The above issues are related with the nature of human behaviour i.e. personality trait, which might vary culture to culture (Irwin & Scott, 2010). I cited different theories in this chapter where most of them were emerged from the studies in first world economies, very few of them in developing countries and none of them in Bangladeshi context.
68
The perspective of the research proposes PCB sector to undertake initiatives for finding out the scope of their possible contribution. This proposition has a prone to sit on another side from conventional nature of SME financing market. The loan officers and other concerned people of financial market are used to practicing the traditional system where PCBs lend money for profitability as a kind of business organisation. In this traditional system, PCBs do not have any responsibility to borrowers. Therefore, it is very difficult to motivate the PCBs to invest their time, knowledge and money for increasing borrowers’ financial accessibility. Therefore, win-win framework is required for their contribution. This is the main challenge of this proposition. To overcome this challenge, PCBs and concerned people will logically raise the specific problems in the field including cost-benefit analysis.
To extract the actual truth- I need to step into the field to answer the question of “What is” the actual truth in the frame of reality (Crotty, 1998p-10) of interaction between PCBs and SMEs. The concerned later question is “What does it create meaning” (Crotty, 1998p-10) i.e. what consistent initiatives are to be undertaken for increasing financing eligibility and why and how. How the “SME financing tradition” could be broken and should be reinvestigated in a new perspective beyond the traditional. The Trap informed by previous studies fits in the Bangladesh context; “what is” the actual truth underlying poor financing accessibility in the context and how could this achieved knowledge be utilised in developing the situation- are the ground of my philosophical perspective.
According to Crotty (1998), the first question specifies my ontological and the second one does my Epistemological involvement. Both the position also involves me in a framework of investigation plan, which fall in the framework of Crotty (1998) made in order of Epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods. The framework helps me to stand on the ground of constructionism and subjectivism epistemological position, as I have to learn from the field and use that knowledge to develop a new way of seeing the world beyond the traditional financing system for breaking the cycle.
Discourse analysis commonly refers to be the examination of language through pattern of pronunciation, choice of words or sentence structure. It constitutes coherence and sequence of repeatable relations to object, subject and related stated things that
69
influence our views and therefore create new meaning (Foucault, 1970). Over the last half century, the discourse analysis has been used in different aspects of social science; however, the use of discourse is recent in management research probably for fierce competitive business environment. In this environment, the innovation and challenge inspires relative researchers to view things more critically in new stance (Elliot, 1996). Elliot (1996) importantly mentions that discourse analysis is potential in the social factors rather than only linguistic factors. The discourse is effective for social welfare (Lessa, 2005) and disciplinary power of management coaching and the difference between employee and executive coaching (Nielsen & Norreklit, 2009). Mavin (2001) and Potter & Wetherall (1987) argued that the beliefs, actions and events grounds the underlying process of social system that more critically comes out through discourse analysis. Banister (1994) straightway advised that discourse analysis is effective for interpreting social data, which not only produce new meaning but also extract the actual truth/problem. Elliot also mentions that discourse analysis is useful in psychology and consumer research, which is associated with cognitive factors. It could be effective for this research as the risks of information asymmetry lives in the borrowers’ intention. More likely, for prospect-based financing where the primary source of repayment is business prospect, the risk assessment is critical for risk assessment team.
Discourse analysis is a form of data analysis for qualitative research. It not only extract new concepts to construct something, rather it extract the actual truth interpreted by different participants’ ideology (Banister, 1994). The basic characteristics of qualitative research are that it explores the truth in social research. This means, only quantifying data in different context of a theory only produce the existing condition based on the truth that the previous studies claimed. The qualitative researchers intend to get into a further step to extract new truth if there is any. However, simple qualitative data analysis also was conducted in a frame of existing theory and restricted to play in a boundary. The discourse analysis allows researcher to get into a further steps where the ideology of participants is more important than a questionnaire either structured or semi- structured. The ideology is created in participants in a long time observation and experience. This ideology less likely comes out from a questionnaire. Dijk (1995; 1997) viewed that discourse is more effective in exploring the truth from different ideology of different participants.
