received lower rates), varied from Rs.45 –
100 for a full day’s work (Save the Children 1997: 23)3. A stitcher could stitch at
most three to four balls per day and the ball rate ranged from Rs.15 to Rs.25 (ibid).
The top quality balls in the West would retail upwards of US $100 according to a
major Sialkot supplier to Adidas. Given that the average household size in Sialkot was
about eight and that almost half the stitching households, had only one bread earner,
the stitching families just barely if at all eked out an existence (Saeed 1998:18-19).
All worked long hours, given that it was home-based employment, were flexible
(Raasta Development Consultants 1996; Save the Children 2000a) - for example,
women would stitch in the spare time between their household chores and tending to
their children.
The lot of stitching families in general, is captured with precision in the
following words of a matron of a leading soccer ball firm based on a door to door
survey of 403 stitchers comprising one-third of her stitching work force in 1996, the
majority of whom were women (56.4%):

The stitching families frequently took advance payment

from the contractor as they received no social security
cover, no provident fund, no pension fund provision, no
bonus payment, no profit sharing… The income from
soccer ball stitching was simply too little to cater for
any medical emergency. With great difficulty could
they maintain all their children in school and pay for
books and uniforms. Almost all had debts. I was

3
In 1995, 1 US$ = 31.61 Rupees (source: http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory)
 informed that help with educational expenditure and
medical care was the most pressing need, followed by
others such as: repair work to their homes damaged
during the rainy season, dowry for the girls when they
get married, toilets, a pump, fans, electricity meter
(AKI, 2002).

Institutional Crisis: Quick Feet but Sloppy Footwork

Into this world of stitchers, waded in the international media, beginning with
CBS in 1995. On April 6, 1995, CBS aired at 9 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) a short
documentary on the soccer ball industry in Sialkot ‘CHILDREN AT WORK’ (CBS
transcripts, retrieved on Lexis-Nexis in 2003). The CBS story forcefully brought to
the fore the unsettling irony of poor children at work so rich American kids could
play. While highlighting the involvement of children in soccer ball stiching, on
several counts, the CBS story failed the test of journalistic rigour. For example,
allegations were made that children earn less than adults. No evidence was provided
accept for the questionable testimony of their interpreter who was not a native of
Sialkot and did not have any experience with the soccer ball industry.
The CBS story was picked up by the other mass media both in the US and
abroad that embellished and distorted the already factually questionable documentary.
The international media, particularly the European press, given the immense
popularity and centrality of soccer there compared to the US, went on a frenzy, doling
out a blitz of moral penalties to the soccer ball industry for being found in bed with
child labour. Like the CBS story, this subsequent media reporting tended to show, to
borrow vocabulary from soccer, quick feet (i.e., in bringing the child labour
involvement in the soccer ball industry story quickly to their various respective
audiences) but alas quite sloppy footwork (i.e., highly inaccurate reporting of the
situation).
In 1995, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) published a
report about the veracity of allegations being made about the soccer ball industry.
Except for agreeing with reports on the issue of wages being exploitative, the report
refuted most of the main charges that would be levelled by the media such as the
prevalence of bonded child labour, work place beatings, children working
predominately in workshops for long hours, and differential wages for children and
adults. The validity of the HRCP report was corroborated by evidence on Sialkot’s
soccer ball industry published prior to the crisis (e.g., Weiss 1991) as well as later by
numerous studies and surveys done by other independent organizations such as
international NGOs (e.g., Save the Children and ILO), international trade unions and
their Pakistani affiliates (e.g., International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and
All Pakistan Federation of Labour) and local organizations (e.g., Raasta Development
Consultants). In those crucial early days, the international media made no allusions to
the HRCP report and its evidence contradicting most of the ‘facts’ being presented by
their stories. Whether this was done out of criminal negligence or wilful ignorance,
the point is nevertheless made: media did not exercise due diligence.
As time went on, each successive story, with one or two notable exceptions
(e.g., see Ramsey 1995) would make more scathing and, thus, even less tenable
claims and allegations on the venality of the soccer ball industry and its exploitation.
Children were not only working but they were enslaved and bonded (i.e., sold for
loans by their parents under the desperation of economic compulsions to usurious
‘loan sharks’ who would use their labour as payment for the loans extended to their
parents) (Double 1995; Lee 1995). Ages of children employed by the global soccer
ball industry to stitch their balls went down from the CBS low of seven years to a
toddling three years (Schanberg 1996). Children were not a part of the stitching labour
force but they were alleged to be the entire force in toto. For example, the Deutsche
Presse-Agentur, June 12, 1996, carried the following headline: ‘Pakistani children
produce 36 million soccer balls a year.’
The drumbeat went on in ever-higher octaves stoking a consumer outrage
(Greenhouse 1997; Schoenberger 2000). The dint and the rage were being heard on
both sides of the Atlantic except, of course by the child stitchers and their families in
Sialkot. Being mostly illiterate (Save the Children 1997) and lacking subscriptions to,
or even knowledge of, such newspapers as the Financial Times, they were not aware
of what was specifically being said about them in the international arena. The
important issue to stitching families of a living wage were drowned out in a frenzied
cascade of representations that came to focus just on children and that they should be
in school. The fact that schooling was in appalling condition and that children
preferred to work than to go hungry in schools where corporal punishments were
often given, did not find space in these representations (Save the Children 1997;
Crawford 2001).
 Nor was space found for the stitching family, especially the women stitchers.
It is quite instructive that our research could not unearth in that media frenzy a single
article in which women were given space, such was the salience of child labour that
blinded the self-appointed and self-righteous media representators to all other critical
and relevant matters. All this pertinent information could have been incorporated if
the media had just listened to the stitching families. Instead, what they effectively did
was to simply graft their cognitively held institutionalized worst Dickensian child
labour nightmares onto Sialkot. Whether these institutionalized understandings
actually corresponded to the world of the stitching families, especially as experienced
and lived by them, seemed to have apparently mattered little.

