Arvind Ashta

BHAI: Building Humane Advances and Institutions · Research Teaching Mentoring

This article highlights the determinants of financial inclusion within the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), focusing on the moderating role of the male/female entrepreneurial rate. To this end, we collected quantitative data for the eight member countries from 2010 to 2020 and used a panel model to determine if total financial incl...

The study examines the antecedents of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in 54 countries and finds similarities in six out of eight variables considered. Regression analysis reveals that entrepreneurship is influenced directly and positively by employment and the control of corruption and negatively by tertiary enrolment and innovation. Intrap...

We examine whether all three roles of universities (education, research and development, and collaboration with industry for knowledge transfer) are essential for a country’s innovation relative to other countries and its peers. The study employs OLS and path analysis to determine the significant indicators affecting the global innovation score of...

We analyze environmental laws and regulations enacted by 125 countries from 1990 to 2021. An examination of the legislation dynamics yields four principal observations. First, countries with a higher degree of development tend to enact more environmental legislation than less developed countries. Second, parliamentary systems are associated with a...

Innovation-focused education and research have been identified as critical contributors to enhancing the innovative behaviour of individuals, organisations, and economies. Therefore, Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) embrace innovations to transform teaching, research, and knowledge transfer that impact economic and social objectives. The rese...

Financial services providers have the funds to finance climate change, and new entrepreneurs would like to join this effort. They need ideas on what fintechs can do to make money yet be sustainable. The research purpose of this study is to explore what fintechs are doing in this field of climate change and what theoretical and policy implications c...

Microfinance is the provision of financial services to disadvantaged people and the financially excluded, often with a social mission of poverty alleviation and women empowerment. There are many different forms of microfinance institutions (MFIs): for-profit, not-for-profit and state-owned, all of which use different strategies to improve socio-eco...

This study measures the relative importance of the determinants of the intentions to use autonomous vehicles. We hypothesize that the intention to use is influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived ease and that the perceived usefulness will be determined by driving pleasure and psychological ownership. The perceived risk may also negatively a...

There are isolated streams of research in spiritual capital, spiritual leadership, and community leadership. We put together these three notions and indicate that taken together, a spiritual leader with a community leadership style can use his spiritual capital to boost both the social and financial performance of the organization and reduce risk....

We are living in a world with a lot of inequalities: while people in the wealthiest countries in the world have access to running water, electricity, and gas for heating, over 800 million people are suffering from hunger, who are underfed or badly fed, and one in three people are not sure to get adequate food every day.The problem is not just that...

The innovations in new products and services that are carried out mostly in capital�intensive countries and trickle down to developing countries for consumption by adapting them as per the market requirement are termed as 'Glocalisation'. 'Reverse innovation' refers to those innovations that are rendered to a product in a developing country, befo...

For the past few decades, microfinance has played a significant role in banking the unbanked, but its impact on poverty has been disputed. Gradually, the attention of policymakers shifted to financial inclusion, hoping that financial deepening could impact poverty. The world bank has published three sets of Global Findex reports in 2011, 2014, and...

Based on a qualitative single case study with eight interviews, this study lays the foundation for literature on the motivation for transforming from a quasi-governmental entity to a social business. The context of this case study is a spin off of business schools from the French chambers of commerce and industry. This spin off was encouraged by en...

Le Covid-19 est une pandémie mondiale. Les efforts individuels des pays ne fonctionnent pas puisque le virus se déplace avec les mouvements de populations. Bien que de nombreux pays aient engagé des dépenses considérables, les modalités de financement ne sont pas évidentes. Une des suggestions pour gérer la crise du Covid serait de créer un gouvern...

Social entrepreneurship is a topic studied in depth in recent years, especially due to the continuous emergence of organizations categorized within this concept during the economic crisis. However, very little research has been done on the team associated to the social entrepreneur. By looking at a case of social enterprise in the gastronomy sector...

While working in artificial intelligence for large institutions, Gilda H. Darlas found that the use of algorithms exacerbated social inequalities generated by the financial models of banks. These social inequalities had resulted from decisions based on past data and negative emotions, thereby perpetuating the dark side of entrepreneurial finance. S...

Strategic Management theory suggests that environmental opportunities and threats influence a firm's strategy. A change in the business environment should therefore lead to a change in strategy. A crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, should therefore impact business strategy, directly or indirectly, through changes in societies and markets. Small...

For microfinance institutions (MFIs) with double bottom line objectives and trade‐offs, the optimal loan size can be determined by using a combination of Markovian Chains with transition probabilities and expected cash flows. Progressive lending may be safe over a range of loan sizes, beyond which a rational borrower would indulge in a strategic de...

