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The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether focus on social output affects the efficiency of MFIs. Inclusive growth is the key developmental aim for many developing countries, including India. The role of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in promoting financial inclusion is widely applauded. However, to achieve financial sustainability, MFIs have become highly commercialised and are seen to have drifted away from their social mission. Various studies have shown the efficiency of MFIs on financial parameters. MFIs being a social enterprise, it is important to include social output among the efficiency parameters.

This study attempts to compare the efficiency of MFIs with and without social performances across the various size of MFIs based on their asset, i.e. large, medium and small. This study uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for assessing an MFI’s efficiency. For calculating the social output score, the Gutman Scale is used. Efficiency is calculated with and without social output, and the resulting scores are compared to assess the impact of social performance on the efficiency of MFIs.

The results of this study allow us to conclude that with the inclusion of social output, the efficiency of MFIs improves across various categories. In terms of social performances, it is concluded that MFIs are targeting women and mostly working in rural areas but have neglected issues like health and education.

The findings of this study will help MFIs in formulating their mission and vision statements and in achieving the objective of financial inclusion without experiencing mission drift.

As per the vision of promoting agricultural collectives, the government of India promoted the farmer producer organization (FPO). However, with the fast growth of FPOs, there is an issue with performance measurement. This study is aimed at the development of performance metrics for the FPOs.

In the first stage, we selected the measures from a secondary literature review and identified 11 parameters. Further, the Delphi round was conducted in the second stage with 26 experts working with FPOs and they were asked to rank these parameters. Based on the weightage of each parameter, the most important parameters were decided. The mean ranks and deviations of the performance parameters were analyzed. The hypothesis test and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance have been further used to validate the performance parameters. In the third stage, based on the inputs from the experts, a questionnaire was designed, and the data was collected from chief executive officers (CEOs) of the FPOs to identify the most important performance parameters.

The experts identified governance, financial support and professional management as important measures for FPOs. In the second round of the study, finance and governance were identified as the most important factors. It is important to note that finance and governance were the two most important factors in making an FPO successful. Finally, a 100-point metric was developed in seven major heads.

This study will be advantageous for all the stakeholders involved in the promotion of FPOs, including FPOs themselves, funding agencies providing funds to FPOs, skill-building organizations, etc.

This paper is one of its kind to develop a 100 points metrics for performance evaluation of FPOs.

Lack of access to finance is one of the major contributing to low profitability in agriculture. Various policy interventions were performed for promoting access to finance. However, access to finance always remained one of the biggest challenges to Indian policymakers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the policy interventions in the areas of agriculture finance.

This paper makes an attempt to explore the relation of earlier policy initiatives with the current microfinance industry as well. The data for the paper are collected from Reserve Bank of India Archive Museum at Pune. This Museum is having huge collection of archives of policy documents of the Indian financial sector and is one of its kinds in India.

The study concludes that many of the interventions of today were earlier experimented or proposed in the past but, due to some or the other reason those, interventions were not successful. The study concludes that if those interventions had been implemented that time, it would have taken India in one of the tops in the list of financial inclusion.

This paper is a unique in its feature as it has tried to link the evolution of agriculture finance and the microfinance industry of India as microfinance is an integral part of agricultural finance in India.

Women establish about half of the world's population and constitute a significant part of the workforce. Women's empowerment is considered as an entry point for women's integration and inclusion into development. Economic independence is recognized as the key to women's empowerment. Economic independence provides women with autonomy in other aspects of their life. By organizing them into groups and providing financial freedom by enhancing the livelihood of women, cooperatives are playing an essential role in the empowerment of women. In the last two decades, self-help group (SHGs) has evolved as an informal form of cooperative and has played a very important role in women empowerment.

This paper is an attempt to explore the role of cooperatives in women empowerment. Firstly, an intensive search of literature was done to identify the role of cooperatives in bringing women empowerment in the Scopus database. This data were analysed to look at the trends in research using VOSviewer. Later, the findings of this study are supported by field observation.

The paper also develops a framework for women empowerment through cooperatives and reviews the field experiences to support the framework. The paper concludes that the theory of economic modernity holds true for women empowerment, as economic independence through cooperatives has helped women gain access to control over resources and led to women empowerment.

