Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics

19-46

Authors: Ademola Samuel Sajuyigbe, Isaac Olugbenga Fadeyibi

The emerging field of entrepreneurship in 20th century has made women entrepreneurs to be creative and innovative. However, in Africa especially Nigeria, women have historically been disadvantaged in accessing not only material resources, but also have been deprived of resources like finance, market information and modern technology. This study examined the influence of women entrepreneurs on sustainable economic development in Nigeria. Other specific objectives were to assess the perceived contributions of women entrepreneurs to economic sustainability in Nigeria; ascertain the ways in which women entrepreneurs have been empowered; determine the factors motivating women into entrepreneurship and to identify the major challenges facing women towards entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. This research work was carried out among the three thousand one hundred and fifty (3,150) women entrepreneurs registered with ministry of commerce and industry in the South-Western geo-political zones of Nigeria. A total of six hundred and eighty (680) participants were selected as sample size for the study. The data collection instruments for the study were structured questionnaire and personal interview. Data analysis was performed with the aid of simple percentage, mean, chi-square and linear Regression. Results revealed that involvement of women in entrepreneurship (β = 0.310, t = 17.175, P<.001) have positive and significant influence on sustainable economic development. Results also indicated that majority of women have been empowered by voting in elections, have access to education, and they have benefited from empowerment training. Furthermore, result indicated that involvement of women in entrepreneurial activities accounted for 30.3% of the variation which was explained by the model while extraneous variables accounted for about 69.7%. Results so revealed that lack of access to finance, work/home conflict and lack of moral support from family members are major challenges facing women entrepreneurs in Nigeria. Study concluded that involvement of women in entrepreneurship is a catalyst to the sustainable economic development. The study recommended the establishment of Women Entrepreneurship Development Centre (WEDC) by the federal/state government in collaboration with private sector to provide financial assistance, business advice, mentorship and other practicable support in order to empower the Nigerian women towards realization of the self-employment aspirations.

64-86

Authors: Nidhi Kaushal, Sanjit Mishra

Narrative writings in literature are ample source of knowledge and are most easily understandable. In every old tradition, we find that people learn ethics and morality through oral forms of literature including short stories, ballads, and various other types of the genre. These narratives used to have tremendous influence on the listeners and readers seeking lessons in leadership. India, just like any other traditional country, has been rich in such genres whose practitioners effectively transmitted the required knowledge or the motivation to the learners in particular and the masses in general. The objective of this paper is to analyse and discus the art and craft of such stories which were useful in communicating the ideals of leadership. We assume that while leadership lessons can be learned from the study of literary writings, they can also be a valuable resource material for innovative learning the management skills. The role of the leader can be familiarly communicated in the form of the tales. Describing a positive psychological narrative from the text is the best way to manifesting an idea in to the minds of people.

110-126

Authors: Philip Ifeakachukwu Nwosa

This study examined relationship between external reserves and economic growth in Nigeria from 1981 to 2014. The study used the Ordinary least squares econometric method of analysis. The result of the study showed that external reserves had positive and significant influence on the economic growth in Nigeria. Based on the major finding of this study, it was concluded that external reserve in Nigeria has over the period of study contributed positively and significantly to the growth of the economy. Thus, the study recommended the need for prudent management of Nigerian’s external reserves to ensure more growth and also that government should put in more policies that will enhance increased accumulation of external reserves.

147-171

Authors: Dematria Pringgabayu, Dany Muhammad Athory Ramdlany

The research was conducted to determine whether the leaderhsip and organizational culture have positive and significant impact on knowledge management at State Owned-Port Company. This study has three variables, namely the leaderhsip and organizational culture as an independent variable and knowledge management as the dependent variable. Data obtained from interviews and questionnaires were distributed to the employee population at State Owned-Port Company This research method uses descriptive method and verification method. Data processing is performed using path analysis. The result of this study indicate that leadership has a significant influence 12,8% on knowledge management and organizational culture has a significant influence 26,7% on knowledge management at State Owned-Port Company. Simultaneously, leadership and organizational culture have total influence 0,958 on knowledge management at State Owned-Port Company.