Institutional Entrepreneurs Playing Janus

On June 28, 1996 with official endorsement of the US Department of Labor
and prominent politicians (e.g., Senator Joseph Kennedy II), a campaign was
launched to bring an end to child labour in the soccer ball industry. The campaign
came to be known as the ‘Foul Ball Campaign’ co-ordinated by the International
Labour Rights Fund (a Washington based labour advocacy group) in cooperation with
a network of labour, consumer, religious, sports, and child advocacy groups (US
department of Labour 2003). The campaign called on everyone from youth soccer
leagues to school administrations to put pressure upon industry to stop using children
in the production of soccer balls.
The soccer ball industry responded by first expressing indignation at learning
about child labour involvement (Moore 1996; US Department of Labour 1996) and
then quickly forming a coalition of international sporting goods industry associations,
particularly SICA (Soccer ball Industry Council of America) and WFSGI (World
Federation Sporting Goods Industry) who were representing the interests of their
members (i.e., international brands), and Sialkot-based suppliers represented by the
Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI). The latter’s enrolment was
crucial given that almost the world’s soccer ball production was concentrated there
and the international industry could not simply tell its supply chain to adjust or it
would go elsewhere. There was, especially for match quality hand-stitched balls,
nowhere else to go. To further legitimise the coalition, the industry associations
enrolled UNICEF, ILO, and Save the Children as well.
 The project was announced in February 1997 but began to be implemented in
October 1997 (ILO 1997). It was decided to phase out child labour by shifting
stitching, the activity in which children were involved, to monitorable stitching
centres (ibid). That is to factories or workshops that, unlike village homes, could be
easily accessed by ILO monitors to verify that no children are involved in stitching
soccer balls.
The project also had a social protection program which was to take care of the
displaced child stitchers and their affected families by creating alternative income
opportunities for their families largely through micro credit schemes and vocational
training (e.g., tailoring) (Crawford 2001). As for children they were to be provided
education either by enrolling them in government schools or setting up one to three
room education centres where they would be educated up to grade 5 on a few hours a
day basis (Save the Children 2000; ILO-IPEC 1999; Bunyad Literacy Community
Council 1998).

Defining the Problem. As far as the industry was concerned, at least in its
popular rhetoric to Western markets, child labour resulted from vague and
unfathomable reasons. Like a mystery virus, it had afflicted the whole soccer ball
industry and now the industry was going to expunge the alien host. Issues of the
industry’s own culpability in perpetuating child labour (e.g., not paying a living wage
to stitchers and being more concerned with the rich gloss on soccer balls than the
poverty ridden faces that made them) were conveniently ignored. Robert Reich,
Secretary of Labor and a key sponsor of the Child labor elimination campaign, framed
the issue legalistically as one separate from wages, an issue of complying with the law
not with justice:

I want to emphasize that these conditions [of child

labour] violate international law. This is not an issue
that one can simply attribute to the poverty of a
particular nation. Unlike wages or certain working
conditions, the employment of very young children is a
fundamental breach of international law. It is something
that almost every nation has laws against. It is bad for
 even a developing nation because those young children
need to be in school if that nation is to develop . . .
This is a basic human right. The International Labor
Organization has international treaties these nations
have subscribed to. This is different from developing
standards such as wages, which do rise as a nation can
afford them. (US Department of Labor, 1996).

