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This paper examines the difficulties faced by microfinance loan officers in their daily work and highlights that these difficulties may be grouped into six categories: variable remuneration; fieldwork; trade-off between the social mission and financial objectives; leadership problems; exhausting work both morally and physically and microfinance organization (MFO) not showing enough consideration for its employees.

This paper analyses the root causes of employee turnover in social enterprises by examining a well-known microfinance organization that was created in 2008 as a non-bank financial institution and which is active in a Latin American country. Its mission is to “accompany with adequate and responsible financial services the development of entrepreneurial families, mainly from the rural sector”. Among its clients, 65% are rural and half are women. This major MFO is experiencing high growth (57.8% in 2016) and had 63 branches across the country in 2016. At the time of data collection (in 2016), it employed more than 1,100 staff members, including approximately 600 loan officers (55% of them being women), had a loan portfolio of more than 85 million USD and served approximately 105,000 active borrowers.

One can be highly tempted to say that microfinance institutions and other social enterprises should dedicate the same attention to their employees as to their clients by deploying ethical and socially responsible human resource management (HRM) practices, but it is not that simple. Implementing socially responsible HRM practices may be particularly costly, though some practices may be less expensive than others. Moreover, as most microfinance institutions operate in developing countries, the resources or infrastructure needed to implement some of these practices may be limited, and corporate social responsibility is less formalized or institutionalized in such countries than in developed ones (Visser, 2008). Moreover, one may also argue that the financial resources required to implement such practices could instead be dedicated to the development of better services for clients or to practices favouring a better respect of those clients. The implementation of socially responsible HRM practices may thus, in some cases, limit the pursuit of MFOs’ social mission, even if some authors argue that, on the contrary, implementing ethical HRM practices contributes to the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for external stakeholders. It should also be noted that the funders of MFOs may not make the implementation of such practices a priority and can even be against it. Therefore, as mentioned by Foote (2001, p. 35) in his study on charities, “a difficult balance must be achieved between the ethical interests of charity sector employees and the demands of the bottom line in a market of increasing competition for donations”.

Based on our study, one can be highly tempted to say that microfinance institutions and other social enterprises should dedicate the same attention to their employees as to their clients by deploying ethical and socially responsible HRM practices, but it is not that simple. Implementing socially responsible HRM practices may be particularly costly, though some practices may be less expensive than others. Moreover, as most microfinance institutions operate in developing countries, the resources or infrastructures needed to implement some of these practices may be limited, and corporate social responsibility is less formalized or institutionalized in such countries than in developed ones (Visser, 2008). Moreover, one may also argue that the financial resources required to implement such practices could instead be dedicated to the development of better services for clients or to practices favouring a better respect of those clients. The implementation of socially responsible HRM practices may thus, in some cases, limit the pursuit of MFOs’ social mission, even if some authors argue that, on the contrary, implementing ethical HRM practices contributes to the development of CSR for external stakeholders. It should also be noted that the funders of MFOs may not make the implementation of such practices a priority and can even be against it.

Our study contributes to the literature on ethics and HRM since it discusses the pertinence of implementing ethical and socially responsible HRM in non-conventional organizations. It also contributes to the literature on microfinance and social enterprises by offering a comprehensive overview of the difficulties faced by employees of such organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of fixed-term contracts (FTCs) on labour productivity, wages (i.e. labour cost), and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits).

The authors apply dynamic panel data techniques to detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data covering the period 1999-2006.

Results indicate that FTCs exert stronger positive effects on productivity than on wages and (accordingly) that the use of FTCs increases firms’ profitability.

This paper is one of the first to examine the FTC-productivity-wage nexus while addressing three important methodological issues related to the state dependency of the three explained variables, to firm time-invariant heterogeneity, and to the endogeneity of FTCs.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a systematic overview of dimensions that need to be enfolded or considered in microfinance policies and strategies designs as well as impact studies aiming to empower or assess the empowerment of a specific category of women, namely women entrepreneurs. Afterward, the study aims to suggest some directions for future studies.

To meet its purpose, the paper applies the systematic review approach. The applied methodology follows guidelines for systematic reviews of social and economic interventions as set out by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). More specifically, the authors examine 87 empirical papers from 6 databases investigating the impact of microfinance institutions on the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.

Overall, findings of the study suggest that dimensions of the empowerment of women entrepreneurs are formed and conditioned by normative, cognitive and regulative institutional logics. Additionally, the systematic review suggests key research avenues and calls for more inclusive empirical studies in terms of geographical coverage, microfinance services/products assessed and method designs applied.

Findings of the current review provide clear theoretical contribution and useful practical implications in the field of microfinance and the empowerment of women entrepreneurs. On the one hand, the study suggests to scholars key avenues for future studies likely to bring new insights in terms of theory, context and methods. On the other hand, this study extents the understanding of microfinance practitioners on the concept of women empowerment as the field of female entrepreneurship is concerned. This implication is likely to enable the design of appropriate microfinance strategies and policies, allowing women entrepreneurs to achieve an overall empowerment.

The present paper contributes to the debate around the multidimensionality of the concept, “women empowerment.” The multidimensional nature of the addressed concept is well established in the existing literature. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has provided a conceptual analysis of empowerment dimensions of a particular category of women, namely women entrepreneurs. Unlike most of the studies assuming that all women face identical challenges, the present paper brings new insights on the topic as it is built on a different assumption. The paper takes ground from the institutional theory and applies it to the specific case of female entrepreneurship.