Search results for: business tourism

Authors: Yusuf Sani Abubakar

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This paper investigates mechanisms of settlement of disputes at the Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs). Dispute settlement at the Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) can be both through litigation as well as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). The paper aims to investigate how disputes are settled at the Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs), as it is natural to have disagreements between different parties involved in the business of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs). The paper adopts a qualitative methodology where the sources are taken from journals, books, websites etc. In analyzing the data obtained from the sources, content analysis will be used. In addition to writings on this topic by various writers, this paper will add to the literature and will recommend certain effective ways of solving disputes arising between parties participating in the business of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs).

Keywords: Islamic finance, dispute resolution, Islamic financial institutions, litigation

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Authors: Nevruz Zogu, Shpetim Rezniqi

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It is very important that a new environment where work shall be constructed in such a strong record to be creative and eligible for workers, can not have success in the workplace. But, is it possible to design the inner-inspire to create and collaborate? By watching and analyzing examples of creativity in business, construction managers can learn ways on how to encourage their imagination inside buildings. We struggle to find and retain talented employees and skilled labor environment is becoming more and always an important tool for recruiting and retaining employees. Managers who recognize the importance are gaining an edge over their competitors. The physical work environment is as important as its quality is often used as a recruiting tool and even to companies with The relationship between the company and the employees between strategy and behavior, between the product and the customer can reincorporated under the light of symbolic mediation of space, as instrument and interpreter of the core values and identity of the organization.

Keywords: strategy, business, quality, productivity, space, offices, assets

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Authors: Claudio Di Benedetto, Irene Bengo

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The objective of the paper is to study how large European companies develop social business (SB) at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP). BoP markets are defined as the four billions people living with an annual income below $3,260 in local purchasing power. Despite they are heterogeneous in terms of geographic range they present some common characteristics: the presence of significant unmet (social) needs, high level of informal economy and the so-called ‘poverty penalty’. As a result, most people living at BoP are excluded from the value created by the global market economy. But it is worth noting, that BoP population with an aggregate purchasing power of around $5 trillion a year, represent a huge opportunity for companies that want to enhance their long-term profitability perspective. We suggest that in this context, the development of SB is, for companies, an innovative and promising way to satisfy unmet social needs and to experience new forms of value creation. Indeed, SB can be considered a strategic model to develop CSR programs that fully integrate the social dimension into the business to create economic and social value simultaneously. Despite in literature many studies have been conducted on social business, only few have explicitly analyzed such phenomenon from a company perspective and their role in the development of such initiatives remains understudied with fragmented results. To fill this gap the paper analyzes the key characteristics of the social business initiatives developed by European companies at BoP. The study was performed analyzing 1475 European companies participating in the United Nation Global Compact, the world’s leading corporate social responsibility program. Through the analysis of the corporate websites the study identifies companies that actually do SB at BoP. For SB initiatives identified, information were collected according to a framework adapted from the SB model developed by preliminary results show that more than one hundred European companies have already implemented social businesses at BoP accounting for the 6,5% of the total. This percentage increases to 15% if the focus is on companies with more than 10.440 employees. In terms of geographic distribution 80% of companies doing SB at BoP are located in western and southern Europe. The companies more active in promoting SB belong to financial sector (20%), energy sector (17%) and food and beverage sector (12%). In terms of social needs addressed almost 30% of the companies develop SB to provide access to energy and WASH, 25% of companies develop SB to reduce local unemployment or to promote local entrepreneurship and 21% of companies develop SB to promote financial inclusion of poor. In developing SB companies implement different social business configurations ranging from forms of outsourcing to internal development models. The study identifies seven main configurations through which company develops social business and each configuration present distinguishing characteristics respect to the involvement of the company in the management, the resources provided and the benefits achieved. By performing different analysis on data collected the paper provides detailed insights on how European companies develop SB at BoP.

Keywords: base of the economic pyramid, corporate social responsibility, social business, social enterprise

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Authors: Ali Muhammad

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The study investigates the effect of a number of contextual on the degree of trust within Kuwaiti business organizations. The model used in this study suggests that degree of trust within the organization is determined by four contextual variables, namely, centralization, formalization, role ambiguity, and procedural justice. Organizational trust refers to employee’ positive assumptions in regard to the goal and behaviors of other members in the organization according to organizational duties, relationships, experiences, and interrelatedness. According to the norm of reciprocity, individuals with high perceived organizational justice will be compelled to react positively to the organization in the form of higher degree of trust. The duty to exchange kindness for kindness. Based on the exchange theory, this research proposes that procedural justice, role clarity, and voice in the organization will lead to the perception of an organization’s discretionary positive treatment of employees and, in return enhances their trust in the organization. Survey data were collected from a sample of 206 employees working in Kuwaiti business organizations. Results of multiple regression analysis revealed that both organizational justice and formalization have positive effects on organizational trust. Furthermore, results indicate that lower degree of role ambiguity leads to higher degree of organizational trust. On the other hand, centralization was not found to have a significant effect on organizational trust. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: centralization, formalization, organizational justice, organizational trust, role ambiguity