While this tune of resolve and responsibility was being played on the front-
stage, there was much work being done back-stage, away from the public arena.
Efforts were being undertaken by industry to delink the issue of fair wages from the
child labour problem and to scuttle efforts that tried to make the connection. For
example, a FIFA code requiring soccer ball manufacturers to pay fair wages was
effectively sabotaged by WFSGI according to ICFTU (International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions), an assertion corroborated by WFSGI itself, which admits in an
open letter to its members that it was largely responsible for stopping FIFA:

A meeting was arranged with FIFA officials, SICA

members, and Stephen Rubin at the FIFA house in
Zurich to discuss the implications and ramifications of
the “Code of Conduct” agreed upon between unions and
FIFA. It was agreed at the meeting that FIFA would
wait with further actions for the “Industry Code of
Conduct” which is being developed by WFSGI and
SICA at this time (Gorgemans 1997: 7).

ILO and the Coalition. Through an exchange of ideas with several civil
society organizations, the industry had developed a good feel about whom they could
trust. Any organization which was likely to raise controversial issues (e.g., the need
for a fair wage), was conveniently excluded from the coalition including the
International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF), one of the original campaigners against
child labour (Riddle, 1997). It was in this context that ILO, UNICEF and SCF were
invited to join the coalition.
 There was not always complete consensus on who should be part of the
coalition. The Sialkot-based suppliers, for instance, were apprehension about ILO’s
inclusion given its institutional linkages with organized labour. They had no way of
knowing whether ILO would spread its tentacles to other labour rights issues such as
organizing workers into independent unions. To convince them about ILO’s probity,
the international industry associations helped organize a mission for the Sialkot
manufacturers to visit ILO’s child labour removal work in Bangladesh in May 1997.
When the delegation returned from Bangladesh, the following conclusion was
reached:

Mr. Zaka-ud-Din, SCCI [Sialkot Chamber of Commerce

and Industry] . . . said the mission to Bangladesh to see the
BGMEA [Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and
Exporters Association] project had strengthened the
industry’s confidence in ILO’s partnership and any
apprehensions [italics added] they had have been cleared . .
Mr. Tom Cove (SGMA), said they have seen that the ILO
understands the concerns of the private sector [italics
added] and a lot of confusion [italics added] has been
cleared.’ (PCC minutes of meeting #3; May 29, 1997).

Apart from the friendliness of ILO towards the private sector and governments
(ILO had never recommended action against a state for violating labour rights), ILO’s
participation also appeared attractive because of its considerable international repute.
Finally, ILO’s participation would serve to neutralize the ILRF, the driving force
behind the Foul Ball Campaign. The industry effectively hijacked the platform on
which ILRF’s campaign had been based, leaving it on the sidelines.
It is noteworthy that while the industry actively orchestrated the coalition and
defined its scope, its own financial commitment to the project was distinctly
unimpressive (less than US$600,000 to tackle the child labour issue between the
periods 1996-2003). Effectively, the entire costs of over US$ 5 million were footed by
the taxpayers of the United States (US Department of Labour) and the United
Kingdom (Department for International Development) as well as by the Sialkot
suppliers.
 Credibility for Whom? The composition of the coalition nicely reveals its
objectives. While NGOs like ILO, UNICEF or Save the Children, commanded much
respect in the West, they were far from welcomed in Sialkot. They quickly realized
this when they waded into villages with television crews and jeeps prominently
displaying foreign origins (e.g., UN license plates and UN seals emblazoned on the
doors of their vehicles). In the words of an NGO official remembering a village visit:

Early on our car windows broken. We were surrounded

by angry mob in our car for several hours with a
Canadian making [a] movie. Initially some foreigner
had come and made a movie. When work stopped,
[villagers] felt that movie had stopped work. Bringing
bad name to village. After that for sometime using
police protection. [Villagers] accused us of taking
bribes . . . Found out films are going abroad and then
work is stopping.

