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Comparing Virtue, Consequentialist, and Deontological Ethics-Based Corporate Social Responsibility: Mitigating Microfinance Risk in Institutional Voids

Journal of Business Ethics volume 126, pages 487–512 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries, portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry. Though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations, not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries. Further, though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries, the impact of such CSR practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry. We use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics-based CSR theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics-based CSR—virtue, consequentialist, and deontological. We argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk, virtue ethics-based CSR is potentially the most useful form of CSR toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk. We test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world. Our findings suggest that virtue ethics-based CSR is not just an important philosophical paradigm; it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice.

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  1. Department of Management, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA

    Subrata Chakrabarty & A. Erin Bass

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  1. Subrata Chakrabarty
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Correspondence to Subrata Chakrabarty.

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Chakrabarty, S., Erin Bass, A. Comparing Virtue, Consequentialist, and Deontological Ethics-Based Corporate Social Responsibility: Mitigating Microfinance Risk in Institutional Voids. J Bus Ethics 126, 487–512 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1963-0

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Keywords

  • Ethics-based CSR theory
  • Social entrepreneurship
  • Stakeholder theory
  • Institutional theory
  • Sustainability
  • Bottom of the pyramid