A recent literature documents the successes of community-based development organizations (CBDOs) in providing housing and employment in impoverished communities. Such successes provide hope that it is possible to reverse urban decline. Whether, at the same time, it is possible to create jobs and housing in ways that empower the people within poor communities and increase community capacity for self-directed growth is less certain, as funders emphasize physical production over the goals of empowerment and capacity building. This article, based on in-depth interviews with more than 100 community activists, describes the efforts of CBDOs to balance pressures to concentrate on physical production with their efforts to build capacity and create empowerment within poor communities. The implications of how they do so for the new institutionalism paradigm in organization theory are explored.
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