Understanding social performance: a ‘practice drift’ at the frontline of Microfinance Institutions in Bangladesh

TY - JOUR

T1 - Understanding social performance

T2 - a ‘practice drift’ at the frontline of Microfinance Institutions in Bangladesh

AU - Maitrot, Mathilde Rose Louise

N1 - © 2018 The Authors.

PY - 2019/5/2

Y1 - 2019/5/2

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Microfinance

KW - Bangladesh

KW - street-level bureaucracy

KW - NGO

KW - Poverty

KW - organisational capacity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043346048&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/dech.12398

DO - 10.1111/dech.12398

M3 - Article

SN - 0012-155X

VL - 50

SP - 623

EP - 654

JO - Development and change

JF - Development and change

IS - 3

ER -