Using Markov chains can improve the forecasting of the state of the total loan amount for the next month (growth, stagnation, or decline), compared to traditional forecasting techniques, if each of the previous month's basic information is available. Traditional statistical techniques have high forecasting errors and low accuracy for predicting the...

Fintech signifies technology that is new and aimed at serving the clients of financial institutions. This chapter traces the evolution of technology in finance and the response of banks to this and outlines the strategic risks created by banks and the threats and challenges imposed by the entry incumbents. Banks introduced various innovations in th...

My previous research had considered that businesses do not like rapid changes in laws till they can study the effect that the new law would have on their business. However, the legislator may need to enact in favor of minority interests. If a social innovation succeeds, owing to regulatory advantages provided for doing good to an impoverished secti...

Although FinTechs and incumbents are applying artificial intelligence (AI) differently, they both expect that the status‐quo will likely be maintained through collaboration rather than competition. Both perceive BigTechs as a strategic threat given their AI capabilities and their entrance into financial services. Incumbents are experimenting with m...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating a rush of opportunities in the financial sector, but financial organizations need to be aware of the risks inherent in the use of this technology. Financial organizations are integrating AI in their operations: in‐house, outsourced, or ecosystem‐based. The growth of AI‐based fintech firms has encouraged seve...

Both academic and nonacademic literature is evolving following the oscillating development of artificial intelligence (AI) and computing power's evolution in their application to finance and financial markets. The limits to economic growth encountered after the financial crisis and, successively, the recent pandemic bursts have posed new challenges...

Neobanks are recent innovations in the financial landscape. They usually offer a limited range of financial products through mobile phones. This interview with the president of Nickel, France’s leading neobank, finds that it relies on a physical distribution network of tobacconists and is aimed at the financially excluded. Low costs and a human tou...

Sustainable Development Goal 16 talks about Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, and goal 10 talks about reducing inequality. A major problem exposed by the COVID-19 crisis is that public deficits seem to be the normal state in the business cycle’s booms and downturns, limiting capacity for emergencies. Corporate capitalism has an incentive to...

It is often considered that weak ties permit obtaining new information which contributes to successful ventures. However, is this true for all segments of the population? We explore the use of ties in very poor microsocial milieus of people who have resorted to microcredit. We find that strong ties and weak ties are both relevant in different situa...

Group lending is a social innovation because the substitution of the guarantee on assets by the collective guarantee of the group of belonging leads to the financial inclusion of the excluded. In a lending group, members who know each other mutually control each other to guarantee repayment of the loan and its circulation among the members. Is the...

Could work-sharing solve the problems of unemployment, inequality and global warming, and yet produce a happier world? This literature review takes a multidisciplinary view of the problem. It finds that theoretically work-sharing can do all these things, but the existing evidence of its performance is debatable and there are hesitations from indust...

Notre contribution se situe sur un axe alternatif de recherche, encore peu investigué, autour de la question de la réhumanisation/déshumanisation qui résulterait de l’offre numérique de services financiers. À travers quatre études de cas originales (Chine, Vietnam, Europe et États-Unis), nous avons constaté que l’automatisation des routines par les...

The objective of the study was to enhance our knowledge on institutional bottlenecks for financial development, financial inclusion, and microfinance, using Mauritania as a case study. We used a mixed-methods’ methodology that combines analysis of secondary data and an expert interview. First, a logit model with dummy independent variables was used...

The concept of reverse innovation can be defined on a spectrum ranging from narrow to broad. We look at the broad concept, which indicates that an innovation travels successfully from a developing country to a developed country. A few authors have indicated that microcredit is a reverse innovation. However, credit by itself is not an innovation, no...

a₹tha

The diffusion of social innovation requires overcoming institutional resilience and ignorance of innovation. The forces of the marketing and development work of the organization managers may be unable to overcome the strength of the institutional framework. These institution brakes include soft norms such as values, ideology, and psychology, as wel...

Microsavings institutions that cannot provide microcredit are unlikely to be self‐sustaining. Payments banks are Indian microfinance institutions that can collect microsavings, but cannot give microcredit. They have been mainly unsuccessful owing to low spreads between interest given to savers and interest received from the reserve bank or commerci...

Lifting the poor from poverty through financial and social inclusion is the ultimate target and raison d'etre of microfinance. As the most recent literature has recognized, microfinance institutions have economically worked well in operating microcredit, but the aim of raising the living standard of their indigent clients has not been generally met...

Financial stress scales need to be incorporated into the borrower selection procedure before providing a loan. The three financial stress scales that we examined have strong correlations, but the two involving at least eight questions are better for discriminating between poor and rich. The financial stress indicator that separates male and female...

