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Entrepreneurship is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that is associated with value creation and considered a driver of economic development. While Africa exhibits a strong upsurge in the number of women entrepreneurs, the continent is still struggling in terms of gender equality and women's empowerment. The region is entrepreneurially disadvantaged, with a low degree of female participation in this field and a large gender gap in favor of men. Therefore, this paper aims to present original insights into female entrepreneurship from the context of Morocco, exploring the motivations and barriers to women entrepreneurs in the service sector. It adopts a multi-level integrative framework and combines feminist and institutional theory to capture the agency and enabling factors along with institutional regulative and normative constraints associated with female entrepreneurship. The paper adopts an interpretative qualitative research approach capitalizing on in-depth interviews with twenty women entrepreneurs in the service sector. The data is analyzed using thematic coding and identified factors are classified into micro-meso-macro levels. The findings highlight the importance of integrating multiple lens and levels of analysis to capture the complexity of the phenomenon and illustrate the imbrication and interplay of enablers and constraints and contribute theoretically and empirically to knowledge on female entrepreneurship in the North African context and a factor-driven economy through the case of Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the evidence that women in Sub-Saharan Africa become entrepreneurs faster than any other group globally, more studies are needed to understand the motivation(s) for their decision to pursue entrepreneurship. This paper aims to contribute to research on what motivates Sub-Saharan African women to become entrepreneurs. A case study approach was utilized to understand the experiences of 20 women entrepreneurs from Sub-Saharan African countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. All the study participants had tertiary-level education and left their corporate careers to pursue entrepreneurship. Pull and opportunity factors were the main factors that motivated the women interviewed to become entrepreneurs. Push and necessity factors accounted for a few cases. The level of education did not dictate the pull and opportunity factors of motivation. These findings are important because previous studies have stereotyped Sub-Sahara African women entrepreneurs with the generalization that they are motivated to become entrepreneurs by push and necessity factors and are often uneducated and on the fringe of economic activity. The paper makes specific policy recommendations for harnessing motivations and linking them to broader economic development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the economic potential of music streaming in a developing African economy. It aims to know whether, in emerging African countries, the economic value of music streaming can significantly improve the world's music market revenue growth. Hence, the study uses two marketing theories, product and marketing concepts, to conceptualize a hypothesized model based on survey data from Nigeria. Specifically, it achieves its objective by analyzing the factors that correlate with premium music streaming using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Our findings suggest that music sampling and consumer attitude are crucial for determining purchase intention and premium streaming. Additionally, we find that stringent anti-piracy measures and low streaming costs can influence optimal music purchase intention and premium music streaming behavior. Overall, while the study fosters an understanding of the economic potential of music streaming in emerging African markets, its evidence supports the literature with valuable insights for decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to finance is perceived as one of the major problems facing businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the structures that support them in their development. This paper aims to measure the probability that a support structure with given characteristics, specific services to entrepreneurs and some technical capacities will face large-scale financial problems. We estimate a multinomial logistic model using a pool of disaggregated data collected by the Nkafu Policy Institute in a survey of 80 business support structures in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana in 2021. Our results show that the financial health of a business support structure is not fundamentally dependent on the duration of support, but rather on other factors related to the quality of services offered to entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers have become active and engaged with multiple actors outside the hotel, raising new challenges to theory and practice. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the external actors with which customers interact to ascertain which ones foster/hinder customer engagement and value co-creation/destruction. We used qualitative methods (16 in-depth interviews, document analysis, and four participants' observations) gathered from seven regions in Ghana. Data were analyzed using Nvivo12 within a thematic analysis framework designed to identify, analyze, and describe patterns found in data. The study revealed that guests' interactive engagement with multiple actors beyond the hotel environment influences their experience, either fostering or hindering value co-creation. Positive and negative engagement fosters/hinders guests' interactions and the potential for value co-creation/destruction. The study offers a novel connection between customer interactions, engagement, and value co-creation to discover and depict the external actors' actions that foster or hinder customers' experience in the hotel setting. Industry players can use the developed customer interactive engagement framework