The implementing agencies quickly learned that tact was the order of the day.
Participating manufacturers were asked for village contacts. Protocol became one of
first contacting people of prestige and power in villages (e.g., imams of mosques,
village head man (known as a chaudhry) and school teachers), individuals that
internal documents of the project (e.g., UNICEF briefings for its mobilizers; see
UNICEF (date not given), ‘Major Activities Under UPE’) referred to by the term
‘influentials’. The agencies explained to these ‘influentials’ their virtuous intentions
of helping villagers and after securing the cooperation of the influentials, would
request them to vouch for their bona fides to other villagers. At that point, according
to the same BLCC official quoted above, community meetings would be organized
‘where we explained ourselves’ (Interview Notebook II, 2003: 99).
Another complementary approach to establish ties with the village community
was for the project’s implementing NGOs to present themselves as just Pakistani
development organizations and to remove the NGO tag and their UN connections
from their discussions with villagers. Unfortunately, the NGOs could not discard their
international credentials completely either. They needed, for example, the UN license
plates on the motorcycles of their mobilizers to keep the local police from harassing
them. In the neo-colonial context, local police understood that meddling with UN
agencies or other international Western agencies would not be tolerated by their
masters as such action could bring international condemnation and a reduction of aid
both of which were undesirable to Pakistan’s ruling oligarchy. Thus, the NGOs had to
constantly reinvent themselves sometimes as foreign organizations and sometimes as
local ones depending on the audience fervently hoping that the audience would not
catch on to their other performances contradicting the ones they were presenting to
the audience in question.
It was interesting to note how these criticisms sometimes sunk home. Many
Pakistani workers working with UNICEF, ILO, and SCF, expressed doubts in
interviews whether they were actually serving the villagers or some ulterior imperial
cause. Often, the role and involvement of foreign donors was privately resented by the
workers implementing their change agenda. Many of them were under no illusions as
to how consultative the institutional process was, as the following quote from an NGO
manager illustrates:

What shapes production of reports is the ideas that

the donors would be interested [would find
interesting]. For example, if we put a girl with a
niqab or hijab [Islamic veil] [on report covers
dealing with their education programs], for sure
donors will be offended and funding will be
stopped.

Scoring the Wrong Goals: Unintended Consequences

By September 2003, according to the ILO, 95% of all Sialkot exports were
now being made without the use of child labour (IMAC 2003). The industry was
effectively child labour free. This, however, came at a heavy price paid by those least
able to afford it: the stitching families.
The project to phase out children was designed, at least in principle, to ensure
that the stitching families are not harmed, especially the children, when the latter are
prevented from stitching soccer balls. Industry can, if it wishes, say that the stitchers
have benefited from the project in the following ways: New stitching centres had to be
constructed so that stitching could be made more transparent and monitorable unlike
the earlier situation in homes, sites that were inaccessible to external monitors. Some
of these new centres provide an excellent bus service, meals, and subsidized ration
stores for stitchers, facilities that previously were not available. Also, stitchers
benefited in that wages had to be increased to lure them into the stitching centres as
they had preferred to work from home. Similarly, the NGO community can claim
success in that they have made stitchers aware of the importance of education for their
children, and their income generation and education programs have benefited child
stitchers and their families.
However, these benefits appeared to have materialized for only an
insignificant portion of stitchers. For example, less than 30% or so of the families that
received microcredit, disbursed under the project, were stitching families (Crawford
2001: 16). Similarly, vocational training benefited at most a couple of hundred
stitchers (ibid). As for education, the schemes that the NGOs developed and
implemented were geared for making child stitchers literate. Apparently 10,000
children went through such schemes (IMAC 2003). While this figure is disputed by
several NGO workers, even if we were to take it at face value, literacy (defined in
Pakistan as the ability to read and write one’s name) still remains a far cry from
education. Moreover, most of the project’s education efforts could not be made
sustainable. The education programs had effectively wound up by March 2004 and all
the education centres where former child stitchers were being provided literacy, with
a handful of exceptions, came to be closed down. Thus, the educational benefits of the
program to the stitching community were transient at best.
With the income generation and education programs having largely missed the
bulk of stitching families that were affected by the project, the lot of the stitchers
seem not to have improved in any substantive way by the child labour crusade carried
out in their name to benefit them. Of all groups in the stitching community, women
stitchers seem to have suffered the most largely due to the construction of the
monitorable stitching centres.
The institutional entrepreneurship created a chain of events that led to a new
production regime where stitching was moved from homes, inaccessible to outsiders
in the deeply rural and conservative culture of Pakistan, to monitorable stitching
centres. The effects of this transition have sunk deeply and savagely affected the sense
of well-being of women stitchers. A study by Save the Children (2000a) in 12 villages
with monitorable stitching centres, in which 3210 households were interviewed, found
that nearly all stitchers preferred the old regime to the new one. Home based stitching
was found to be more convenient.
Home based stitching was convenient because it enabled them to do their
household chores and save commuting time that they could productively deploy for
house work or for stitching. Moreover, it was convenient in that it protected women’s
privacy. This is to say working at home provides them with the convenience of not
exposing themselves as soccer ball stitchers after which come the slurs and the
derogatory comments made by their fellow villagers. This is because in the wider
village culture of Sialkot, soccer ball stitching is looked down upon as a lowly activity
(Punjab Rural Support Program 2002). One woman stitcher nostalgic about home
based stitching, sighed, ‘Before you could earn with respect at home.’ Respect is
clearly important for women and the visible daily commute to centres open their self-
respects up for scathing verbal assaults by villagers, particularly men. One woman
stitcher, despite her precarious economic situation, left working in centres because she
could no longer tolerate such abuse. In words laced with deep hurt, she recollects her
centre stitching experience as follows:

If we go to factories, people say nasty things about us.

