All Myth and Ceremony? Examining the Causes and Logic of the Mission Shift in Microfinance from Microenterprise Credit to Financial Inclusion. Issue 1 (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mader, Philip; Sabrow, Sophia
• Is Part Of: Forum for social economics. Volume 48:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 22
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: microfinance -- financial inclusion -- discourse analysis -- self-preservation; Economics -- Sociological aspects -- Periodicals; Economics -- Periodicals; 330
• DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2015.1056204
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0736-0932

Abstract

Abstract : This contribution assesses the shift in the mission of microfinance from providing small loans for entrepreneurship to the broader agenda of financial inclusion. Three leading organisations' publications inform a discourse analysis, which allows the strategic shift to be analysed using two theoretical frames from organisational sociology: instrumental rationalism and sociological institutionalism. The proclaimed shift in strategy is found to consist less of rational innovation towards the aim of poverty alleviation than of "myth and ceremony" for the sake of organisational self-preservation.