A stream of research has examined the financial well‐being of individuals. However, less research has been conducted on the financial well‐being of young adults in developing economies. To further examine this domain, we developed a conceptual framework based on the existing literature of consumer research and financial well‐being and assessed how...

The present study investigates the sustainability of microenterprises using primary data on 222 microenterprises in the informal small business segment of India. We identified relevant factors inducing entrepreneurs to sustain their business despite facing challenges emerging in the business world from time to time. The findings indicate that m...

How can we apply the life cycle concept to social entrepreneurship? Ashta first explains the evolution of the industry life cycle concept. He then applies it to a few microfinance cases which lasted for more than a century so that the reader can see the concept in its entirety. These cases are from different developed countries that also experience...

How can the development of microfinance in developed countries (Chapter 3) and in developing countries (Chapter 4) inform theory and make it evolve from a static theory to a more dynamic one? Ashta’s significant contribution in this chapter is to summarize in a theoretical framework, that of the industry life cycle, the different propositions for s...

Ashta concludes the book and looks at the “So What” question. How does this realistic theory make any difference to other social entrepreneurship theories, education and research? Ashta’s first significant contribution in this chapter is to highlight the reasons for dynamism that emerged from this book. Second, this work combines the work on social...

Ashta argues that a combination of high-speed technological change and inequalities is leading to an increase in social entrepreneurship, which in turn drives research in social entrepreneurship. However, research in this disciplinary field of social entrepreneurship is young, definitional, largely case-based and static. To make social entrepreneur...

This chapter has two objectives: to link the social entrepreneurship concepts to what researchers observe in the modern-day microfinance industry in developing countries and to link the life cycle concept to the financial inclusion need and microfinance industry in developing countries. Ashta’s first contribution in this chapter is that he provides...

In this chapter, Ashta introduces the reader to basic elements of social entrepreneurship research. He distinguishes the concept of social entrepreneurship from that of social enterprise and finds that there is a large overlap in research between the two. He introduces the concepts of both fields that would later be used as building blocks. Ashta’s...

Using evidence from the microfinance sector, which is considered a leading sector of social entrepreneurship, this book attempts to push the boundaries of research in this field. While recent studies consider that commercial enterprises, not-for-profits and social enterprises are formed by entrepreneurs with different personal identities, they do n...

As alternative source of financing, microfinance and crowdfunding organizations are increasingly relying on commitment, compliance and cooperation among individuals, groups, and communities. In considering the extraordinary growth of the market for microfunding and microlending in recent years, this article aims to investigate a number of important...

Work sharing is a sociological solution to reduce inequalities in the workplace. The macroeconomics of work-sharing is elementary: if the same total number of hours can be redistributed to a larger number of people, everyone would be employed by sharing the opportunity to earn. If there was work-sharing, with the flexibility to reduce or increase h...

Social entrepreneurs sell dreams of solving a social problem of a segment of society to entice a broader segment of society to subsidize their ventures. They are motivated by a combination of passion and compassion, need for creativity, problem solving, and esteem. They sell their dreams by storytelling and narratives in order to obtain subsidized...

European microfinance suffers from a visibility deficit. It is rarely mentioned in the media. Our research question is ‘Why does European microfinance suffer from a lack of visibility in the press?’ This study looked at news reports and press releases over a 18-month period (2016–2018) to check if European microfinance and its innovations were in t...

Institutional development of microcredit in India has been influenced by global pressures, interinstitutional contradictions, and intrainstitutional conflicts in logics. The hybrid model used in India often created dissonance among institutions that operated for a common cause with competing logics. Logics clashed and differences in their legitimac...

The FinTech revolution captures the simultaneous attack of a large number of technologies, notably mobile telephones and blockchain, which are ushering in efficiency or outreach to multiple niche markets. The use of mobile telephone technology has expanded Internet reach to the excluded, created possibilities for business where banks were not histo...

In the aftermath of the funding problems that swept the world after the 2006-2008 financial crises, people took the initiative to find alternative sources of funding by bypassing the conventional financial institutions. Alternative finance links individuals who have extra funds with those who need them. While different types of alternative finance...

Research purpose The paper discusses the realistic theory of social entrepreneurship wherein social entrepreneurs sell dreams to society and create and capture value by story-telling. The study sees if visions and mission statements of social entrepreneurs tell different stories. Research design/methodology/approach We examine microfinance and cr...

The world differs substantially in development, culture, and well-being. Culture impacts development and well-being. Cultural factors play a crucial role in attaining a higher level of well-being. Moreover, there is a direct connection between the culture of learning and well-being. The countries with higher level of development have been often ass...

Gandhi would have argued that microfinance should focus on the poorest. Gandhism would require that microfinance revert to its initial objective of helping the poor to help themselves out of poverty. Social impacts should come before financial profits. The greater impact would require providing a wider panorama of financial services. Microfinance p...