[They say] Putting red lipstick, going out, what do you
have in mind. [We] do it [stitching] out of necessity.
Common feeling [in villages] is that if one cannot do
anything [one is useless] then stitch. No respect in
village.

Home based stitching thus saved women from verbal abuse. At times, it also
provided them protection from physical sexual abuse. One former Save the Children
officer, a Sialkot village resident himself, pointed out that sexual harassment,
including rape, was as an important factor that made women overwhelmingly refuse
working at centres even at the pain of severe economic deprivation. He also cited this
sexual abuse at the workplace as a pivotal issue that helped those in the project who
were arguing against large monitorable centres and in favour of all-female stitching
centres based in or near the villages of women stitchers.
 Wages are poor. We have children. Work hard to earn
bread. We get money on times [from subcontractor]
sometimes. Ten years [I have been] stitching. If I
protest, there are 1000 people willing to stitch.
[Subcontractor will] say fine. You do not want to work,
[I will] give it to others.

The women stitchers who made the hard migration to stitching centres
whether in their own villages or in remote locations, just form at best maybe 20% of
the pre-project women stitching workforce. The remainder refused to make such a
migration either out of self-respect, obligations at the home, or due to permission not
being given by their men folk to commute to work. Regardless, their stance has come
at a vicious economic price. They have found themselves at a sharp edge of a pincer
movement. At one end they are losing cheaper ball orders that can be machine-made
to China (Cummins 2000), which can produce them at lower rates, and on the other,
for higher quality balls, they are losing business to the stitching centres where most of
these balls are now being stitched. Caught in this pincer, they are finding themselves
having to compete with each other for the fewer balls that are now stitched at village
homes, driving wages down even further much to the satisfaction of those
subcontractors who further press home their exploitative advantage. A woman stitcher
at her home stated in anger:
Another woman stitcher described the drastic drop in orders in the following
way: ‘Before we used to get 2 balls, now get 1 ball. If before we get 1 ball, now make
half’. That woman stitcher was fortunate that she only lost 50% of her pre-project
production levels. Others have fared worse. Though wage rates initially increased for
male stitchers at centres, they were not enough to compensate for the loss of income
suffered by women and children now unable to stitch. Overall, household incomes fell
in absolute terms. Though, NGO personnel dread speculating on this matter, most of
them estimate that average household incomes have fallen around 25-30% in absolute
terms. Combine this with inflation and the knowledge that the stitching household
incomes were, before this sharp drop, barely affording women stitchers and their
children with a subsistence level existence, what we have is that institutional
entrepreneurship plunged stitching families deeper into impoverishment. All this
happened while the project received international accolades for its humanitarian
concerns and the US presidential seal of approval. The women stitchers would have
truly wondered if they indeed were the ones being described by Bill Clinton in his
ringing endorsement of the project at the ILO headquarters in Switzerland in 1999:

Let me cite just one example of the success being

achieved, the work being done to eliminate child labor
from the soccer ball industry in Pakistan. Two years
ago, thousands of children under the age of 14 worked
for 50 companies stitching soccer balls full-time. The
industry, the ILO and UNICEF joined together to
remove children from the production of soccer balls and
give them a chance to go to school, and to monitor the
results. Today, the work has been taken up by women in
80 poor villages in Pakistan, given them new
employment and their families new stabilities. (Clinton,
1999).

DISCUSSION
The case of de-institutionalization of child labour in Sialkot, and the
introduction of new institutions such as monitorable stitching centres offers a host of
new insights into the process of institutional change, and the role of institutional
entrepreneurs within it. Below, we discuss some of these insights and how they
extend existing understandings of change.

Legitimising Practices or Fields?

