Social performance management in financial institutions: Case of Pride Microfinance Limited

Abstract

The study was conducted to find out whether microfinance institutions particularly Pride Microfinance is helping the economically active poor to improve their livelihoods in order to help validate the mission statement of Pride in respect to the achievement whether it is achieving the social economic transformation of the clients it serves. The study had three objectives namely to ascertain how social performance is managed in Pride, to find out whether Pride is achieving its social mission and to investigate that lasting commitments to social performance implemented by Pride. The research study was designed following the ethos of descriptive, retrospective studies. In respect of retrospective design, the study used observed welfare indicators to perform quantitative and qualitative analyses attribute their current welfare to past financial interventions by the financial institution. The study findings indicate that generally, Pride microfinance is mindful of its social commitment in the mission but the institution has not mainstreamed social performance to give it comparable importance to that of sustainability and financial performance. The services of Pride either deliberately or accidentally do help entrepreneurs to better their lives as evidenced by better welfare ratings for those who had stayed longer and borrowed more loans. The welfare improvements of the clients of Pride microfinance can be attributed to the loans but there exist other factors that intervene and either accelerate success or back track it for some of the clients hence laying ground for further research. The study recommendation is that Pride further harnesses the potential of the instituted social performance management system implement in order to improve management trust in the social information collected to collaborate the financial performance data in order to improve the quality of management decision.