Minorities seeking majority legislations need to communicate the increased option set and limit the downside risk for the system. Social movements urging for change require institutional support including enabling legislation. Public policy support may require associating with similar movements or other stakeholders. Loss aversion, downside risk, c...

Microfinance is a new credit segment that can benefit greatly from the advantages the credit scoring technique can offer. In the developing countries even the professionals are not familiar with the technique of credit scoring and many microfinance institutions that serve millions of borrowers do not consider using it. Since the credit scoring tech...

The use of poverty scoring is associated with increased outreach towards poor borrowers only in nonprofit microfinance institutions while, in for-profit microfinance institutions, poverty scoring is associated with increased availability of financing. Poverty scoring allows for-profit microfinance institutions to borrow funds from social investors...

Greece has endured higher death rates, more suicides, increased prostitution, emigration, splitting up of families, rationing of bank withdrawals, and capital controls in the last few years. The authors believe the crisis is a result of inherent disadvantages in terms of trade. The Greeks need to look out for themselves and formulate appropriate ta...

Legislators in developed countries are loss-averse and hesitant to make regulatory changes to accommodate new technologies, fearing destruction of a system that works.

Abstract: Purpose – Microfinance impact evaluation studies help in discovering client needs which are diverse, special and different from the needs of the conventional bankable clients. Thus, such area of market research is becoming essential for microfinance institutions for designing better client-centred products. In this research, the authors...

A school of thought hails microcredit as a social innovation, a messiah to enable people to help themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship. An opposing school of thought considers microcredit as a capitalist demon ensnaring the poor in poverty and debt. The layman and the million professionals working in this industry are at a loss to make...

Sustainable development requires balancing environmental, social and financial concerns. This requires investors to select and monitor entrepreneurs who would balance these triple concerns. At the same time, there has been considerable attention to “small is beautiful” and micro-investors have stepped in to look for such eco-entrepreneurs. To the c...

Disabled people, being deprived of economic activities, may nevertheless engage in non-economic activities within the household, especially in extended family households in poor countries. These may include looking after children. Thus, there may be a close relationship between human, physical and financial resources and consumption, production and...

Disabled people, being deprived of economic activities, may nevertheless engage in non-economic activities within the household, especially in extended family households in poor countries. These may include looking after children. Thus, there may be a close relationship between human, physical and financial resources and consumption, production and...

The paper traces the evolution of The Microfinance Sector of Togo over the half century from its independence in 1960 to 2010. The methodology uses oral histories, consisting of a round table discussion with heads of Microfinance Institutions as well as regulatory, supervisory and financing institutions and academics, followed by semi-structured in...

Microentrepreneurs need financial capital as well as human and social capital. Banks prefer refinancing microfinance institutions and capacity building organizations rather than dealing with microentrepreneurs directly. In this chapter, we examine if the advent of crowdfunding could disturb such relations. Our research question is “what is the perc...

The originality of this paper lies in the use of credit counterparties based on either the material (or physical) collateral or personal guarantees on human mission drift indicators. This methodology is based on the very foundations of microfinance, the extension of credit to people excluded from the traditional financial system using social solida...

Microentrepreneurs need financial capital as well as human and social capital. Banks prefer refinancing microfinance institutions and capacity building organizations rather than dealing with microentrepreneurs directly. In this chapter, we examine if the advent of crowdfunding could disturb such relations. Our research question is “what is the perc...

As alternative source of financing, microfinance and crowdfunding organizations are increasingly relying on commitment, compliance and cooperation among individuals, groups, and communities. In considering the extraordinary growth of the market for microfunding and microlending in recent years, this article aims to investigate a number of important...

Article publié dans la revue

This paper studies the Greek balance of payments over the las 18 years. It places this analysis in the background of an Economic Union. The Greek state is an example of acute suffering as well as shame thrust upon a people once their industries had been destroyed through inherent disadvantages in terms of trade. They need to look out for themselves...

The author claims that the neoliberal analysis known as creative destruction is not working. Replacing less productive entities with more productive ones will not ultimately create enough demand to support growth. What will such a world look like? This is one of the more imaginative pieces we have published, exploring cooperative models of the econ...

A study of a small sample of French dual-career entrepreneurs—businesspeople who were once in salaried employment—focuses on their motivations for change and how they viewed themselves in terms of five personality traits: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. In contrast to previous research that i...

How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life, R. Skidelsky, E. Skidelsky. Penguin Books, London, U.K. (2013), (243 pp.)

Male suicides seem to accompany microfinance growth and penetration.

A crowdfunding site in a developing country like India faces strategic challenges due to both supply-side and demand barriers in the social lending market.