Understanding Social Performance
A 'Practice Drift' at the Frontline of Microfinance Institutions in Bangladesh
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3883635 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mathilde Maîtrot (0000-0001-9365-6380, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 623-654 |
| Publication date | 2019-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Development and Change (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0012-155X • E-ISSN: 1467-7660 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/dech.12398 |
| OpenAlex | W2793368340 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 74 |
This article examines the role of microfinance staff and procedures in enabling microfinance's social mission. It does so primarily through studying institutional ruling relations and practices in rural Bangladesh. Attempting to move away from the linear and deterministic approaches of impact studies, it ethnographically scrutinizes the everyday practices of implementers. Findings point to the emergence of systemic practices that jeopardize microfinance institutions' potential to perform their social mission. These include low client-selection standards, hard selling of loans and forceful loan renewal, little follow-up on loan use, and abusive and violent client-retention and repayment-collection strategies. This is conceptualized as a 'practice drift' as distinct from the commonly reported 'mission drift'. Rather than stemming from planned, top-down changes in institutional mission and strategy, practice drift emerges from a displacement of decision-making processes to the branches. The article argues that observed changes in microfinance practice are enabled by decentralized structures and management systems that leave the choice of tactics used to achieve targets to the discretion of field staff
Business · Discretion · Economic growth · Economics · Loan · Microfinance · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Finance · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Law · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion
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Examining mission drift in client targeting among Indian for‐profit microfinance institutions
Interrogating Microfinance Performance Beyond Products, Clients and the Environment
Microfinance loan officers before and during Covid-19
Migration speculation
The Moral Economy of Microfinance in Rural Bangladesh
The Underside of Microfinance
The Political Economy of Microfinance
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Poverty Capital
The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
The Microfinance Promise
The Mirage of Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid
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Loan Officers’ Gender and Microfinance Repayment Rates
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Assessing the Effect of Microfinance on Vulnerability and Poverty among Low Income Households
Texts and the ontology of organizations and institutions
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Estimating the Impact of Microcredit on Those Who Take It Up
The privatization of public interest
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Innovative flexible products in microfinance
A Paradox of Learning in Project Cycle Management and the Role of Organizational Culture
Microfinance Repayment Performance in Bangladesh
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Microfinance Mission Drift
Mainstreaming Microfinance
Health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households
Microfinancing the Developing World
Contested Credit Landscapes
The Paradox of Sustainability
The Empirics of Microfinance
Financial performance and Outreach
Microcredit as a Grass‐Roots Policy for International Development
NGOs, Civil Society, and the State in Bangladesh
Microfinance Meets the Market
How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew, and Almost Destroyed a Generation in India
Who cares? The personal and professional problems of NGO fieldworkers in Bangladesh
The Burden of Microfinance Debt
Demystifying Micro-Credit
On the difficulty of studying 'civil society
On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life
The Antinomies of 'Financial Inclusion
Relational Thinking
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,25 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |