Microfinance was rapidly hailed as a poverty alleviation tool by development agencies, researchers and practitioners. Despite the increasing capacity of MFIs to manage their financial sustainability, impact studies available report disappointingly low social achievements. Social performance assessment tools available struggle to combat a narrow MFI-centric approach which often overlooks contextual issues and institutional characteristics which can influence MFIs’ poverty reduction potential. This research’s main objective is to identify which and explain how organisational structures and management systems impact on MFIs’ social performance. This work uses a bottom-up research strategy, based on a 10-month extensive fieldwork in Bangladesh, a 490 household data-set, an ethnographic community study in Modhupur and institutional analyses of ASA and PDBF. It analyses the livelihoods, capitals and strategies of rural households in Bangladesh, explores their perceptions and experiences of microfinance and examines the management of socio-financial trade-offs within MFIs at different hierarchical levels. The research’s main findings seriously question the poverty reducing potential of standardised commercialised microfinance in settings characterised by vulnerability, shocks and seasonality, such as rural Bangladesh. It finds that although most MFIs have similar poverty reduction missions it is the way in which their organisational structures, managementsystems and working cultures are arranged that shapes their financial and social achievements. There is strong evidence that commercial MFIs can experience a silent practice drift at the field level in Bangladesh and that the commercialisation of MFIs provides strong incentives for the field staff to prioritise the achievement of their financial targets to the detriment of social performance, discouraging them from reporting low social performance. There are therefore few reasons why MFI senior managers should question their model and policies. This drift can manifest itself through malpractices hard-selling of loans, poor client selection and follow-up procedures, forcing clients into borrowing more and larger loans, using extreme forms of pressure through abusive language and behaviours and micro-collateral. This process usually has longer-term negative impacts on clients, especially the very poor who adopt successive short-term coping tactics to meet inflexible repayment schedules. This thesis concludes that commercial microfinance should not be targeted to the poorest and that more consideration should be given to clientselection and follow-up procedures. This thesis argues that the commercialisation of the global microfinance industry serves the interests of diverse stakeholders who contribute to maintaining the industry’s reputation though the media. This can be deemed an iceberg industry (that shows little of its actual workings and impacts to the public) which is sustained through considerable support from an increasing number of private investors for whom MFIs’ commercial expansion (regardless of its social achievements) serves their financial and political interests.

Social Protection, and in particular social assistance, has emerged as a key area of international development policy. Recognition of the important role of social protection policies is aligned to a growing consensus on their role in reducing poverty and vulnerability and in preventing people from falling into poverty and facilitating exit from poverty. In the late 1990s, the World Bank (WB) developed the Social Risk Management (SRM) framework as a new conceptual framework for analysing social protection in developing countries. In the SRM, risk taking, the proactive management of risk at household level, was argued to be essential in enabling poor households to invest and grasp opportunities for economic development and poverty reduction. This research examines and conceptualizes the why and the how of investment by households in poverty. The research also examines the extent to which access to social assistance interventions may play a positive or negative role in the process. The thesis argues that the SRM oversimplifies and underestimates a variety of factors and processes that play a role in the household’s investment behaviour in three dimensions of their life, namely savings, education and health. In the research, household decision making is conceptualised as a two stage process of ‘constructing’ investment preferences (what they are willing to do), and of ‘realizing’ or ‘revealing’ household choices (what they actually do). The empirical findings indicate that access to social assistance did not appear to have a role in constructing investment preferences. However, it had limited role under certain circumstances in favouring the realization of households’ investment preferences. The research suggests that the SRM fails to encapsulate the complexity of household investment decisions, crucial to exiting poverty. Building on some of the concepts emerged in the research, I develop a ‘behavioural’ variation of the ‘risk taking /poverty exit’ component of the SRM in an attempt to improve the explanatory capacity of this framework. The research utilises the grounded theory framework (GT), adapted to a low income country context, and investigates the role of social assistance in household behaviour through an extensive field work in Bangladesh with urban households targeted by the Old Age Allowance Scheme (OAA), one of the largest social assistance schemes in Bangladesh.

This study offers the framing analysis of local and foreign-based media on the coverage of "Rohingya: Gambia files case against Myanmar at ICJ" for over nine months period and examines the bias in their new contents and attention to the case. Evaluation of the number of coverage published by each media shows that local media do not pay as much attention as foreign-based media, and undermines the seriousness of the issue. Moreover, the finding highlights that the news representation of local media is evidently in favor of the Myanmar government in support of iconic national leader - Aung San Suu Kyi while abetting in covering up the violent action of the Myanmar military. Findings also suggest that foreign- based media covered the case most with genocide frame whereas self-defense frame was the most popular one in the coverage of local media. This study employed comparative content analysis to detect the bias and observe the different framings of media. Keywords: Bias, Frames, media frames, Framing theory, Myanmar, Rakhine, Bangladesh.

