Abstract
A decade ago, the microfinance industry prided itself on its trends toward financial and operational sustainability. Recently, investors, donors, lenders, regulators, and microfinance institutions have been more concerned with social and outreach performance. Transactions cost and distance theories inform a new ICT-enabled microfinance institution (MFI) outreach theory positing that information and communication technology (ICT) adoption among MFIs will result in direct improvements to MFI operations and a greater capacity for poverty and geographic outreach. These propositions are modeled using a case study methodology with primary research materials collected from 14 microfinance institutions in 8 countries. Using a pattern-matching mode of analysis, we find that different ICTs impact two types of outreach: geographic and poverty. Policy, database, and software-related ICT adoption activities impact poverty outreach due to their support of flexibility and information. Infrastructure, networking, hardware, and telephony ICT adoption activities impact geographic outreach since these areas support connectivity.
Recommended Citation
Weber, David; Kulkarni, Uday; and Riggins, Frederick, "Breadth and Depth:The Impact of ICT Adoption on Outreach Capabilities of Microfinance Institutions" (2012). AMCIS 2012 Proceedings. 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2012/proceedings/ICTinGlobalDev/2
Breadth and Depth:The Impact of ICT Adoption on Outreach Capabilities of Microfinance Institutions
A decade ago, the microfinance industry prided itself on its trends toward financial and operational sustainability. Recently, investors, donors, lenders, regulators, and microfinance institutions have been more concerned with social and outreach performance. Transactions cost and distance theories inform a new ICT-enabled microfinance institution (MFI) outreach theory positing that information and communication technology (ICT) adoption among MFIs will result in direct improvements to MFI operations and a greater capacity for poverty and geographic outreach. These propositions are modeled using a case study methodology with primary research materials collected from 14 microfinance institutions in 8 countries. Using a pattern-matching mode of analysis, we find that different ICTs impact two types of outreach: geographic and poverty. Policy, database, and software-related ICT adoption activities impact poverty outreach due to their support of flexibility and information. Infrastructure, networking, hardware, and telephony ICT adoption activities impact geographic outreach since these areas support connectivity.