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Authors: Muhammad Umar Usman

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This study investigates the entrepreneurial intentions, drivers and challenges of starting a business among final year students in Jigawa State polytechnic. Nigeria. Final year students of Jigawa State Polytechnic from the department of accounting, business administration and management and public administration were used as a case study. The study became necessary due to the alarming rate of graduate unemployment in Nigeria. The study adopted a holistic case study approach involving a multiple methods of questionnaires involving (182) Higher National Diploma (HND) and National Diploma (ND) final year students and a telephone interview with two lecturers teaching entrepreneurship in the college. The findings clearly indicate that exposer to entrepreneurship education increases students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The result found that desire for independence, confidence and strong intention are the most important factors that influence students’ entrepreneurial intention. The study identified 3 key drivers of students’ entrepreneurial intentions. These are to earn a living, to seek job security and provision of employment. The result again identified 4 factors namely lack of support, finance, insecurity and erratic power supply as the major challenges in starting a business in Nigeria. It was also revealed that the current entrepreneurship education programme prepares students on how to open up a business not becoming an entrepreneur. The study concluded entrepreneurship helps students toward building and driving their intention to venture into business. However, the challenges of entrepreneurship in Nigeria need to be addressed in order to enable individuals to become an entrepreneur and create employment opportunities that will lead to the development of Nigerian economy. Thus, the government should provide adequate support particularly the issue of infrastructures. The Federal Government of Nigeria in collaboration with the National Board for Technical Education should fashion out the curriculum thereby making it more practically-oriented so that students may become more interested. Polytechnics should develop an internship programme for students to work in firms so as to put theory learnt in the class to practice. Students should try to align the theory learnt in college with the practical application in dynamic economic environment. Hence, this will help in building their capabilities toward entrepreneurship development in Nigeria.

Keywords: entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial drivers, challenges, entrepreneurial education

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Authors: Rishabh Garg

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Traditionally, business parties build trust with a centralized operating mechanism, such as payment by letter of credit. However, the increase in cyber-attacks and malicious hacking has jeopardized business operations and finance practices. Emerging markets, owing to their higher banking risks and bigger presence of digital financing, are looking forward to technology-driven solutions, financial inclusion and innovative working paradigms. Blockchain has the potential to enhance transaction transparency and supply chain traceability. It has captured a vast landscape with 200 million crypto users worldwide. Fintech and blockchain products are popping up across brokerage, digital wallets, exchanges, post-trade clearance, settlement, middleware, infrastructure, and base protocols.

Keywords: blockchain, distributed ledger technology, decentralized applications, ethereum, smart contracts, trade finance

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Authors: Elena Valionienė, Genutė Kalvaitienė

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The issue of resilience of an individual, an organisation, or an entire ecosystem of organisations has recently become an integral part of the education system, where the uncertainties that lead to societal development in the short term create economic, social, and psycho-emotional instability. The Maritime Transport Sector (MTS) is no exception, and the aim of the article is to model the possibilities of enhancing the professional, sociocultural, and psycho-emotional resilience of MTS specialists to proactively respond to crises caused by uncertainties. The research consists of theoretical model creation that helps to identify general maritime business resilience factors and critical success factors. This can develop high resilience and achieve business excellence in a highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment.

Keywords: maritime transport sector, resilience, uncertainties, VUCA

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Authors: Parisa Göker, Hilal Kahveci, Özlem Candan Hergül

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Humans are generating culture while being in touch with nature. Along with skills, local knowledge based on experience, and many other subjects developed within this process, 'culture' offers humans a chance to survive. For this reason, culture forms the equipment for humans, which facilitates their survival in all ecosystems. Together with technology, quick consumption of natural sources and overuse culture of humans have brought up the eco-village concept. Ecovillages are ecologically, economically, socio-culturally, and spiritually sustainable settlement models. It is known that the eco-village approach is applying a proper methodology on behalf of integrative and versatile solution generation. Today, the eco-village approach, introducing a radical criticism to the understanding of civilization and consumption culture and deeming urban solutions inadequate as a spatial reflection to civilization and consumption culture, while making a difference about integrative solution offering with multidimensional features, along with the goal of creating self-sufficient communities, is creating solutions on the subject of both reducing the ecological footprint of humans and to provide social order and also to solve the injustice seen in terms of income and life standards. In this study, environmental issues, sustainable development, and environmental sustainability topics are examined within the context of eco-tourism and eco-village. Alongside this, the natural and cultural landscape values of Kurşunlu village which are located in Bilecik province’s Gölpazarı county, and a contextual frame is created for the facilitation of sustainability in the event of dynamizing the Kurşunlu village in terms of tourism-oriented activities.

