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GEST-S449

Social innovation

academic year
2024-2025

Course teacher(s)

Marek HUDON (Coordinator)

ECTS credits

5

Language(s) of instruction

english

Course content

1. Roots of microfinance (ROSCAs and cooperatives)

2. Management structure of microfinance institutions

3. Group lending

4. Beyond group lending

5. Savings and insurance

6. Empowerment and gender issues in microfinance

7. Ethical issues related to interest rates

8. Impact

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

At the end of the course, the students will be able to :

  • Critically think about social entreprises (microfinance)

  • Understand different microfinance products

  • Develop some reasoning on management issues of social entreprises

Teaching methods and learning activities

Lectures

Exercises

Case studies

Contribution to the teaching profile

The course contributes to the development of the following skills :

  • Analyse change contexts from an integrative perspective, making sense of all available empirical data with an innovative and rigourous theoretical framework.

  • Recommend practical and creative managerial solutions to the most pressing organizational and societal problems.

  • Negotiate project recommendations across cultures and stakeholder groups to increase organizational readiness for change.

  • Operationalize negotiated solutions into actionable managerial strategies.

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

The main text for this course is The Economics of Microfinance, 2010, by Beatriz Armendáriz and Jonathan Morduch, published by MIT Press. Other material for the course includes a number of published and unpublished papers, which can be downloaded electronically.

Other information

Contacts

marek.hudon@ulb.ac.be

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

  • Oral examination

Oral examination

Oral exam

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

100% oral exam

Language(s) of evaluation

  • english

Programmes