This dissertation explores how the scaling-up of education NGOs relates to their organizational strategies. The study applies an explanatory comparative case study approach, by following the trajectory of Opportunity—a service delivery NGO—, and Inclusion—a social advocacy NGO—in Argentina, that scaled-up to multiple locations. The mechanisms followed for their geographic scaling-up strategies were also dissimilar, and the tensions emerging from the implementation of these approaches illustrate the challenges scaled-up NGOs face when they incorporate multiple strategies and organizational designs.

The study examines two open systems organizational theories—neo-institutionalism and resource dependency—, to establish which one explains better if the two scaled-up education NGOs changed their strategy orientation and how. The research looks at how changes in strategies of the two scaled-up NGOs related to education policies, legitimacy, resources and age of the NGOs. The dissertation also studies the mechanisms that the education NGOs followed to scale-up geographically, as well as the challenges and advantages for the strategies of the NGOs. It explores how the underlying identities or purposes of the collaboration systems established by the scaled-up NGOs—linked to particular organizational designs—affected the ways in which the scaled-up NGOs carried out their strategies and work.

The study concludes that newer versions of neo-institutionalism explain the behavior and strategies of education NGOs, better than resource dependency, because newer versions of neo-institutionalism recognize that organizations are not entirely passive entities, while clarifying the manner in which institutions exert pressures on organizations to conform. The research also concludes that while international and national institutions promote the hybridization of NGOs strategies—by fomenting the participation of education NGOs' in service delivery and advocacy—, the combination of these two strategies in the collaboration systems of geographically scaled-up NGOs is problematic. Education scaled-up NGOs might face a dilemma: while political advocacy and service delivery reinforce each other, both strategies are also founded on different and sometimes contradictory organizational designs, underlying purposes, and identities, which might ultimately hinder the ways in which strategies are carried out.