Keywords: eco village, sustainability, rural landscape, cultural landscape

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Authors: Lien T. H. Tran, David A. Holloway

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Corporate governance practices have changed significantly across the world in the past three decades. Spectacular corporate failures during this period have acted as a catalyst for the development of codes and guidelines that have resulted in the global acceptance of a ‘best practice’ model. This study assesses the relevance of such a ‘one size fits all model’ for the developing nation state of Vietnam. The findings of this analytical paper is that there are three key elements (government, international institutions and the nature of business) that are pertinent and central to corporate governance developments in the country. We also find that the quality of corporate governance in Vietnam is at a medium level when compared to international practices. Vietnam still has a long way to go to construct and embed effective corporate governance policies and practices and promote ethical business behaviours and sound decision making at board level.

Keywords: corporate governance, government, international institutions, public companies, Vietnam

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Authors: Panprae Bunyapukkna

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The purpose of this research is to analyze the process that most of the Thai film industries commonly use in order to find the right cast to play the role. The result proved that most of the low-budget film productions find the cast by asking from the crew’s friends or friend of friend. Therefore, finding the cast in low-budget film productions normally has only few people shown up for the auditions and sometimes either none of them has acting knowledge or their appearances do not match the character. However, since most of the low-budget film productions do not have much ability to find members of the cast, thus some of them still will be selected. On the other hand, most of the high-budget film productions use modeling companies to find the cast for them. However, most of modeling agencies in Thailand seek and select their cast members from the cast’s appearances or talents rather than the knowledge of acting.

Keywords: casting for film, modeling business, acting, film, performing arts, film business

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Authors: A.Halim Sahelan, Mohd Halid Abu, Jamaluddin Hashim, Zulisman Maksom, Mohd Afif Md Nasir

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This study aims to assess the students' needs for the tour planning e-guide. The study is developing on the contribution and importance of the Educational Tour Planning Guide (ETP) is a multimedia courseware as one of the effective methods in teaching and learning of environmental science among the students in primary schools of the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. It is to provide the student with knowledge and experience about tourism, environmental science activities and process. E-guide to ETP also hopes to strengthen the student understanding toward the subject learns in the tourism environmental science. In order to assess the student's needs on the e-Guide to Educational Tour Planning in Environmental Science, the study has produced a similar e-Guide to ETP in the form as a courseware to be tested during the study. The study has involved several steps in order to be completed. It is such as the formulation of the problem, the review of the literature, the formulation of the study methodology, the production of the e-Guide to ETP, field survey and finally the analyses and discussion made on the data gathered during the study. The survey has involved 100 respondents among the students in standard six primary schools in Kluang Johor. Through the findings, the study indicates that the currently tested product is acceptable among the students in learning environmental science as a guide to plan for the tour. The findings also show a slight difference between the respondents who are using the e-Guide to ETP, and those who are not on the basis of the e-Guide to ETP results. Due the important for the study, the researcher hopes to be having a fair discussion and excellence, recommendation for the development of the product of the current study. This report is written also important to provide a written reference for the future related study.

Keywords: the tour planning e-guide, the Educational Tour Planning Guide, environmental science, multimedia course ware

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Authors: Jeonghwan Jeon

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Recently, the industry and academia have been planning development through industry/university cooperation (IUC), and the government has been promoting alternative methods to achieve successful IUC. Representatively, business cultivation involves the lead university (regarding IUC), research and development (R&D), company support, professional manpower cultivation, and marketing, etc., and the scale of support expands every year. Research is performed by many academic researchers to achieve IUC and although satisfaction of their results is high, expectations are not being met and study of the main factor is insufficient. Therefore, this research improves on theirs by analysing the main factors influencing their satisfaction. Each factor is analysed by AHP, and portfolio analysis is performed on the importance and current satisfaction level. This will help improve satisfaction of business participants and ensure effective IUC in the future.

Keywords: industry/university cooperation, satisfaction, portfolio analysis, research and development

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Authors: Julie Delany

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To thrive in today’s digital climate, it is vital that organisations adopt new technology and prepare for rising digital trends. This proves more difficult in government where, traditionally, people lack change readiness. While individuals may have a desire to work smarter, this does not necessarily mean embracing technology. This paper discusses the rollout of an application into a small department of highly experienced nurses. The goal was to both streamline the department's workflow and provide a platform for gathering essential business metrics. The biggest challenges were adoption and motivating the nurses to change their routines and learn new computer skills. Two-thirds struggled with the change, and as a result, some jeopardised the validity of the business metrics. In conclusion, there are lessons learned and recommendations for similar projects.

Keywords: change ready, information technology, end-user, iterative method, rollout plan, data analytics

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Authors: Ulrike Dowie, Ralph Grothmann

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Rational planning decisions are based upon forecasts. Precise forecasting has, therefore, a central role in business. The prediction of customer demand is a prime example. This paper introduces recurrent neural networks to model customer demand and combines the forecast with uncertainty measures to derive decision support of the demand planning department. It identifies and describes the keys to the successful implementation of an AI-based solution: bringing together data with business knowledge, AI methods, and user experience, and applying agile software development practices.

