Financial crisis have been happening for a long time now with little empirical studies investigating the real causes of these crisis and providing viable remedies. We provide empirical evidence of a three-stage cyclical pattern in an economy, following our investigation of the financial crisis of the past, where a gradual deterioration of financial structures occur that leads the economy into recession: The 'sustained economic activity' stage, characterised by the 'booming economic activity' stage. Unsolicited actions of many of the financial markets' players operate during both of these stages to push the economy into a 'booming economic activity'; the next stage is the formation of a 'bubble' and gradual enlargement of this credit 'bubble' in the sector; in the next stage this bubble ruptures and results in the financial crises in that sector. The economy thus experiences a big confidence shock and failure of financial institutions. The study makes policy recommendations to financial markets players and regulators.

A great body of literature suggests that the poor were better off before the microfinance sector's paradigm shift of the mid-1990s. The sector's 'dependent' constituents' focus changed in an effort to cope with the changes dictated by its 'controlling' constituents. This paper's key finding is that the not-for-profit sector, where beneficiaries' interests are at stake, and the corporate sector, where owners and management are separate, should undergo an externally dictated change only after passing through a regulating agency's scrupulous check, lest the change harm the sector's beneficiaries. The paper attempts to create awareness among policy-makers of the need to be thoughtful of the ultimate beneficiaries in similar cases of externally dictated organisational change.

The drastic shift in the microfinance paradigm during the early 1990s, when the donor community adopted a new approach as to the sustainability of microfinance institutions, changed the overall scenario of the paradigm. Instead of providing subsidized financial services to microfinance institutions (MFIs) for their life time, the donors started emphasizing self-sustainability on the part of MFIs through making them adopt principles of commercialism. The shift in the donors' approach, although relieved of their burden to a considerable extent, gave rise to an increase in the interest rates on loans for the poor. Many scholars considered it as a drift from the primary mission. This conceptual paper presents two viable alternatives which, through amalgamating microfinance and charity principles, can potentially help the sector achieve the dual objective of boosting the supply of subsidized financial resources to the sector and ensuring the poor's access to an affordable source of financial help.

An organization's survival depends largely on its capacity to withstand external "reorganizing" attempts. Little research, if any, has so far been undertaken examining the survival of an entire business sector where its constituents undergo an externally dictated change and as a result it runs a risk of a thorough "jolt" or even "demise". The authors present empirical evidence that a business sector may be subjected to "unwanted" re-organizing by its "parent/controlling" entity, and may cease to exist, in its real essence, if its constituents are forced to undergo a change that will alter the very objectives upon which their existence rests.

Business schools produce leaders who command 'power' and 'governmentality', as per Foucault's theoretical conceptualisations, to institutionalise routines and social practices in contemporary organisations. These leaders must uphold ethics in their business decisions; however, this has not been reflected in many instances, as recurring financial crises have depicted over time. Efforts to address the issue and reach its root cause have failed to deliver concrete results so far, which necessitates an objective probe into today's business education. This conceptual-cum-analytical paper proposes an alternate, indirect approach to effectively tackle the issue. We suggest two remedies: first, transformative teaching and learning activities that inculcate ethical values into students should be implemented at the grass root level - primary and secondary schools, that feed into business schools with future business leaders; second, a conducive corporate governance environment within business organisations that supports ethical decisions and nurtures ethical behaviour needs to be developed - arguably the first being the prerequisite for the second.