Development Agency or Bank? Vision and Strategy of the World Bank in the 50’s and 60’s - Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. This paper brings together historical analysis and theories of organization development to reveal that the Bank was unwilling to lend for housing programs not because these were not sound, but because they were geared toward achieving social welfare objectives and were not directly linked to productive investment projects, such as dams, power stations, and railroads. It was not until the late 1960s that the Bank began to take social issues into consideration, rather late compared with other multilateral institutions. EconLit Classification: D23, F33, N20, N60, O19, O20
Keywords: World bank, Development policies, Housing, Evolutionary theories of organizations