Keywords: agile software development, AI project success factors, deep learning, demand forecasting, forecast uncertainty, neural networks, supply chain management

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Authors: Venugopal Kummamuru

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Corporate Governance (CG) is of utmost importance for running a company ethically. It is essential for the growth and success of the corporation. It is intended to increase the accountability of an organization to the larger context of the business environment. The general principles of CG include and are related to Shareholder recognition, Stakeholder interests, and focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Clear Board responsibilities, Ethical behavior, and Business transparency. Network Marketing Organizations (NMOs) focus on marketing through direct-sales using people who are associated with the organization but are not their employees. This paper tries to study the importance of Ethics and CSR in an NMO and suggest a basic guideline for CG in NMO(s). This paper could be used as a basis or starting point for conducting an in-depth research to understand the difference in CG practices between NMO(s) and other organizations and define a standard set of guidelines for CG practice.

Keywords: corporate governance, corporate responsibility, direct selling, network marketing

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Authors: Vinod Chovvayil Panengal

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The idea of secularism in India has taken a different direction after independence when religion became a reason for a great divide in, otherwise harmonious society. Since then the religious spaces became protected and more sacred and not shared. However, there is a larger threat on beliefs, rituals, and the spirituality of these religions in the form of technology, tourism and globalization. In a way, they weaken the importance of religion from our society over a period of time. The importance of religion to a sense of place has been overlooked or diminished. Religion provides symbolic meaning to places which distinguishes certain physical environments from otherwise similar ones. The rapid transformation of urban spaces, eliminating the territorial differences of sense, spirit and identity have started creating urban centers rooting out this genre of unique urban spaces from our cities. Indian cities, with a strong identity created by rich and colorful overlays of culture through its evolution, have been threatened by this de-territorialization. This paper enquires the relationship of the symbol of the identity and religiosity of a place, through spatial form, rituals and activity, and accommodating the technology and the changing social structure within the bounds of that relationship. The subjects for this enquiry are Sufism and the Sufi city- Ajmer. The internal transformations in the ideologies of Islam and Sufism and the changes in the society surround it triggered the phenomena of de- territorialization. The need for establishing a symbiotic relationship between the spiritual content and the social life, through the manifestation of space, time and activity derived from this concern on abated territory of Sufism inside the city. Redirecting transformation catalyst such as tourism, technology, etc, towards the improvement of physical and social conditions, preservation of the heritage and the expansion of the notional idea of religion over the city will help to re- territorialize city as a Sufi city.

Keywords: sense of place, religion, Islam, identity

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Authors: Ghazanfar Bozai, Kanwal Gul

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In Pakistan, SMEs are the major source of contribution to the economy, but due to lack of proper HR practices (lack of employee engagement), these fast growing business shut down with in few years of startup. The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive literature survy of the major best practices used for employee engagement globally. This paper could be used as employee engagement best practices guide for SME’s in developing countries. This article is focused on identifying the attributes of employee engagement in different countries/ cultures and organizations. It will provide a summary of employee engagement models used globally and how SMEs could pick suitable attributes of employee engagement as per their structural culture. This article will add valuable literature on employee engagement in developing countries for new startups and small, medium business.

Keywords: attributes, employee engagement, human resources practices, small medium enterprises

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Authors: Sukhbaatar Dorj, Erdenebaatar Altangerel

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As alternative to existing e-government measuring models, here proposed a new customer centric, service oriented, simple approach for measuring countries e-Governments. If successfully implemented, built infrastructure will provide a single e-government index number for countries. Main schema is as follows. Country CIO or equal position government official, at the beginning of each year will provide to United Nations dedicated web site 4 numbers on behalf of own country: 1) Ratio of available online public services, to total number of public services, 2) Ratio of interagency inter ministry online public services to total number of available online public services, 3) Ratio of total number of citizen and business entities served online annually to total number of citizen and business entities served annually online and physically on those services, 4) Simple index for geographical spread of online served citizen and business entities. 4 numbers then combined into one index number by mathematical Average function. In addition to 4 numbers 5th number can be introduced as service quality indicator of online public services. If in ordering of countries index number is equal, 5th criteria will be used. Notice: This approach is for country’s current e-government achievement assessment, not for e-government readiness assessment.

