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This study aims to explore how a microlending digital platform connects social investors in developed countries and micro-entrepreneurs in Africa. However, additional research is necessary to discuss how online auction models are designed and implemented and how existing theories can explain their use in the so-called developing countries.

The research is based on a single case study: an online auction model for microlending named AfricaMC. Two main methods collected empirical data, namely, online participant observation, i.e. real-time participation in the online auction market and in the forum of discussions, where the authors observed the processes of microlending transactions as registered members; analysis of online documents, by reviewing forum discussions, analyzing reports, blogs, chats and other materials.

The results suggest that using sociological and information systems theoretical lenses in a complementary manner could provide greater value than using economics.

The study makes two main contributions. First, it mobilizes a pluralist theoretical approach based on economic, sociological and information systems perspectives to improve the understanding of microlending digital platforms using online auction models. Second, it uses the understanding produced from data analysis of one particular African case to validate propositions derived from these three theoretical approaches that might be applied to other cases.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Grameen America's response to COVID-19 pandemic. This is accomplished by identifying and analyzing the key initiatives implemented by Grameen America within the framework of selected United Nations' Sustainability Development Goals (UN’s SD Goals).

This study has used qualitative content analysis to analyze financial and nonfinancial information of Grameen Bank.

This study follows a qualitative content analysis method to precisely gauge the shift in Grameen’s strategy and focus, as well as to assess the impact of its initiatives on the small business community before and after the pandemic. The findings showcase that Grameen’s longstanding mission to alleviate poverty is in line with the UN’s SD Goal 1. Also, Grameen’s commitment to create partnerships with external organizations to offer credit and noncredit services and support is consistent with UN’s SD Goal 17.

Notwithstanding the significant contributions of this case study, the findings are limited in some respects. First, this case study focuses on the Grameen America’s unique experience regarding its response to COVID-19 pandemic. This may affect the interpretation and generalization of the findings of this study. Performing comparative views across wide range of relevant microlending institutions could help improve the generalization of the findings. Also, this case study examines the impact on women and minority groups who were particularly affected by the pandemic. The results should, therefore, be interpreted with care as circumstances may change over time.

The implication for practice is that policymakers should encourage the creation of more member-based financial and non-financial institutions that can help members integrate financially and socially into society. Also, practitioners should increase their ethical duties and responsibilities to their members in society in good and bad times as members tend to value the ethical aspect of financial businesses.

The social implication of the findings is that helping members of society to cope with the difficulties brought about by COVID increased the sense of belonging among members and made them feel cared for, thereby increasing financial and social inclusion among underserved people.

Prior literature addressed the initiatives of microlending institutions such as Grameen Bank to achieve financial inclusion among financially vulnerable women. This case study contributes to the literature on financial inclusion and poverty alleviation by examining Grameen America’s response to the pandemic by identifying and assessing Grameen America (GA’s) key initiatives and their impact within the framework of the UN’s SD Goals in the post COVID-19 world.

In this paper, the authors suggest that Central Americans can use entrepreneurship to solve economic uncertainty in their home country and that entrepreneurship can contribute to reducing the number of undocumented migrants to the USA.

The authors first illustrate the context of Central American illegal migration to the USA from a transitional entrepreneurship perspective, the authors address the economic drivers of illegal migration from Central America, which results in marginalization in the USA. Second, the authors build a theoretical model that suggests that Central Americans can improve their entrepreneurial abilities through the entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism.

Central Americans at risk of illegally migrating to the USA have high entrepreneurial aptitudes. Entrepreneurship can help them avoid the economic uncertainty that drives Central Americans to illegally migrate to the USA and become part of a marginalized community of undocumented immigrants. This conceptual paper introduces an entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism as a tool for Central Americans to reshape their personalities and increase their entrepreneurial abilities in their home countries. In particular, entrepreneurial intentions reshape the personality characteristics of individuals (in terms of high agreeableness and openness to experiences, as well as low neuroticism) through the entrepreneurial cognitive adjustment mechanism, which consists of reflective action in sensemaking, cognitive frameworks in pattern recognition and coping in positive affect.

This paper studies Central Americans at risk of illegal migration using the lens of transitional entrepreneurship, which advances the understanding of the antecedents to marginalized immigrant communities in the USA and suggests a possible solution for this phenomenon. Besides, the authors build a cognitive mechanism to facilitate the transitional process starting from entrepreneurial intention to reshaping individuals' personality, which further opens individuals' minds to entrepreneurial opportunities. Since entrepreneurial intention applies the same way to all entrepreneurs, the authors' aim of constructing the entrepreneurial intention unfolding process will go beyond transitional entrepreneurship and contribute to intention-action knowledge generation (Donaldson et al., 2021). Moreover, the conceptual study contributes to public policy such that international and local agencies can better utilize resources and implement long-term solutions to the drivers of illegal migration from Central America to the USA.

Crowdfunding (CF) has become an increasingly popular means of financing for entrepreneurs and has attracted significant attention from both researchers and practitioners in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate the core content and knowledge diffusion paths in the CF field. Specifically, we aim to identify the main topics and themes that have emerged in this field and to trace the evolution of CF knowledge over time.

This study employs co-word clustering and main path analysis (MPA) to examine the historical development of CF research based on 1,528 journal articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database.

The results of the analysis reveal that CF research focuses on seven themes: sustainability, entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurship, fintech, social entrepreneurship, social capital, and microcredits. The analysis of the four main paths reveals that equity CF has been the dominant topic in the past years. Recently, CF research has tended to focus on topics such as fintech, the COVID-19 pandemic, competition, Brexit, and policy response.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore knowledge diffusion dynamics in the CF field. Overall, the study offers a structure for analyzing the paths through which knowledge is diffused, enabling scholars to effectively manage a large volume of research papers and gain a deeper understanding of the historical, current, and future trends in the development of CF.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.

Recognising the growing importance of environmental and sustainable activities and the role of communication strategies in soliciting their financing, this work investigates the influence of message framing, green emphasis and quantitative information on the probability of green crowdfunding campaigns' success.

This analysis is based on crowdfunding campaigns published between 2015 and 2020 on the Indiegogo platform in the category “Community projects – Environment”. The study develops an in-depth qualitative content analysis of the projects before performing an empirical examination to determine funding causes.

Communication strategies (message framing, green emphasis and quantitative goals) affect funding success. However, project category moderates the impact of message framing and green emphasis on campaign success. While positive framing increases agri-food campaign success, negative framing is more effective for clean energy and climate preservation projects. Moreover, indication of a quantitative goal and a marked green emphasis in a project's presentation increase campaign success, but a too marked green emphasis is only effective for agri-food projects.

Green entrepreneurs and campaign managers must work carefully on their projects' communication, accounting for the type of product proposed, emphasising green components in its description and utilising quantitative information to present future goals. These strategies maximise backers' responses and enable entrepreneurs to obtain funding. The authors’ findings may be extended to other contexts, including the banking sector, to craft effective communication strategies for green financial products.

By applying framing theory in a new context (i.e. the online financing of green entrepreneurs), this study identifies new campaign success determinants and provides evidence for the moderating role of project category. Furthermore, the study highlights the need to develop different communication strategies for social and environmental-oriented projects.