20 years of research in microfinance: An information management approach

Abstract

In the last 20 years, microfinance has moved from a promise to reality, although with ups and downs. This paper reviews 1,874 papers published from 1997 to 2017 to perform a scientometric analysis of the microfinance field. The literature review is based on bibliometric data: keyword co-occurrence networks and citation networks were exploited for knowledge mapping. Data analysis shows the two research traditions: papers focusing on clients (welfarists) and papers focusing on microfinance entities themselves (institutionalists). Institutionalism, which had little presence in the early research in microfinance, now exhibits great strength. A chronological analysis reveals the evolution of the topics most interesting to researchers: the first stage described the innovations of the microcredit practices and their impact; the second and very expansive stage in which microfinance institutions' peculiarities were analyzed; and nowadays the sector is mature but with negative aspects arising, such as mission drift. The keywords analysis discovers emerging research topics, shows the use of sophisticated techniques, and recognizes an emerging trend of the sector: achieving financial inclusion. AbstractIn the last 20 years, microfinance has moved from a promise to reality, although with ups and downs. This paper reviews 1,874 papers published from 1997 to 2017 to perform a scientometric analysis of the microfinance field. The literature review is based on bibliometric data: keyword cooccurrence networks and citation networks were exploited for knowledge mapping. Data analysis shows the two research traditions: papers focusing on clients (welfarists) and papers focusing on microfinance entities themselves (institutionalists). Institutionalism, which had little presence in the early research in microfinance, now exhibits great strength. A chronological analysis reveals the evolution of the topics most interesting to researchers: the first stage described the innovations of the microcredit practices and their impact; the second and very expansive stage in which microfinance institutions' peculiarities were analyzed; and nowadays the sector is mature but with negative aspects arising, such as mission drift.The keywords analysis discovers emerging research topics, shows the use of sophisticated techniques, and recognizes an emerging trend of the sector: achieving financial inclusion.

Toward a realistic theory of social entrepreneurship (NGOs) grounded on microfinance research: Selling dreams to society

“…A recent scientometric study of 1,395 microfinance research papers indicates that research seems to have followed the practice of microfinance with a focus on innovations and promise for clients (the dream and the story) in the first stage, a focus on the institution in the second stage (the social enterprise) and a questioning of mission and drift in the third stage (Gutiérrez‐Nieto and Serrano‐Cinca, ). Thus, researchers have been following the life cycle of the microfinance industry as outlined in this article.…”

“…Thus, researchers have been following the life cycle of the microfinance industry as outlined in this article. Moreover, recent trends show that microfinance researchers are moving toward financial inclusion and SE (Gutiérrez‐Nieto and Serrano‐Cinca, ), again indicating that while the validity of a SE theory based on one sector is limited, but a large number of researchers seem to be inclined to go that way.…”

“…This lower frequency of focus on social problem, its solution and the target segment of society (clients) that is sought to be improved is problematic since the research from microfinance shows that social entrepreneurs focus on it and a large body of microfinance research has focused on the clients. Figure 1 uses the frequencies in the total row of the Appendix and compares the key themes of SE definitions with the usual themes of microfinance research (corroborated by Gutiérrez-Nieto and Serrano-Cinca, 2018). In the microfinance sector, the social challenge was to solve the problem of poverty by encouraging micro-entrepreneurship through the use of microcredit (Morduch, 1999;Yunus, 2003).…”

“…Mission drift in microfinance has become an important area of study since 2008 (Gutiérrez‐Nieto and Serrano‐Cinca, ). Researchers have looked into this problem of mission drift from different angles: are MFIs increasingly becoming for‐profits and whether they are still targeting the poor, the women, and rural clients or are they progressively targeting the nonpoor, men, and urban clients?…”

Stimulating Enterprises' Innovation Activity: Financial Aspect

“…First of all, the state is interested in creating favorable starting conditions for start-up entrepreneurs. As a rule, they do not have enough material and financial resources to establish their organization's production infrastructure, for example, roads, communications, etc [5,6].…”