Keywords: countries e-government index, e-government, infrastructure for measuring e-government, measuring e-government

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Authors: Deepshikha Shukla, C. H. Solanki, Mayank Desai

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In the last few years, it has been observed that earthquake is proving a threat to the scientist across the world. With a large number of earthquakes occurring in day to day life, the threat to life and property has increased manifolds which call for an urgent attention of all the researchers globally to carry out the research in the field of Earthquake Engineering. Any hazard related to the earthquake and seismicity is considered to be seismic hazards. The common forms of seismic hazards are Ground Shaking, Structure Damage, Structural Hazards, Liquefaction, Landslides, Tsunami to name a few. Among all the natural hazards, the most devastating and damaging is the earthquake as all other hazards are triggered only after the occurrence of an earthquake. In order to quantify and estimate the seismicity and seismic hazards, many methods and approaches have been proposed in the past few years. Such approaches are Mathematical, Conventional and Computational. Convex Set Theory, Empirical Green’s Function are some of the Mathematical Approaches whereas the Deterministic and Probabilistic Approaches are the Conventional Approach for the estimation of the seismic Hazards. Ground response and Ground Shaking of a particular area or region plays an important role in the damage caused due to the earthquake. In this paper, seismic study using Deterministic Approach and 1 D Ground Response Analysis has been carried out for Madhya Pradesh Tourism Office in Indore Region in Madhya Pradesh in Central India. Indore lies in the seismic zone III (IS: 1893, 2002) in the Seismic Zoning map of India. There are various faults and lineament in this area and Narmada Some Fault and Gavilgadh fault are the active sources of earthquake in the study area. Deepsoil v6.1.7 has been used to perform the 1 D Linear Ground Response Analysis for the study area. The Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) of the city ranges from 0.1g to 0.56g.

Keywords: seismicity, seismic hazards, deterministic, probabilistic methods, ground response analysis

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Authors: Rudainah Alkhazam, Özlem Yaşar Uğurlu

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Immigrant entrepreneurship arises from the start of entrepreneurial activity by immigrants in the country they relocate to. The future prosperity and stability of the refugee-hosting countries depends on the mutual social and economic benefits between the residents and the refugees. Syrian refugees and workers in host countries necessitate efforts to assist their residents and refugees in meeting their daily needs, contributing lawfully to local and possibly regional economies through trade, and instilling hope in their future. This study investigates the effects of Syrian refugee entrepreneurs on host communities' business sectors, focusing on Turkey. Specifically, we examine entrepreneurship in general and its role in the country's economy. Because Turkey is the most popular resettlement destination for Syrian refugees, this study will shed light on the challenges of successful migrant entrepreneurship in Turkey and their role in the business sector. The research relies on a mixed-method approach which helps identify recurring themes, favorable results, and conflicting results across methods, allowing us to draw accurate conclusions. The study will adopt a quantitative method in collecting numerical data from Syrian refugees in Turkey. The self-administered survey would be translated into Arabic to ensure that the respondents understood the questions and possible replies. The research will use survey questionnaires to gather the majority of the data. These surveys would have closed-ended questions with nominal ratio and Likert scales. The data will be analyzed using linear regression and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to ascertain the role of Syrian entrepreneurs in the business sectors of Turkey. The research will use the findings to make future recommendations. Syrian entrepreneurs, among the migrant entrepreneurs, contribute to the labor market, the majority of whom are young people. This research noted the significant participation of Syrian immigrant women in the entrepreneurship sector. The previous experience of Syrians in the field of trade and running their own business plays a vital role in the success of their business in the host countries. The study shows that Syrian entrepreneurs could integrate effectively into the various Turkish business sectors and could rely on themselves, open and manage their projects, and market them in the Turkish market. Syrian entrepreneurs consider that the investment and labor laws, commercial arrangements, and facilities for obtaining financial resources in Turkey need to be more flexible and available to immigrant entrepreneurs.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, immigration, Syrian, Turkey, refugees, investors, socio-economic benefits, unemployment

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Authors: Bahram Fathi, Karim Alizadeh, Azam Mohammadbagheri

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The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of oil price shocks in explaining business cycles in Iran using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach. This model incorporates both productivity and oil revenue shocks. The results indicate that productivity shocks are relatively more important to business cycles than oil shocks. The model with two shocks produces different values for volatility, but these values have the same ranking as that of the actual data for most variables. In addition, the actual data are close to the ratio of standard deviations to the output obtained from the model with two shocks. The results indicate that productivity shocks are relatively more important to business cycles than the oil shocks. The model with only a productivity shock produces the most similar figures in term of volatility magnitude to that of the actual data. Next, we use the Impulse Response Functions (IRF) to evaluate the capability of the model. The IRF shows no effect of an oil shock on the capital stocks and on labor hours, which is a feature of the model. When the log-linearized system of equations is solved numerically, investment and labor hours were not found to be functions of the oil shock. This research recommends using different techniques to compare the model’s robustness. One method by which to do this is to have all decision variables as a function of the oil shock by inducing the stationary to the model differently. Another method is to impose a bond adjustment cost. This study intends to fill that gap. To achieve this objective, we derive a DSGE model that allows for the world oil price and productivity shocks. Second, we calibrate the model to the Iran economy. Next, we compare the moments from the theoretical model with both single and multiple shocks with that obtained from the actual data to see the extent to which business cycles in Iran can be explained by total oil revenue shock. Then, we use an impulse response function to evaluate the role of world oil price shocks. Finally, I present implications of the findings and interpretations in accordance with economic theory.