and value co-creation/destruction actors in tourist and hotel settings to assess their businesses and explore the value they aim to generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates how regulatory policy modulates the complex relationship between market power and bank lending. The empirical evidence is based on the seemingly unrelated panel regressions by employing a dataset of 52 African countries for the period, 2006–2018. The study finds a U-shaped relationship between market power and bank lending. The study shows that the estimated thresholds fall within the range of -4.38 to 9.67 of market power. It observes that the thresholds of market power in countries with stringent regulatory policies are relatively greater than countries operating in low regulatory policy regimes. The study shows a negative and direct effect of market power on lending. In the light of interactions, the conditional effects are estimated to provide meaningful interpretations. This is relevant to policymakers because our established conditional effects, imply that regulatory policy is a sufficient complementary condition for reducing the negative effect of market power on bank lending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business strategy literature argues that firm survival and growth in any competitive environment depend on the adaptation of suitable competitive business strategies. Despite the growing interest in strategic management within the fish farming industry, there is a notable lack of empirical evidence exploring how the competitive environment influences companies’ business strategy and performance. This paper examines the direct effect of competitive strategy and the moderating effect of competitive intensity on business strategy-performance relationship. Using hierarchical regression to analyze 306 samples gathered from fish farming firms of south-Benin, empirical evidence shows that competitive strategy including cost-leadership, and both product quality and marketing differentiation strategies impact positively firm financial performance. This research highlights the relative importance of product quality differentiation strategy. In addition, findings indicate that competitive intensity structure contribute to firm success. Surprisingly, findings show that competitive intensity does not significantly moderate the effect of cost-leadership and product differentiation strategies. Besides, the effect of marketing strategy on firm performance becomes more negative under high competition in the domestic market. Study recommends that firms should gain organizational economic outcomes by pursuing cost-leadership strategy and product differentiation strategy whatever competitive intensity states in the domestic market of fish farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate about Africa's financial stability by focusing on the prevalence of systemic risk in 40 listed derivatives user-banks over 2011–2017, employing the systemic risk index (SRI), and subsequently exploring how it links to the continent's financial market development. The systemic risk buildup within the industry is mainly depicted as an unstable, diluted, and possibly depleting process. Gloomy predictions persist in the subsequent attempts to uncover plausible causes of systemic risk formation. Mainly, conventional defining factors for risk exhibit irrelevance toward systemic risk development, as threats to financial stability remain confined within the industry, supported by a lack of diversification in financial services. The investigated markets may be individually subject to internal vulnerabilities that could be exacerbated by financial shocks, feedback effects, and the likelihood of contagion and failure among financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credit union is considered as an alternative solution for global poverty and financial inclusiveness for social development. However, to achieve this goal, first and foremost a credit union must be sustainable. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review on the key determinants of sustainability of credit unions and its measurements through comprehensive literature search and assessment based on the PRISMA-P guidelines. The findings reveal standard quantitative measures such as operations of self-sufficiency ratio, financial sustainability score, return on assets and pearl index (two studies qualitatively assessed governance structure and membership rate as measures). Additionally, key factors such as efficiency, loan management factors, deposit mobilization, portfolio at risk, credit risk, regulatory environment, and asset factors are significant determinants of sustainability of credit unions. The findings suggest a great need for complementarity of role and responsible conduct of the key stakeholders (members), staff, management and enabling regulatory environment for sustainable credit union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between institutional pressures, supply chain integration and supply chain performance in the wooden furniture industry. Cross-sectional survey data collected from 86 registered wooden furniture firms in Uganda were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling. The study revealed that institutional pressures are positively and significantly related with supply chain performance and that supply chain integration plays a partial mediating role in the institutional pressures-supply chain performance relationship. Further, our component level analysis of institutional pressures reveals that whereas coercive pressure has a discernible positive influence on both supply chain integration and supply chain performance, mimetic pressure does not, while normative pressure positively influences only supply chain integration. These results underline the need to understand the role of individual components of institutional pressures and integration requirements in strategic supply chain management practice in order to boost supply chain performance of the wooden furniture firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual capital is a significant determinant of firm performance heterogeneity. However, research into the direct relationship between this knowledge base asset and a firm's performance has produced contradictory results. This paper uses contingency theory to argue that a firm's age and debt are moderators in this relationship. The study sought to investigate the moderating effects of age and debt on the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance measures from the perspective of a developing country. The study used data from the financial statements of companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange between 2014 and 2018. According to the regression results, age and debt are significant moderators of this relationship. The findings show that older companies outperform younger companies in using intellectual capital as a performance driver. Companies with higher financial capabilities outperform companies with fewer capabilities. The study concluded with a discussion of the study's implications, contribution, and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the existence of an extensive literature on determinants of bank profitability, there exists no paper which comprehensively weaves through this literature. We humbly undertake such a review by painstakingly discussing all the potential proxies to end up with a holistic model. We keep abreast of the evolving dynamics by proposing two new metrics, namely aging population and digitization to cope with the detrimental sequels of COVID-19. Our full-fledged model consists of bank-specific, macroeconomic-specific, crisis dummies and interacting variables. Operational risk is found to be an area that will need to be further developed in the literature. Our proposed model can be applied to a specific country or a group of countries with researchers being able to flexibly tweak our blueprint model to suit their own specific applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of local workers’ communication skills (CS) on the transfer of soft and hard skills, and the effect of CS vis-à-vis practical skills (PS) on earnings, drawing on economic sociology. It also investigates the continued importance of CS after a significant reduction in expatriate managers. The findings indicate that CS influences the transfer of soft skills, but not hard skills. Expatriate managers significantly contribute to soft skills transfer, while local supervisors are more prominent in transferring hard skills. CS is important for earnings, regardless of the operator’s PS level, but the returns to PS depend on the CS level. As firms mature and expatriate manager numbers decline the influence of CS diminishes, although it remains crucial in affecting earnings. Enhancing workers’ effective communication and shared language skills, as well as regulating recruited expatriate managers’ CS, or the assigning interpreters, can facilitate both skills transfer and earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framing, the paper aims to investigate the association between job characteristics and burnout of the Tunisian police officers, taking the potential moderating role of self-efficacy as a key individual resource. To ensure more parsimonious research, we conducted a pilot study as a preliminary step in order to identify job characteristics that are specific to police work in the Tunisian context (Delphi technique). To test our research hypotheses, we carried out a confirmatory quantitative study using data from a sample of 245 Tunisian police officers using Structural Equations Modeling. Contrary to the common assumption, the results indicated that police officers are more sensitive to the job resources than to the job demands. More importantly, burnout seems to be a matter of job characteristics (social phenomenon) rather than an individual issue. This study offers a better understanding of the burnout phenomenon among police officers in an African country and especially in the post-revolutionary Tunisian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovations in digital platforms have led to strategic innovations of digital services which are exchanged between digital organizations and their customers. There are significant flows, not only of information, but also of innovation from digital platforms to services through a strategic innovation system. But how and why the flows shape the system are under-explained in the literature. This paper explores these innovation flows in two Ghanaian small-medium enterprises. It aims to explain the flows in order to contribute knowledge of a strategic innovation system which extends previous knowledge of strategic information systems. The explanation is that the stragic innovation system is shaped by innovation flows because of three types of adaptabilities: cognition, software production, and service provision. These adaptabilities are moderated respectively by leading and mutual learning, technologizing and liberating, and customer learning and relating. The theoretical contributions espoused by this explanation are discussed with their research and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of financial performance as perceived by Togolese female managers operating in the informal sector. The analysis is conducted using the partial least squares methodology based on data collected from 208 female-managed enterprises throughout Togo. The results indicate that business environment constraints, stereotypes toward females' managerial abilities, female entrepreneur's risk appetite, and being part of a network are associated positively and significantly with perceived financial performance, while difficult access to finance and cultural factors influence it negatively and significantly. Furthermore, the age of the enterprise is a significant determinant of the perceived financial performance. The positive effect of the business environment constraints is contrary to our expectations. This may be explained by the number of enterprises operating informally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]