Guest blogger Bill Kramer is principal of The Global Challenge Network, LLC, an executive education and training company. From 2001 through mid-2007, he worked on pro-poor business strategies with WRI. Previously, Bill founded a non-profit focusing on the relationship of knowledge to economic development and enjoyed a long career in the private sector, founding a dozen companies, most of which were in the book business.

By Bill Kramer

Last week’s Wall Street Journal story about ICICI Bank's micro-finance loan collection tactics and the Business Week article last month about Mexico's Banco Azteca (and the interesting follow-on posts) raise a series of complex issues around doing business at the BoP. These questions have been present from the movement's early days, but are taking on new currency as BoP markets mature. Finance and information technology, in particular, are recognized as lucrative opportunities, and BoP-targeted enterprises grow up, rapidly. The debates around microfinance interest rates (cap or not) and business practices (Are banks conning borrowers? Are borrowers getting in over their heads?) have raged since the inception of the modern microfinance industry by NGOs more than 20 years ago.

Nobody will, or should, condone thuggish tactics in debt collection. It's a problem across the income spectrum (banks do play hardball with the non-BoP, too; I speak from 30 years of entrepreneurial business experience). The current flaps will, I hope, serve to establish higher standards for business at the BOP, something WRI called for back in 2004, and which Cornell's BoP protocol effort continues to push.

Debtors at all levels can get in over their heads; the impacts on the BoP of such mistakes are, of course, perhaps more profound and damaging. The appropriate responses are not to limit access, but to provide much more financial education, incentives for good business practices, and swift and sure punishment for illegal or unethical practices.

These stories help me clarify my own thinking on ethics at the BoP. (For another examination of BoP business ethics, do read Nitin Rao’s excellent post, Does BoP Success Require the Moral Imperative?) Looking at multiple cases from different industries, I have identified four major aspects of BoP business ethics:

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Position: Managing Director, Sustainable Supply Chain Management Center

Location: Eugene, Oregon

Organization: Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon

Job Description: The Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) Center will be a cornerstone of the Lundquist College of Business’s strategic objective of becoming internationally renowned in selected focus areas. The Center can achieve this mission by promoting goals that reflect our values: excellence in programmatic research focused teaching, and high-value outreach at the intersection of supply chain management and environmental stewardship.

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