70
The different ideology explores the truth about problems and issues in social science. Another ideology is that the discourse analysis is effective when the discourse emerges from opposition party either it is political opposition or interest-based opposition. Actually, it is less likely limited within some specific subject and issues. The it has been used in social relationship and inequality dominated by power and control in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, language, religion, age, nationality or word region (Dijk, 1995). The above discussion about first accessing SME financing clearly reflected that the group of SME employ more people, it has much contribution in GDP but thy have been established as a stigmatized group of SMEs in getting financing accessibility to external source such as PCBs. The stigmatization happens based on an unscientific blame that small business financing is costly for banks. This is the widely accepted truth in traditional financing market and literature. For example, Udell (2006) found that there is almost no difference in pricing between large business financing and small business financing. To extract scientifically the original truth in this inequality of financing behaviour, a discursive approach could be effective from both the powerful financing sources such as PCBs and stigmatized group of first accessing SMEs. The discursive approach is effective for extracting “what is” more deeply with the participants’ ideology that is created by their observation and experience. Furthermore, the aim of main stance of this study is to find more than the “what is” on the same ground i.e. their ideology. Therefore, the discursive approach will be effective for articulating the “what is” beyond the existing scholars’ findings. The ideology on how to change the tradition will be effective by interpreting the ideology of the experienced participants.
3.11. Chapter summary
In this chapter, I have searched the contents to answer to the research questions on a theoretical-conceptual that focus on the risk financing determinants, risk assessment process and associated barriers in making financing decision. In this framework, the changing attitude of the PCBs is to enhancing interactions with the particular group of SMEs (Section 1.3). The aim of the interaction is to collect the soft information of the first accessing SMEs to reduce information asymmetric affect. In the situational setting of Bangladesh, the macro-economic initiatives undertaken by BB introduced holistic regulations to enhance the financial accessibility of the particular group of SMEs. The focal point here is that the BB instructed PCBs to enhance interaction with the SMEs to find prospect through considering soft information; however, the entire initiatives have
71
failed. The financial accessibility setting is still surrounded in the traditional collateral- based financial system and the group of SMEs are isolated from the mainstream financial sources, the PCBs. Therefore, the soft information factors could be further research. The soft information factors are not well informed for the first accessing SMEs. This studies conceptualises some factors in literature (section 3.5). These factors are not researched in the contextual setting of Bangladesh. This study finds the factors from the Bangladeshi context titled as CCA factors where the soft information is defined as CCA (Cognitive Collateral Assets) (Section CCA is defined as the on which the conceptual framework has been developed (Section 5.6.3).
Figure 1. Traditional SME financing trap Source: Created by the Author
In this figure 1, it is perceived that the prospect-based financing is almost isolated (Akter and Abdullah, 2016) from the mainstream financial system. The main reason is that the soft information is not well defined, the interaction process is not well structured and the information asymmetry is still untreated. Therefore, the issues related to the interaction, soft information and the information asymmetry needs to be further researched in a holistic manner. To thus far, it is found that a fundamental problem is addressed in the traditional SME financing. I entitle that as SME financing trap.
73
Chapter Four: Research Methodology
4.1. Introduction
The aim of the research is to explore the role of Private Commercial Banks (PCBs) in increasing the availability of finance for SMEs. Following on from the literature review in the preceding chapter, a theoretical perspective on the primary data collection is developed in this chapter. In order to do this, the epistemological and ontological basis of the research is discussed in this chapter. The generation and analysing of arenas constructed by socio-economic culture of business in everyday life is central to the study (Elliott, 1996) in the particular context of Bangladesh. Hence, the study has discussed ontology and epistemology that was adopted in this study (Crotty, 1998). Furthermore, I have adopted an interpretivist research paradigm since this study intends to discover something scientifically unaddressed in the reality rather than any specific objectives (Crotty, 1998). The shape of discourse analysis adopted in this study uses interpretive repertories (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Interpretive repertories are associated with the themes emerged from the research text. Finally, this chapter deals with data collection and analysis process and associated methods with the explanation of how such methods fit with ethical concerns, limitations and core practicalities.