Keywords: oil price, shocks, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, Iran

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Authors: Milica Lilic, Marina Rosales Martínez

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Academic research cannot be oblivious to social problems and needs, so projects that have the capacity for transformation and impact should have the opportunity to go beyond the University circles and bring benefit to society. Apart from patents and R&D research contracts, this opportunity can be achieved through entrepreneurship as one of the most direct tools to turn knowledge into a tangible product. Thus, as an example of good practices, it is intended to analyze the case of an institutional entrepreneurship program carried out at the University of Seville, aimed at researchers interested in assessing the business opportunity of their research and expanding their knowledge on procedures for the commercialization of technologies used at academic projects. The program is based on three pillars: training, teamwork sessions and networking. The training includes aspects such as product-client fit, technical-scientific and economic-financial feasibility of a spin-off, institutional organization and decision making, public and private fundraising, and making the spin-off visible in the business world (social networks, key contacts, corporate image and ethical principles). On the other hand, the teamwork sessions are guided by a mentor and aimed at identifying research results with potential, clarifying financial needs and procedures to obtain the necessary resources for the consolidation of the spin-off. This part of the program is considered to be crucial in order for the participants to convert their academic findings into a business model. Finally, the networking part is oriented to workshops about the digital transformation of a project, the accurate communication of the product or service a spin-off offers to society and the development of transferable skills necessary for managing a business. This blended program results in the final stage where each team, through an elevator pitch format, presents their research turned into a business model to an experienced jury. The awarded teams get a starting capital for their enterprise and enjoy the opportunity of formally consolidating their spin-off company at the University. Studying the results of the program, it has been shown that many researchers have basic or no knowledge of entrepreneurship skills and different ways to turn their research results into a business model with a direct impact on society. Therefore, the described program has been used as an example to highlight the importance of knowledge transfer at the University and the role that this institution should have in providing the tools to promote entrepreneurship within it. Keeping in mind that the University is defined by three main activities (teaching, research and knowledge transfer), it is safe to conclude that the latter, and the entrepreneurship as an expression of it, is crucial in order for the other two to comply with their purpose.

Keywords: good practice, knowledge transfer, a spin-off company, university

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Authors: Pius A. Onobhayedo, Eugene A. Ohu

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Nigeria has one of the fastest growing mobile telecommunications industry in the world. In the absence of fixed connection access to the Internet, access to the Internet is primarily via mobile devices. It, therefore, provides a test case for how to penetrate the mobile market in an emerging economy. We also hope to contribute to a sparse literature on strategies employed in building successful data-driven mobile businesses in emerging economies. We, therefore, sought to identify and analyse the strategic approach taken in a successful locally born mobile data-driven business in Nigeria. The analysis was carried out through the framework of strategic intent and competitive advantages developed from the conception of the company to date. This study is based on an exploratory investigation of an innovative digital company based in Nigeria specializing in the mobile advertising business. The projected growth and high adoption of mobile in this African country, coinciding with the smartphone revolution triggered by the launch of iPhone in 2007 opened a new entrepreneurial horizon for the founder of the company, who reached the conclusion that ‘the future is mobile’. This dream led to the establishment of three digital businesses, designed for convergence and complementarity of medium and content. The mobile Ad subsidiary soon grew to become a truly African network with operations and campaigns across West, East and South Africa, successfully delivering campaigns in several African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia amongst others. The company recently declared a 40% year-end profit which was nine times that of the previous financial year. This study drew from an in-depth interview with the company’s founder, analysis of primary and secondary data from and about the business, as well as case studies of digital marketing campaigns. We hinge our analysis on the strategic intent concept which has been proposed to be an engine that drives the quest for sustainable strategic advantage in the global marketplace. Our goal was specifically to identify the strategic intents of the founder and how these were transformed creatively into processes that may have led to some distinct competitive advantages. Along with the strategic intents, we sought to identify the respective absorptive capacities that constituted favourable antecedents to the creation of such competitive advantages. Our recommendations and findings will be pivotal information for anybody wishing to invest in the world’s fastest technology business space - Africa.

Keywords: Africa, competitive advantage, competitive strategy, digital, mobile business, marketing, strategic intent

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Authors: Gladys Oppong, Saumya Singh, Pramod Pathak

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Women entrepreneurship has started establishing itself globally. Despite various social hurdles, Indian women have proved their strength in the area of entrepreneurship. Rising pattern of women entrepreneurship in Indian context make it significant to know the reason behind it. It’s a normal perception that women with financially strong backgrounds are highly motivated to progress in the area of entrepreneurship while lack of money becomes a major restraint for others. The proposed study attempts to identify the motivational factors for becoming women entrepreneur. The research work is to be conducted on women entrepreneurs. For this purpose, factor analysis will be used. The study has identified a set of motivational factors namely family business, social status, education and qualification, self-fulfillment and achievement among others that give momentum to the women to become an entrepreneur. The outcome of the study will be helpful in developing women entrepreneurship in India.