In studying instances of institutional change, theorists often tend to focus on
the institutional obstacles that prevent a field from adopting a particular practice,
technology or belief. The tacit assumption underlying most such studies is that the
objective before institutional entrepreneurs or drivers of change is to get a new set of
institutions accepted. Narratives based on such an assumption revolve around the
process through which these institutions are legitimised.
The case of Sialkot alerts us to a different category of institutionalisation
processes. While we set out to study the de-institutionalisation of child-labour in the
soccer-ball manufacturing industry, assuming like most theorists that this was indeed
the most interesting aspect of this change, very soon we realized that what we thought
was the legitimization of particular practices, was in fact the legitimisation of an
entire field and thus a product. Sialkot-made soccer balls that had been selling in the
West for decades, had now become ‘tainted’ by child labor, and needed to be
legitimised again. And in order for that to happen, it was important that the Sialkot-
based suppliers be ‘sanitized’ in accordance with the wishes of the Western public.
Few previous studies of institutional change have involved this dynamic. For
instance Thornton’s (2002) study of new organizational forms in higher education
publishing, Lounsbury’s (2002) study of deregulation in the American finance
industry, Lee and Pennings’ (2002) exploration of the Dutch accounting industry, or
Kaufman and Patterson’s (2005) study of the diffusion of cricket all explored
legitimisation or de-legitimization of practices or organizational forms within a field
rather than the legitimisation of an entire field.
There are at least two crucial differences between a case where the objective
of an entrepreneur is the institutionalisation of a practice, and one which is primarily
about the legitimisation of an entire field. First, in the latter case, rather than
engineering voluntary acceptance of a practice by the field where it is being
introduced, the emphasis is on appeasing important stakeholders of the institutional
entrepreneur(s). In the case of Sialkot, for instance, the child labour project was
initiated only to appease powerful Western stakeholders who, in various ways, could
have imposed sanctions on the major brands.
Secondly, and relatedly, since the campaign is undertaken to appease those
outside the field, the shape and form in which particular practices are adopted must be
approved by the external stakeholders rather than field members who actually adopt
those practices. In the case of Sialkot, it meant that as long as the manufacturing was
free of child labour it mattered little if the whole community was better or worse off.
It also did not matter if the community did not approve of the means through which
the ‘problem’ was solved, or of the new practices that were introduced. What
mattered was the approval of the powerful stakeholders driving the change. For this,
of course, it was important to create a particular discourse about the change process in
which the adopters appeared better off and much pleased with the outcome.
At the same time, it was important to give the impression that the child labour
project involved no coercion whatsoever. Indeed, nowhere in the discourse, whether
that of the ILO or WFSGI or even that of the Sialkot chamber, was there even a hint
that any coercion was involved in the project. Bill Clinton’s address at the World
Economic Forum in 1999 epitomised the portrayal of the campaign in international
media. It was represented as an unprecedented achievement on the part of the private
sector and the community, who came together to deliver the children of Sialkot their
lost childhood. There were no unintended consequences. Nor were there any betrayed
souls amongst the NGO workers. On the contrary, this was held out as a celebration
of corporate social responsibility and of the great institutions whose job it was to
ensure universal human rights.
At the very least, this episode cautions us against defining the scope of
institutional change studies (especially those involving developing countries and
Western stakeholders) too narrowly. Cross-border diffusion of practices is an
increasingly frequent occurrence, but treating it merely as another instance in which
certain practices are legitimised in a particular field runs the risk of overlooking the
true significance of the change, and keeps institutional theory from evolving in new
directions.

The Role of Institutional Entrepreneurs

The Sialkot child labour case reveals a side of institutional entrepreneurs that
is generally not evident in the literature. As mentioned earlier in the paper,
institutional entrepreneurs generally come across as highly enterprising, dynamic
visionaries who are able to mobilize resources and engineer change in meaning
around particular practices. In the case of Sialkot, however, institutional entrepreneurs
appeared to be imposing an iron-curtain between two different sectors of a field, i.e.,
western consumers and Sialkot-based manufacturers. Particular representations of
Western consumers were put before the manufacturers, in which it was stressed that if
child labour was not eradicated immediately all business would stop coming to them.
Similarly, the Western consumers were painted a beautiful, rosy picture of how
children were being rescued from sweatshops and sent to schools.
Given the lack of literacy and capital among the stitchers, they could not
possibly become involved in the negotiations about their fate. Their concerns were
represented through official channels who themselves faced sanctions if they deviated
too much from the official narrative. This was exemplified by the testimony of
various NGO workers who mentioned the existence of implicit guidelines for
representing the problem of child labour and the solutions that were being
implemented.
The iron curtain was made effective by ensuring all members of the coalition
of institutional entrepreneurs would tell the same story on both sides of the curtain.
Thus, members of the coalition was carefully recruited, keeping in mind both their
interests and the legitimacy their participation brought to the process of change. There
was hardly any dissent among the ranks of this seemingly disparate group. All of
them seemed very comfortable in defining the problem as one of child/human rights
rather than of fair wages.
Dealing with two different polities, however, posed its own problems. What
was legitimate in one field was often unwelcome in the other. Thus, while the
enrolment of multilateral agencies such as the UNICEF added legitimacy to the
campaign as far as the stakeholders in the West were concerned, field workers in
Sialkot often took the UN plates off their vehicles to avoid delegitimization of the
campaign. Such front-stage, back-stage behaviour, which characterized all aspects of
the change process, left numerous field workers disappointed and dismayed at their
own role in this project. They were crucial actors who ensured the implementation of
the project at the grass root level. However, their input was never taken on board as
far as the ultimate objectives of the project and its anticipated consequences were
concerned.
While the enrolment of institutional entrepreneurs has been studied before
(DiMaggio 1991) the exclusion of various actors who might question a particular
construction of a problem has not received much attention. Similarly, how powerful
actors construct coalitions and set agendas is well known. What is not so well
documented is their front-stage, back-stage behaviour when a particular practice is
introduced in a field to avoid sanctions from powerful stakeholders in another field.
This study provides more process-level insights into the dynamics of institutional
entrepreneurship highlighting, in particular, the complexity and power dynamics
within campaigns for social change.

