Pursuing goal of self‐sustainability but leads towards more instability: Challenges and way forward of Self‐Help Groups (SHGs)

This study contributes to a stream of literature by developing a conceptual framework to understand promising influence of Self‐Help Group (SHG) on poor people’s lives through microfinance, as SHG is a function of microfinance institutes. In particular, this study highlights the drawbacks of SHG with regards to microcredit, training and social network with respect to SHG members. It is found that less attention and studies has been paid and formally documented about drawbacks or negative aspects of SHGs. Three hypotheses are proposed concerning the relationship of SHG with self‐sustainability, predicting a negative relationship between self‐sustainability and micro‐credit but the ambiguous relationship is found between self‐sustainability and other SHG dimensions (i.e., social‐network, and micro‐training). Furthermore, this study investigates different situations through which SHG affect negatively on self‐sustainability of poor people. Finally, this study highlights different conditions in which microfinance institute services such as SHG does not fulfill its original goal and make the condition of poor people more miserable.