Keywords: women entrepreneurship, motivation, family business, social status

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Authors: Charles L. Sigmund, M. A. Aed, Lissa Graciela Rivera Picado

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One critical component of the training development process is the evaluation of the impact and value of the program. Oftentimes, however, learning organizations bypass this phase either because they are unfamiliar with effective methods for measuring the success or effect of the training or because they believe the effort to be too time-consuming or cumbersome. As a result, most organizations that do conduct evaluation limit their scope to Kirkpatrick L1 (reaction) and L2 (learning), or at most carry through to L4 (results). In 2021 Microsoft made a strategic decision to assess the measurable and monetized impact for all training launches and designed a scalable and program-agnostic tool for providing full-scale L5 return on investment (ROI) estimates for each. In producing this measurement tool, the learning and development organization built a framework for making business prioritizations and resource allocations that is based on the projected ROI of a course. The analysis and measurement posed by this process use a combination of training data and operational metrics to calculate the effective net benefit derived from a given training effort. Business experts in the learning field generally consider a 10% ROI to be an outstanding demonstration of the value of a project. Initial findings from this work applied to a critical customer-facing program yielded an estimated ROI of more than 49%. This information directed the organization to make a more concerted and concentrated effort in this specific line of business and resulted in additional investment in the training methods and technologies being used.

Keywords: evaluation, measurement, return on investment, value

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Authors: Flex Anim

Abstract:

The financial system is a decentralized studies system that was put into place in Ghana as a grassroots financial studies approach. Its main goal is to give people the precise knowledge, abilities, and training required for a given trade, business, profession, or occupation. In this essay, the question of how the financial studies system's devolution to local businesses results in responsible and responsive representation as well as long-term company learning is raised. It centers on two case studies, Asekwa Municipal and Oforikrom. The next question posed by the study is how senior high school students are rebuilding their livelihoods and socioeconomic well-being by creating new curriculum and social practices related to the finance and business studies system. The paper here concentrates on Kumasi District and makes inferences for the other two examples. The paper demonstrates how the financial studies system's establishment of representative groups creates the democratic space required for the successful representation of community goals. Nonetheless, the interests of a privileged few are advanced as a result of elite capture. The state's financial and business training programs do not adhere to the financial studies system's established policy procedures and do not transfer pertinent and discretionary resources to local educators. As a result, local educators are unable to encourage representation that is accountable and responsive. The financial studies system continues to pique the interest of rural areas, but this desire is skewed toward getting access to financial or business training institutions for higher education. Since the locals are not actively involved in financial education, the financial studies system serves just to advance the interests of specific populations. This article explains how rhetoric and personal benefits can be supported by the public even in the case of "failed" interventions.

Keywords: financial studies system, financial studies' devolution, local government, senior high schools and financial education, as well as community goals and representation

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Authors: Juliza Hidayati, Sukardi, Ani Suryani, Sugiharto, Anas M. Fauzi

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The idea of making North Sumatera as a barometer of national oil palm industry requires efforts commodities and agro-industry development of oil palm. One effort that can be done is by successful execution plantation revitalization. The plantation Revitalization is an effort to accelerate the development of smallholder plantations, through expansion and replanting by help of palm Estate Company as business partner and bank financed plantation revitalization fund. Business partner agreement obliged and bound to make at least the same smallholder plantation productivity with business partners, so that the refund rate to banks become larger and prosperous people as a plantation owner. Generally low productivity of smallholder plantations under normal potential caused a lot of old and damaged plants with plant material at random. The purpose of revitalizing oil palm plantations is which are to increase their competitiveness through increased farm productivity. The research aims to identify potential criteria in influencing plantation productivity improvement priorities to be observed and followed up in order to improve the competitiveness of destinations and make North Sumatera barometer of national palm oil can be achieved. Research conducted with Analytical Network Process (ANP), to find the effect of dependency relationships between factors or criteria with the knowledge of the experts in order to produce an objective opinion and relevant depict the actual situation.

