Tackling poverty with microfranchising

Six years ago, the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Among those goals: end poverty in all forms everywhere and eliminate hunger. With more than one-third of the world's population living in poverty, the challenge is daunting.

Laté Lawson-Lartego (D.B.A. '16) has devoted his career to addressing these and other inequities, first at CARE and now at Oxfam America, where he is interim co-vice president of global programs.

As a student in Robinson's Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) program, Lawson-Lartego focused on these longtime passions, researching and defending a dissertation on the design and implementation of a microfranchising network to provide small-scale farmers in Bangladesh with the infrastructure, information, and technology needed to access markets, improve productivity, and adapt to climate volatility.

The research revealed that small-scale farmers who were supported with agricultural products and services through the microfranchise network doubled their outcome and increased their income by 31 percent. They also reduced supply chain costs by 40 percent and increased sales by 34 percent.

Lawson-Lartego and his dissertation advisor, professor and D.B.A. program academic director Lars Mathiassen, published a paper based on the dissertation, Microfranchising to Alleviate Poverty: An Innovation Network Perspective, in the July 2021 edition of the Journal of Business Ethics.

More information:
Laté Lawson-Lartego et al, Microfranchising to Alleviate Poverty: An Innovation Network Perspective, Journal of Business Ethics (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04459-8

Provided by Georgia State University