EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Measuring Social Performance in Social Enterprises: A Global Study of Microfinance Institutions

Leif Atle Beisland, Kwame Ohene Djan, Roy Mersland and Trond Randøy

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2021, vol. 171, issue 1, 71 pages

Abstract: Social enterprises in the microfinance industry need to adhere to both financial and social demands. Critics argue that there is a mission drift away from the social mission, and this has motivated the introduction of social rating agencies to strengthen the business ethics of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Using a global dataset of 204 socially rated MFIs from 58 countries, we assess the factors that drive the social performance ratings of MFIs. Overall our results show that social ratings of MFIs are significantly related to financial performance, greater outreach especially in rural areas, well-defined social objectives, staff commitment, service quality and an enhanced customer service. We observe that various rating agencies attach different importance to each of the social indicators. The public policy implication is that social rating agencies need to become more transparent, to reduce the information asymmetries between heterogenous socially motivated investors and the focal MFI.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/324143/3/M ... cial-Enterprises.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring Social Performance in Social Enterprises: A Global Study of Microfinance Institutions (2021) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:324143

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().

 
Page updated 2025-08-26
Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:324143