Keywords: palm barometer, acceleration of plantation development, productivity, revitalization

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Authors: Philippe Gugler

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Goal of the study: The concept of competitiveness has been addressed by economic theorists and policymakers for several hundreds of years, with both groups trying to understand the drivers of economic prosperity and social welfare. The goal of this contribution is to address the major useful theoretical contributions that permit to identify the main drivers of a territory’s competitiveness. We first present the major contributions found in the classical and neo-classical theories. Then, we concentrate on two majors schools providing significant thoughts on the competitiveness of locations: the Economic Geography (EG) School and the International Business (IB) School. Methodology: The study is based on a literature review of the classical and neo-classical theories, on the economic geography theories and on the international business theories. This literature review establishes links between these theoretical mainstreams. This work is based on the academic framework establishing a meaningful literature review aimed to respond to our research question and to develop further research in this field. Results: The classical and neo-classical pioneering theories provide initial insights that territories are different and that these differences explain the discrepancies in their levels of prosperity and standards of living. These theories emphasized different factors impacting the level and the growth of productivity in a given area and therefore the degree of their competitiveness. However, these theories are not sufficient to more precisely identify the drivers and enablers of location competitiveness and to explain, in particular, the factors that drive the creation of economic activities, the expansion of economic activities, the creation of new firms and the attraction of foreign firms. Prosperity is due to economic activities created by firms. Therefore, we need more theoretical insights to scrutinize the competitive advantages of territories or, in other words, their ability to offer the best conditions that enable economic agents to achieve higher rates of productivity in open markets. Two major theories provide, to a large extent, the needed insights: the economic geography theory and the international business theory. The economic geography studies scrutinized in this study from Marshall to Porter, aim to explain the drivers of the concentration of specific industries and activities in specific locations. These activity agglomerations may be due to the creation of new enterprises, the expansion of existing firms, and the attraction of firms located elsewhere. Regarding this last possibility, the international business (IB) theories focus on the comparative advantages of locations as far as multinational enterprises (MNEs) strategies are concerned. According to international business theory, the comparative advantages of a location serves firms not only by exploiting their ownership advantages (mostly as far as market seeking, resource seeking and efficiency seeking investments are concerned) but also by augmenting and/or creating new ownership advantages (strategic asset seeking investments). The impact of a location on the competitiveness of firms is considered from both sides: the MNE’s home country and the MNE’s host country.

Keywords: competitiveness, economic geography, international business, attractiveness of businesses

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Authors: Arda Bagus M, Yehezkiel Festian P, Budianto Santoso

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The Tourism Area of Southern Malang is administratively located in the Regency of Malang, East Java Province, Indonesia and geographically is in a position between 112o17' - 112o57' E dan 7o44' - 8o26' S. Southern Malang consists of several sub-districts that directly borders with the Indian Ocean, such as Donomulyo, Bantur, Gedangan, Sumbermanjing, Tirto Yudo, and Ampel Gading. This area has a high geotourism potential because of the existence of geodiversity such as beaches, waterfalls, caves, and karst area. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is still no systematic data that informs the geotourism potentials to the public. The aim of this research is to complete the lack of data and then arrange it systematically so it can be used for both tourism and research purposes. Research methods such as field observation, literature study, and depth interview to local people have been implemented. Aspects reviewed by visiting the field are accommodation, transportation, and the feasibility of a place to be geotourism object. The primary data was taken in Sumbermanjing, Gedangan, Bantur, and Donomulyo sub-district. A literature study is needed to determine the regional geology of Southern Malang and as a comparison to new data obtained in the field. The results of the literature study show that southern Malang consists of three formations: Wonosari Formation, Mandalaka Formation, and River-swamps Sediment Formation with the age range of Oligocene to Quaternary. Depth interviews have been conducted by involving local people with the aim of knowing cultural-history in the research area. From this research, the geotourism object distribution map has been made. The map also includes Geotrek and basic geological information of each object. The results of this research can support the development of geotourism in Southern Malang.

Keywords: geodiversity, geology, geotourism, geotrek, southern Malang

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Authors: Alexis Thouki

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In our post-Christian societies, ecclesiastical heritage acquired a new extrovert profile aiming to reach out an increasingly diverse audience. In this context, the various motivations, interests, personalities and cultural exchanges, found in the ‘post-modern pilgrimage’, bequeath a hybrid and multidimensional character to religious tourism education. In consequence, churches have acquired the challenging role of enriching visitors cultural and spiritual capital. Despite this promising diversification to relate, reveal and provoke constructive discourses, due to the various ‘conflicting interests’, practitioners attempt to tame the rich in symbolism and meanings religious environment through ‘neutral interpretations’. This paper aims to present the results of an ongoing developing strategy related to the presentation of contentious meanings in English churches. The paper will explore some of the underlying issues related to the capacity of ‘neutrality’ to spark, downplay or eliminate contentious conversations relating to the cultural, religious, and social dimension of Christian cultural heritage thematology. In an effort to understand this issue, the paper examines the concept of neutrality and what it stands for, executing a discourse analysis in the semantic context in which the theological lexicon is interwoven with the cultural and social meanings of sacred sites. Following that, the paper examines whether the preferable interpretive strategies meet the post-modern interpretative framework which is marked by polysemy and critical active engagement. The ultimate aim of the paper is to investigate the hypothesis that the preferable neutral strategies, managing the ‘conflicting’ demands of worshippers and visitors, result in the uneven treatment of both, the religious and historical spirit of the place.

Keywords: contentious dialogue, interpretation, meaning making, religious tourism

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