The paper develops a framework and supports the findings that economic independence is a key to women empowerment, and cooperatives are playing an important role in the same. It will help practitioners in framing the policies and interventions for women empowerment. The findings of the paper will be helpful in setting directions for research in this domain.

The paper is an original contribution as it has reviewed literature and used VOSviewer. Along with the review, it has supported the findings from qualitative observations from the field.

This paper examines the impact of the Covid-19 induced lockdown on selected vegetables to confirm if the vegetable supply chain was disrupted during that period. It attempts to see if direct marketing via FPOs/FPCs helped Indian farmers to cope with adverse situations aroused in vegetable marketing.

This study opted for mixed methods research. First, a granular data set comprising daily observation on wholesale price and the market arrival of vegetables were analysed. Descriptive statistics and Kalmogorov-Smirnov test were used to understand the severity of disruptions in the vegetable supply chain in India during the lockdown. Then, qualitative information from different stakeholders engaged in the vegetable marketing was collected through a phone survey and assessed using content analysis to comprehend how FPOs have helped farmer’s during this crisis.

This paper confirms disruptions in the vegetable supply chain. Quantities of chosen vegetables arriving in the mandis were significantly lower than in the previous year for all phases of lockdown. Consequently, prices were much higher than in 2019–2020 for both the lockdown and subsequent phases unlock. Results further suggest that those farmers who are already in networks of FPOs/FPCs are able to get benefited. It was also observed that direct marketing through institutional supports is being more explored in the regions where FPOs/FPCs already exist.

Since it is an exploratory study involving a small sample, the research results may lack generalisability.

This study provides scope for direct marketing through FPOs/FPCs in improving the food supply chain.

The last two decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the body of research on the theoretical perspective of the performance of international joint ventures (IJVs). However, the evidence on the antecedents of IJVs performance is inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to critically review the quantitative studies on the antecedents of the performance of IJVs to identify the research gaps in this area and to prepare a future research agenda using the theory, context, characteristics and methodology (TCCM) framework.

Meta-Analysis review is conducted on 97 papers from A*, A and B category journals from the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List.

The results reveal the homogeneity in antecedents such as administrative distance, BOD (board of directors) involvement, resource interdependency, flexibility, learning, competitive overlap, cultural distance, R&D (research and development) intensity, contract, relatedness, the existence of a local IJVs partner, trust, operational experience, partners capability, size asymmetry, goal congruency, capital adequacy, economic distance and heterogeneity in the antecedents such as equity ownership, commitment, control, cooperation and conflict are heterogeneous.

This review seeks to provide deeper insights, which help us to contribute toward the development of the research field of antecedents of the performance of IJVs. The authors have synthesized 97 independent samples with a total sample size of 52,268.

The study aims to co-create a “priority action roadmap for women's economic empowerment” based on women's top priorities to charting recovery directions. Doing so contributes to the growing body of knowledge on COVID-19 literature in at least four areas: assessing COVID-19 impacts on women entrepreneurs; mapping these impacts with four interdependent women's entrepreneurial ecosystem components; innovating a co-creation methodology based on remote participatory research; and providing a replicable model to perform action-oriented research in the context of COVID-19 impacts.

A co-creation methodology is proposed, combining systems-thinking and remote participatory research to engage women entrepreneurs and institutional stakeholders to prioritize impact, response actions and recovery needs in the wake of COVID-19. A ranking exercise using the analytic hierarchy process was used to derive ranking and assess user inputs' consistency.

The study exemplifies the integration of participatory methods and mathematical tool to engage stakeholders in prioritizing recovery work. PARWEE action items ranked by entrepreneurs and vetted by institutional stakeholders cover: access to finances, capacity building, health care, public and private partnership, marketing opportunities and formation of active advocacy groups to voice out women entrepreneurs' needs to institutional stakeholders. Results show a slight difference in the ranking of priority actions between experience owners and fresh starters.

This study innovated a new co-creation methodology for remotely engaging stakeholders of the women's entrepreneurial ecosystem, which is grounded in evidence and provides a replicable model for performing action-oriented research.