博士（経済学） / 甲第457号 / 124p / Hitotsubashi University

The primary water sources of twenty million people in Bangladesh are contaminated with arsenic; almost sixty percent of population does not have access to electricity, and close to ninety percent of the population cooks with solid fuels. These statistics have severe health and development implications for Bangladesh. Polygeneration technology is being developed that can address all of these issues with a single system, by utilizing the exhaust heat from a biogas electricity generator to remove arsenic from water via membrane distillation and using excess biogas as a cooking fuel. History is full of stories of investment in developing countries gone horribly wrong. Thorough market research and analysis can help prevent that in the future. This thesis demonstrates the process of determining beneficial components of business models for the deployment of polygeneration technology in Bangladesh. This involves understanding the existing business models used for providing rural services in Bangladesh and assessing which of these models would be more sustainable for biogas based polygeneration systems within the socio-economic and institutional context of rural Bangladesh. This is achieved through the development of a set of sustainability indicators and an interview questionnaire for providers of rural services in Bangladesh, which was applied during a field study in early 2013. The sustainability indicator scores were calculated and analyzed in the context of strategic management tools, such as the Business Model Canvas. The combination of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of these case studies highlights crucial business model elements. Based on the results of the sustainability indicators for the field sites included in the study, community and cooperative business models provide a sustainable structure for the multiple products and inputs inherent in a polygeneration system. They have the ability to reach a wider customer base and are not focused on maximizing their profit, but still make reasonable economic choices.

Due to rapid urbanization agricultural lands in metropolitan areas are shrinking.  As a result our cities are getting more dependent on distant places for food, which is making the food system vulnerable. In the context of rapid urbanization and climate change a resilient agricultural system of Dhaka could be one of the key to ensure a sustainable future. To investigatethe impact of urbanization and climate change on the resilience of the agricultural system of Dhaka a resilience assessment of agricultural system of Dhaka has been done. The study followed the resilience assessment wordbook for practitioner as method of assessment. As methods to collect and analyze data field studies, interview, GIS analysis, policy analysis were conducted. This study shows that, urbanization is directly responsible for changes in both quality and quantity of the agricultural land of Dhaka whereas climate change does not affect directly. Even with this rapid urbanization there is still scope to take measures to make agricultural system resilient by preserving land within Dhaka metropolitan area. Therefore two Strategies have been proposed. First one is; increasing local food production without administrative reformation and the second; reducing the future demand by administrative and economic decentralization of Dhaka. Both of the strategies will require strong political will along with recognition of importance of agricultural land within the city boundary.

Ready-made garment (RMG) industry is the biggest and most importantindustry of Bangladesh with the highest overall export earnings and foreigncurrency earnings in the country. And international market is the biggestexporting destination for Bangladesh RMG industry. However, the overallcondition of this sector does not look well recently. Research suggests thathundreds of garment factories have been shut down during the past few yearsdue to not coping up with the different challenges of internationalization,although the overall export earnings remain relatively unchanged. Therefore,the authors conducted this research to identify and present in-depthknowledge about the major challenges that Bangladesh RMG industry arefacing while internationalizing and operating in foreign markets in recentyears, as the author believes these challenges could be the possible reasonsthat forcing RMG SMEs to shut down their operations.This research aims to identify the internationalization challenges forBangladesh RMG companies in international markets. Suchinternationalization challenges focusing on international markets have notbeen studied much previously and thus have created a knowledge gap.Therefore, this study addresses such a knowledge gap by answering thefollowing research question: What is the process of Internationalization of Bangladesh RMGcompanies? What are the internationalization challenges faced by the BangladeshRMG companies? How do the RMG companies manage the challenges they face?Empirical data was gathered by interviewing respondents from three RMGcompanies in Bangladesh and through secondary data sources. The findingsof this study show that Bangladesh RMG companies internationalize rapidlywithin a couple of years from inception. The study also identified somemajor internationalization challenges such as competition, major industrialaccidents, Infrastruture, etc. Moreover, network relastionships are found tobe essential in Bangladesh RMG companies‘ internationalization. Theauthors then analyzed the findings by applying previous literature and theirown created conceptual framework. Furthermore, this research providestheoretical and managerial implications on this essential topic. Key words: Competition, Exporting, Internationalization, Internationalization challenges,Infrastructures, Networking, Readymade Garment (RMG) Industry.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(地域研究) / 甲第18394号 / 地博第163号 / 新制||地||55(附属図書館) / 31252 / 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科東南アジア地域研究専攻 / (主査)准教授 安藤 和雄, 教授 小林 繁男, 准教授 竹田 晋也 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Area Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第18640号 / 理博第4019号 / 新制||理||1579(附属図書館) / 31554 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科地球惑星科学専攻 / (主査)教授 石川 裕彦, 准教授 林 泰一, 教授 余田 成男 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

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