Unintended Consequences
Studies of institutional entrepreneurship often tend to be limited to success or
failure of entrepreneurs in implementing a particular agenda, without providing many
details regarding any unintentional consequences of the change process. The case of
Sialkot powerfully brings out the importance of paying attention to unintended
consequences of institutional entrepreneurship. Many previous studies of institutional
change recognize how institutional entrepreneurs frame issues in particular ways so as
to be able to embody their interests in the solutions that are adopted. However, few, if
any, go on to examine what the unintended consequences of this framing, or
problematization are. Whenever we frame a particular issue in one way rather than
another, some stakeholders are bound to be affected by this. Our findings imply that
often, these may be the weakest ones, unable to defend themselves or even represent
their true interests or grievances in the institutional change process.
Given that institutional entrepreneurs often block weaker voices to get their
own heard, it is mystifying why our accounts of institutional entrepreneurs are almost
always so positive. The case of Sialkot illustrates how the child labour campaign
plunged the lives of most women stitchers, and consequently their families, into abject
misery. Still, much of the world continues to understand this campaign as a highly
successful case of institutional entrepreneurship.
From the narratives of NGO field workers, it is obvious that while these
consequences were unintended, they were not entirely unanticipated. Indeed, the price
that stitchers would have to pay for defining the problem as one of human/child rights
rather than of fair wages, and shifting work from homes to stitching centres was
always apparent to many workers on the ground. However, a powerful coalition of
institutional entrepreneurs ensured that their dissent was either never heard, or never
given voice. It is likely that the application of a more critical lens to instances of
institutional entrepreneurship will bring power issues to the fore, and provide new
insights into the role of institutional entrepreneurs.

CONCLUSION
In this paper, we studied an instance of institutional change. However, unlike
most previous studies, which focus on the diffusion of a novel practice in a particular
field, the context of our study was the almost coercive implementation of a practice
that was novel only in the concerned field. This context is by no means unique.
Indeed, with increasing globalization, implementation of various practices, from
intellectual property rights to gender-equity in developing countries has been on the
rise.
 As Perez-Aleman (2005) has argued, it would be erroneous to assume that
these practices are adopted through the sheer isomorphism. As her study of the
Nicaraguan dairy industry demonstrated, individuals, or organizations, do not simply
submit to a new practice, however legitimate it may be in a different context.
Similarly, it would be misleading to imagine that powerful (Western) actors can
simply coerce a field into adopting a particular set of practices, or giving up others.
As Levitt and Wagner (2003) argue, it is important in such cases to depict the process
of change to be anything but coercive. Their own study of Congo revealed how,
despite the pressure of donors and NGOs, it was not possible to giving more aid to
refugees than to black South Africans for the fear of seriously undermining an
essential political coalition.
In Sialkot, both these dynamics were abundantly evident. Child labour was not
an ‘issue’ in soccer ball manufacturing. In fact, given that stitiching was done in the
safety of their homes and in proximity to their family, it was considered the safest
possible occupation for children who needed to work to supplement their family’s
income. There was little doubt that left to themselves, soccer ball manufacturers
would not have tried to eliminate children from the workforce. Similarly, it was also
clear that pure coercion was not an option. With the world’s media watching, in order
to be legitimate, the process needed to look consultative and come up with alternative
arrangements for the affected children.
An exploration of this process provided insights into how institutional
entrepreneurs recruit their partners, define problems, keep powerful and weak
stakeholders separated, and play the role of an intermediary between the two.
Moreover, the study pointed out how in the context of developing countries,
legitimisation of particular practices needs to be viewed in a larger perspective.
Indeed, in Sialkot, what seemed, at first glance to be another instance of institutional
change within a field, turned out to be an exercise in legitimising the entire field to
powerful stakeholders outside. Our study extended existing research by considering
the unintended, although not necessarily unanticipated consequences that all these
activities produce. Most importantly, we stressed the importance of giving voice to
sub-alternized people in our studies, who tend to suffer when powerful institutional
entrepreneurs sideline the voices of weak actors.
Our study opens up new avenues for research in institutional change. We
encourage researchers to study instances of change where power differentials are
great. We also suggest that studying instances of cross-border diffusion of institutions
may be a fruitful line of inquiry. Finally, and relatedly, we would like to persuade
future scholars to pay explicit attention to the unintended consequences of
institutional entrepreneurship, so that we do not end up perpetuating the rather one-
sided views of institutional entrepreneurs that pervade the literature.
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 FIGURE 1: SOCCER BALL SUPPLY CHAIN (1995)

