TY - GEN
T1 - Breadth and depth
T2 - 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems 2012, AMCIS 2012
AU - Weber, David Michael
AU - Kulkarni, Uday
AU - Riggins, Frederick J.
PY - 2012/1/1
Y1 - 2012/1/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Development
KW - Global
KW - ICT adoption
KW - International
KW - MFI
KW - Microfinance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84877892139&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84877892139&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84877892139
SN - 9781622768271
T3 - 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems 2012, AMCIS 2012
SP - 1211
EP - 1223
BT - 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems 2012, AMCIS 2012
PB - AIS/ICIS Administrative Office
Y2 - 9 August 2012 through 12 August 2012
ER -