Advances in business strategy and competitive advantage book series, 2021
Setting up and running a business can be quite risky without the necessary support. This support ... more Setting up and running a business can be quite risky without the necessary support. This support can emerge from an ecosystem that allows private, public, and social actors to work together in supporting the development of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs' efforts result in SMEs. African countries struggle with maintaining a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem owing to several factors including poor governance systems, dilapidated infrastructure, poor funding systems, and absence of enterprise education. These factors compromise the acclaimed benefits of SMEs, which often experience a short life span. As such, SME performance is considered less than satisfactory. The emergence of COVID-19 has had a further negative impact on this trend. As one can imagine, many businesses today have yet to experience anything close to the upset brought about by the pandemic. There is therefore justification for a concerted interest in how SMEs will bounce back post-COVID-19 in Africa. This chapter focuses on how South African SMEs have fared and their sustainability post COVID-19.
Advances in business strategy and competitive advantage book series, 2021
The relatedness of the factors that slow down the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging m... more The relatedness of the factors that slow down the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging markets is discussed in this chapter. The chapter further argues that even though the factors that have encumbered SMEs have gained traction in enterprise development and business management research, how their multidimensional interrelationship can harm the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging markets is yet to receive considerable attention. The entrepreneurial ecosystem framework of Mazzarol is used to present a novel approach in this review by attempting a richer explanation of the extent of the mutual connectedness of these factors and how they shape the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This chapter concludes that the factors that inhibit the realization of an impressive sustainable growth of SMEs are interrelated. For instance, the high cost of electricity significantly reduces the profit that can be made by a small business owner, and, in this case, the small business owner may have difficulty paying back a loan obtained in favor of the business.
Student administration in a higher education institution encompasses admissions and registration,... more Student administration in a higher education institution encompasses admissions and registration, accommodation, health services, assessments, and several aspects of a student’s life from the first contact with the institution until graduation. We set out to determine how students felt about these services at a South African university. The need to understand how students perceive these services is becoming increasingly important, especially in higher education, because it impacts not only student recruitment but the overall image of the university. Findings from this study can lead to much needed improvement of service quality. Data was collected from students using an open-ended questionnaire while interviews and focus groups were used for administrative staff. We realised a mix of feedback in terms of how both students and administrative staff felt about the quality of service at the university. In part, the findings suggest the need to sufficiently cater for both staff and stude...
Critical Perspectives on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Marketing
Digital technologies have tremendously evolved and become a part of daily life. This constant evo... more Digital technologies have tremendously evolved and become a part of daily life. This constant evolution constitutes a major determinant of how consumers and organisations engage. For consumers, the evolvement intensifies their socialising capacity with customers of like mind, voice their dissatisfaction, and explore alternative options. Marketers leverage the digital evolvement to engage with customers, acquire marketing intelligence, and exploit customers' purchase behaviour emotions. Recognising the growing digital technologies trend and importance to marketing, this chapter highlights the need for more effort towards enhancing the technology-marketing interface. Given that movement restriction-induced consequences of COVID-19 have intensified the paradigm shift from physical to virtual marketing, this chapter forwards a theoretical framing that takes a technology-marketing viewpoint that focuses on customer engagement and ensuring implementation processes for effectively mana...
Orientation: The rapid economic developments of the last decade have been driven by the impact of... more Orientation: The rapid economic developments of the last decade have been driven by the impact of revolutionary developments in information and communication technologies. These technological developments have irreversibly and significantly affected the role of an administrative professional with regard to assimilation, processing and utilisation of information.Research purpose: This study investigates the impact of global and national key drivers of change and transformation on the skills requirements of administrative professionals with the aim of developing a future-focused success profile to enable them to be effective in the new world of work.Motivation for the study: The study is motivated by the personal experience of one of the researchers, and her observation of the impact of technological advances and the necessity for administrative professionals to integrate new skills, knowledge and attitudes into the new world of work.Research approach/design and method: This study fol...