41-66

Authors: Aries Heru Prasetyo

This study aimed in contextualizing competitive advantage for social entrepreneurship from different perspective. Having defined social entrepreneurship as ways to have better solution in dealing with social issue, enterprise is believed to be founded upon some social mission. In that case, the role of commitment, loyalty and perseverance become an important concept to understand the characteristic of organization. One important signal found in the study was due to a rapid growth of development for the fields of knowledge. The study identified the important role of leadership and knowledge management to social enterprise. The three major contributions from the study are: (i) addressing the basic framework in analyzing social entrepreneurship, (ii) codifying possible network mapping faced by complex-social enterprise and (iii) proposing model for future competitive advantage by considering unique characteristics of social organization. The study enclosed with proposing three propositions which covered the relationship between social enterprise and the society and also some possibility to have different analysis between developed and developing country.

108-139

Authors: Yashar Salamzadeh; Maryam Rezai

Employing appropriate and up to date Business models in Organizations is so important due to the fact that it is the strategy which shows the main logic of a corporation in creating values in organizations. It is important to the extent that not employing an appropriate and up to date business model will prevent the organizations fulfilling their aims, even if they employ high technology or diverse resources. In fact, economical value of a technology is unknown until corporations employ an appropriate form of business model. It can be said that, those corporations employing more appropriate business models for a technology achieve more value than the corporations discovering that technology. A good business model is the basis of each successful organization, no difference the investment is new or it's an already established one. Due to the importance of this issue, in this study, we try to identify the main reasons for not being up to date or not developing business models in organizations. We do this by reflecting upon the results of credible and up to date researches in the area of different business models and obstacles or challenges facing different organizations. In line with what was said above, we employed library research, extracting updating obstacles in business models, questionnaire and field research for data collection process. Determining reliability and validity of the questionnaire, we distributed it among 198 corporations of management counseling in Tehran province. This research follows positivism paradigm and is practical, quantitative, and inductive. The results lead to the discovery of 35 cases of the main reasons of not being up to date and developed in using business models. As there was no basis for categorizing variables and formerly defined categories, in order to maximize the correlation between variables and factors, calculating the factorial ratio and determining the intended factors, we employed factorial design. Using this statistical technique, the variables were categorized in 4 kinds of obstacles: strategic, information, management, and system. At the end these are ranked using fuzzy Topsis technique. The results of ranking show the importance order of obstacles as follows: Informational factors, Systematic factors, managerial factors & strategic factors.

157-184

Authors: Áurea Sousa; Gualter Couto; Nélia Branco; Osvaldo Silva; Helena Bacelar-Nicolau

The importance of entrepreneurship promotion has increased significantly in today's society, especially during periods of crises. This work is based on the responses obtained through a survey conducted on a sample of 305 undergraduates of the University of the Azores, enrolled in different science pro-grams. The aim is to deepen the knowledge of the entrepreneurial propensity of higher education students in the Azores, and in that way the university can stimulate their interest in creating business-es. The main results obtained, using exploratory data analysis (from the univariate to the multivariate), are presented and discussed.

216-236

Authors: Siavash Mahmoudi, Saeid Mahmoudi, Ali Mahmoudi

Over the last few years, increase in the number of financial crisis cases has attracted the attention of a great number of investors and creditors to the prediction of these cases by using the data available from financial statements of the corporations in order to prevent losses which are caused by them. Many of the studies about the earning management only focus on identifying the factors which affect the earnings management and relation between earnings management and these factors and not on using these factors in order to predict the earnings management. On the other hand, in the present study, 12 influential factors, which are introduced by former studies, are used to evaluate the predicting ability of the neural networks for prediction of earnings management and its different levels. Multilayer perceptron neural network with 2 hidden layers is used for prediction. Moreover, the required data is obtained from the financial statements of the listed companies of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The results show that the applied neural network method has an acceptable ability for the prediction of earnings management and its different levels in all different studies industries.