What makes them tick? : exploring the anatomy of major microenterprise finance organizations

By contrast, this monograph probes the institutional causes of success, focusing on four major microenterprise finance institutions -- Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Bank Rakyat Indonesia"s Unit Banking System, BancoSol in Bolivia, and Actuar Bogota in Colombia. The first two chapters provide a general introduction to the four institutions and review their financial structures. Chapters 3-6, the core of the study, use the analogy of a living body to examine four key systems operating in the institutions. Chapter 3 presents the skeleton or institutional structure of each organization, focusing on the location of functions within each institution, and comparing productivity and costs; the performance of the retail outlets, where interactions with clients takes place, are particularly important. Chapter 4 examines the use of information (the "circulatory system"), while Chapter 5, "adding flesh to the bone," reviews human resource use (staff recruitment, training, motivation, and evaluation). Finally, Chapter 6 views the institutions as living wholes as they strive to maintain institutional health by meeting the challenges that arise at various stages of their life cycles, such as growing, innovating, and coping with shocks; it includes a discussion of leadership and decision making. Brief summaries are appended to each chapter and when taken together, form a portrait of the elements that contribute to scale, self-sufficiency, and longevity. Includes bibliography.