We at South Asian Research Corporation are planning to bring out a book titled Design of Heat Exc... more We at South Asian Research Corporation are planning to bring out a book titled Design of Heat Exchangers in December 2015. Therefore, chapters are invited from concerned people. If intrested in writing, just drop a message in contact form at the given below link..... You will be assigned the unit after you drop a message.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Oct 1, 2019
With excessively low levels of entrepreneurial activities reported for most developing countries,... more With excessively low levels of entrepreneurial activities reported for most developing countries, women who make up the majority of the population are under-represented in entrepreneural activities. Although the low numbers of women in entrepreneurial activities have been aligned to cultural barriers, the role played by non-cultural factors has been overlooked in many cases. Using Kigali as the locus, this paper sought to identify the non-cultural reasons for the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in Rwanda.The data utilized for this study were solicited from 398 women entrepreneurs in Kigali by means of a structured self-administered questionnaire. Though categorized as a quantitative study, primary focus was descriptive statistics, which were obtained through the use of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, V24) software. The results suggest that the typical woman entrepreneur in Kigali is of age 29-43, married, fairly educated and mostly in the retail subsector. In the order of gravity, the respondents noted the persistence of the following non-cultural factors as contributing to the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in Kigali: high rentals, limited access to captital, a complex tax system and the fear of failure. The contribution of this study lies in its examination of non-cultural reasons for the low uptake of entrepreneurial activity by women in Rwanda especially considering among other factors, Rwanda's very low position in Africa's total entrepreneurial activity (TEA). It is hoped that the results may inform policy directives that provide not only for the integration of women into mainstream economic activities but also continue to invest in the optimal utilisation of every member of Rwandan society irrespective of gender in furthering the economy.
Advances in business strategy and competitive advantage book series, 2021
Setting up and running a business can be quite risky without the necessary support. This support ... more Setting up and running a business can be quite risky without the necessary support. This support can emerge from an ecosystem that allows private, public, and social actors to work together in supporting the development of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs' efforts result in SMEs. African countries struggle with maintaining a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem owing to several factors including poor governance systems, dilapidated infrastructure, poor funding systems, and absence of enterprise education. These factors compromise the acclaimed benefits of SMEs, which often experience a short life span. As such, SME performance is considered less than satisfactory. The emergence of COVID-19 has had a further negative impact on this trend. As one can imagine, many businesses today have yet to experience anything close to the upset brought about by the pandemic. There is therefore justification for a concerted interest in how SMEs will bounce back post-COVID-19 in Africa. This chapter focuses on how South African SMEs have fared and their sustainability post COVID-19.
Advances in business strategy and competitive advantage book series, 2021
The relatedness of the factors that slow down the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging m... more The relatedness of the factors that slow down the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging markets is discussed in this chapter. The chapter further argues that even though the factors that have encumbered SMEs have gained traction in enterprise development and business management research, how their multidimensional interrelationship can harm the sustainability and growth of SMEs in emerging markets is yet to receive considerable attention. The entrepreneurial ecosystem framework of Mazzarol is used to present a novel approach in this review by attempting a richer explanation of the extent of the mutual connectedness of these factors and how they shape the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This chapter concludes that the factors that inhibit the realization of an impressive sustainable growth of SMEs are interrelated. For instance, the high cost of electricity significantly reduces the profit that can be made by a small business owner, and, in this case, the small business owner may have difficulty paying back a loan obtained in favor of the business.
Student administration in a higher education institution encompasses admissions and registration,... more Student administration in a higher education institution encompasses admissions and registration, accommodation, health services, assessments, and several aspects of a student’s life from the first contact with the institution until graduation. We set out to determine how students felt about these services at a South African university. The need to understand how students perceive these services is becoming increasingly important, especially in higher education, because it impacts not only student recruitment but the overall image of the university. Findings from this study can lead to much needed improvement of service quality. Data was collected from students using an open-ended questionnaire while interviews and focus groups were used for administrative staff. We realised a mix of feedback in terms of how both students and administrative staff felt about the quality of service at the university. In part, the findings suggest the need to sufficiently cater for both staff and stude...
Critical Perspectives on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Marketing
Digital technologies have tremendously evolved and become a part of daily life. This constant evo... more Digital technologies have tremendously evolved and become a part of daily life. This constant evolution constitutes a major determinant of how consumers and organisations engage. For consumers, the evolvement intensifies their socialising capacity with customers of like mind, voice their dissatisfaction, and explore alternative options. Marketers leverage the digital evolvement to engage with customers, acquire marketing intelligence, and exploit customers' purchase behaviour emotions. Recognising the growing digital technologies trend and importance to marketing, this chapter highlights the need for more effort towards enhancing the technology-marketing interface. Given that movement restriction-induced consequences of COVID-19 have intensified the paradigm shift from physical to virtual marketing, this chapter forwards a theoretical framing that takes a technology-marketing viewpoint that focuses on customer engagement and ensuring implementation processes for effectively mana...
Orientation: The rapid economic developments of the last decade have been driven by the impact of... more Orientation: The rapid economic developments of the last decade have been driven by the impact of revolutionary developments in information and communication technologies. These technological developments have irreversibly and significantly affected the role of an administrative professional with regard to assimilation, processing and utilisation of information.Research purpose: This study investigates the impact of global and national key drivers of change and transformation on the skills requirements of administrative professionals with the aim of developing a future-focused success profile to enable them to be effective in the new world of work.Motivation for the study: The study is motivated by the personal experience of one of the researchers, and her observation of the impact of technological advances and the necessity for administrative professionals to integrate new skills, knowledge and attitudes into the new world of work.Research approach/design and method: This study fol...