[Adapted from Save the Children. (date not given). Info Pack (Public
document). Islamabad: Save the Children].

Order Placed by External buyers

to Sialkot Soccer Ball Manufacturers

Factories Produce and Process Soccer Ball

Panels

Subcontractors Distribute Packaged Panels

to home-based Stitchers

Hand-Stitching in Homes
by Men, Women and Children

Initial Quality Control by Subcontractor;

Defective Balls Repaired and Re-Stitched

Delivery to Factories by Subcontractors

Factory-Based Quality Control

Exported to International Buyers

APPENDIX A: BREAK-DOWN OF INTERVIEW RESPONDENTS
Passive Respondent Definition: Those to whom an informed consent procedure was
administered either in writing or orally but who did not directly provide information to
the researcher (e.g., people in a group who were nodding their heads while group
member(s) spoke to the interviewer).

Active Respondent Definition: All respondents to whom an informed consent procedure

was administered either in writing or orally and who directly provided information to the
researcher.

MAIN STUDY (February-April, July-October 2003)

Total NGO Stitchers Miscellaneous

Gender Active Passive

Male 49 24 10 4 11

Female 61 7 21 29 4

Total 110 31 31 33 15

Notes: Interviews conducted in Sialkot city and in the following villages/areas of Sialkot district: Chak
Qazi, Dhanewali, Head Miralla, Kitara, Lado Pind, Moutra, Nanowali, Rumala Chak, Sambrial, and
Ugoki. NGO and Miscellaneous respondents were all active respondents. Miscellaneous category
consisted of the following:
4 Factory Owners/Business Executives (Male); 3 Teachers (Female); 1 General Manager Stitching
Centre (Male); 1 Quality Control Manager Stitching Centre (Male); 1 Quality Control Manager (Male);
4 Subcontractors (Male); and 1 elderly wife of a soccer ball magnate. She provided me with valuable
insider-information to assess the public posturing of the soccer ball industry concerning the child
labour issue. The respondents are classified based on their current occupation at the time of the
interview even though several had served in other occupations as well (e.g., a current NGO employee
being an ex-stitcher).

PILOT STUDY (December 2000–January 2001)

Total NGO Stitchers Miscellaneous

Gender

Male 13 4 2 7

Female 2 1 1 -

Total 15 5 3 7

Notes: Interviews conducted in Sialkot city and in Ghadaray village located in Sialkot district.
Miscellaneous consisted of 4 Factory owners, 1 Manager, and 2 lower level office workers. All
interviewees were active respondents. The respondents have been classified here on the same
classification scheme used for the main study (see above).
 APPENDIX B: LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS WHOSE
PERSONNEL WERE INTERVIEWED FOR THE RESEARCH

Anwar Khawaja Industries (AKI)

Baidarie

Bunyad Literacy Community Council (BLCC)

Capital Sports (Private) Limited

Child and Social Development Organization (CSDO)

Child Care Foundation of Pakistan

Community Development Concern (CDC)

International Labour Organization (ILO)

International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF)

International Monitoring Association for Child Labour (IMAC)

Punjab Rural Support Programme (PRSP)

Quality Links (Private) Limited

Saga Sports (Private) Limited

Save the Children (SCF)

Select-Anwar Khawaja Industries Health and Education Programme

(SAHEP)

Sublime Sports (Private) Limited

Sudhaar

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)