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Housing researchers often seek to investigate the needs of the populations they study so that they may evaluate the policies targeted at ‘fixing’ the problems faced by the residents of public housing communities. Traditionally, researchers base these recommendations on the statistical exploration of primary and secondary quantitative data. However, some researchers contend that these traditional research tools fail to capture the meaning and significance of housing for its inhabitants and offer little insight into larger related issues of politics and economy (Jacobs, 2003). From the perspective of this group of researchers, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to craft a survey instrument or any other measurement tool, for that matter, which could capture the divergent human experience of families living in public housing across the nation given the diversity of factors that shape the lives of residents.

This chapter, together with those that follow, builds upon the ideas presented in the previous volume in this series (Maginn, Thompson, & Tonts, 2008). There we outlined our vision for a ‘pragmatic renaissance’ in contemporary qualitative research in urban studies. We argued that to survive as an effective and frequently used tool for policy development, a more systematic approach is needed in the way that qualitative-informed applied urban research is conceptualised and undertaken. In opening this volume we build on these initial ideas using housing as a meta-case study to progress the case for a systematic approach to qualitative research methods. We do this to both stimulate broad debate about the ways, in which qualitative research in urban/housing scholarship might be of greater use to policymakers and practitioners, as well as to suggest a way forward in realising the ‘pragmatic renaissance’.

Institutional complexity shapes what is perceived as possible by framing cultural debates about practices, but organizations in turn shape how logics interpenetrate fields, suggesting that we must consider both the degree of compatibility between logics and the degree of practice variation in a field. Our exploratory study of three entrepreneurial impact finance organizations considers how they situate their practices between the market and community logics. We offer a recursive view that considers how multiple institutional logics shape practices and how entrepreneurial organizations adapt and invent new practices that, through their continued use, can influence the institutional complexity of a field.