We at South Asian Research Corporation are planning to bring out a book titled Design of Heat Exc... more We at South Asian Research Corporation are planning to bring out a book titled Design of Heat Exchangers in December 2015. Therefore, chapters are invited from concerned people. If intrested in writing, just drop a message in contact form at the given below link..... You will be assigned the unit after you drop a message.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Oct 1, 2019
With excessively low levels of entrepreneurial activities reported for most developing countries,... more With excessively low levels of entrepreneurial activities reported for most developing countries, women who make up the majority of the population are under-represented in entrepreneural activities. Although the low numbers of women in entrepreneurial activities have been aligned to cultural barriers, the role played by non-cultural factors has been overlooked in many cases. Using Kigali as the locus, this paper sought to identify the non-cultural reasons for the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in Rwanda.The data utilized for this study were solicited from 398 women entrepreneurs in Kigali by means of a structured self-administered questionnaire. Though categorized as a quantitative study, primary focus was descriptive statistics, which were obtained through the use of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, V24) software. The results suggest that the typical woman entrepreneur in Kigali is of age 29-43, married, fairly educated and mostly in the retail subsector. In the order of gravity, the respondents noted the persistence of the following non-cultural factors as contributing to the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in Kigali: high rentals, limited access to captital, a complex tax system and the fear of failure. The contribution of this study lies in its examination of non-cultural reasons for the low uptake of entrepreneurial activity by women in Rwanda especially considering among other factors, Rwanda's very low position in Africa's total entrepreneurial activity (TEA). It is hoped that the results may inform policy directives that provide not only for the integration of women into mainstream economic activities but also continue to invest in the optimal utilisation of every member of Rwandan society irrespective of gender in furthering the economy.
Background This book started as a solo project. However, most peer reviewers have rightly recomme... more Background This book started as a solo project. However, most peer reviewers have rightly recommended it being an edited book offers diverse perspectives on the range of specialism influencing the study of early childhood. The themes/ topics in this call have generally gained approval of the reviewers. However, contributors will exercise their authorial independence in their interpreta=on and approach to the themes.
Among many other tools for economic development, entrepreneurship education remains an important ... more Among many other tools for economic development, entrepreneurship education remains an important tool for entrepreneurship development in any economy. Currently, the way entrepreneurship is taught at universities and colleges is criticized for numerous reasons including the poor uptake of entrepreneurship as a career by graduates of entrepreneurship. A corollary to this is that entrepreneurship as a discipline is yet as attractive as 'established' economic and management disciplines such as Marketing, Human Resource Management, Finance and Accounting. Again, most entrepreneurship education patterns are driven by Western pedagogy leaving one to wonder whether the obvious lack of attraction and uptake of entrepreneurship as a career is linked to the dearth of African-oriented definition of entrepreneurship education. One equally wonders whether the development of an Africa-oriented definition of entrepreneurship education is necessary. This book seeks to close the gap on the following: • Can there be a definition of entrepreneurship education that is unique to Africa? • Is it possible to find a better way to teach entrepreneurship? • At what level should entrepreneurship education start? • What opportunities exist to make entrepreneurship education an attractive field of study? In line with closing the above gaps, the book contributes to: • Critiquing the current teaching styles of entrepreneurship, • Suggest creative ways of teaching entrepreneurship, • Offer contemporary expectations of entrepreneurship education, • Clarify whether the teaching of entrepreneurship should lead to a productive enterprise. Contributions Inquiries and contributions to the book should be directed to Chux Gervase lwu at chuxiwu@gmail.com and Richard Shambare at rshambare@gmail.com
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This book seeks to close the gap on the following:
• Can there be a definition of entrepreneurship education that is unique to Africa?
• Is it possible to find a better way to teach entrepreneurship?
• At what level should entrepreneurship education start?
• What opportunities exist to make entrepreneurship education an attractive field of study?
In line with closing the above gaps, the book contributes to:
• Critiquing the current teaching styles of entrepreneurship,
• Suggest creative ways of teaching entrepreneurship,
• Offer contemporary expectations of entrepreneurship education,
• Clarify whether the teaching of entrepreneurship should lead to a productive enterprise.
Contributions
Inquiries and contributions to the book should be directed to Chux Gervase lwu at chuxiwu@gmail.com and Richard Shambare at rshambare@gmail.com