World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

Anderson, Beverlee B.; ALMubaraki, Hanadi

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276598

Purpose One of the most notable enterprises designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services is the business incubator. There are many key components to developing a successful business incubator. However, when one or two of these components are missing or inadequate, failure can follow. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key components to developing a successful business incubator as an effective tool for economic development, based on the case study of an unsuccessful effort.Designmethodologyapproach The Gateway Innovation Center case study presents an opportunity to examine some possible pitfalls of developing a business incubator. A scant four months after opening, the organizers of the incubator decided to give up on the project. Exploring the various missteps in the formation of the Gateway Innovation Center provides a better understanding of key issues in developing successful incubators.Findings The lack of success was attributed to five features function following form lack of planning lack of expertise lack of due diligence and market area would not support a technology incubator.Originalityvalue Very few business incubator failures are examined. This is one of the first case studies to examine the short life of a highly anticipated business incubator in an area of Southern California that was seeking to foster new businesses and create jobs in a region of relatively high unemployment.

Zamberi Ahmad, Syed

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276606

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the main problems and constraints faced by micro, small and mediumsized entrepreneurs MSMEs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Designmethodologyapproach To attain the above objective, the study employed a mixed methodology research design where both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. A survey method was used to gather data from 177 MSMEs located in selected cities in Saudi Arabia i.e. Riyadh, Jeddah, Jubail and AlKhobar, and, in addition, 15 of these entrepreneurs were purposefully selected and interviewed. Statistical analysis was conducted to identify the factors constraining the growth and survival of MSMEs in the country. The relevant literature review pinpoints salient issues in the environment of the small business enterprises.Findings The results show that the difficulties in obtaining financial support, bureaucracy, lack of credit options and unfriendly business environment are the main problems and constraints faced by the analysed MSMEs. Other important problems include unfriendly business environment, inadequate government support, unpredictable policy changes, and lack of training. These barriers vary according to the field of activity of the enterprises.Research limitationsimplications The instruments used for this study need to be subjected to more statistical tests in order to establish a more robust validity and reliability. In addition, replication of this study using larger samples with more types of business sectors and a broader geographic base is suggested for crossvalidation purposes.Practical implications Policy makers such as governments federal, state, local, NGOs, and other stakeholders can strengthen their MSME entrepreneurs by launching promotional schemes that could lead to entrepreneurial success and design targeted policies and related support programmes that will actively stimulate the development of MSME businesses.Originalityvalue The paper serves to enrich the understanding on the subject of entrepreneurship in an Arab country and will specially help to fill the lack of academic research available about MSMEs businesses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, the insights gained from this study contribute to the future development of this line of research, particularly in a nonWestern context. Proper attention to the issues raised and recommendations made could give a significant boost to entrepreneurial activities in the region.

Nangoli, Sudi; Namagembe, Sheila; Ntayi, Joseph M.; Ngoma, Muhammad

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276615

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of project communication on projectstakeholder commitment. Earlier studies have emphasized the significant influence of projectstakeholder commitment to project success and to date, lack of stakeholder commitment is still listed as a key cause of project failure. In an effort to improve project stakeholder commitment, the paper investigated project communication as a key antecedent of projectstakeholder commitment.Designmethodologyapproach The study adopted a cross sectional study design and results were drawn from a sample of 92 citizenship projects conducted by 16 commercial banks in Uganda. Data collection was based on a specific type of project in order to obtain contextspecific responses.Findings The results obtained after running a hierarchical regression indicated that intraproject communication and extraproject communication had a positive combined predictive potential of projectstakeholder commitment with a Beta coefficient of 0.54. It was recommended that project management should create an atmosphere for effective project communication as one of the primary means of ensuring commitment of various projectstakeholder commitment.Originalityvalue This is the first paper to document the effect of project communication on stakeholder commitment in Uganda. Many people in projects in Uganda have lacked commitment to projects due to inadequate information, attributable to gaps in the communication system. The results indicate that project communication has implications for project commitment.

Musa Ahmed, Elsadig

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276624

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to incorporate the spillover effects of trade on East Asian productivity, namely China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.Designmethodologyapproach This study attempts to fill in the gaps of previous studies by developing applications of extensive growth theory that shows the trade spillover effects on productivity growth of ASEAN 5 plus3. It further provides a meaningful statistical analysis in which, the first step of the estimation to get the coefficients of the explanatory variables that has been used by econometric approach. It can be restated here that in addition, a second step that plugs the parameters of the variables into the model in order to compute the contribution rates of productivity indicators including the calculation of the residual of the model total factor productivity TFP and GDP contributions being used by growth accounting approach. The TFP is considered be trade spillover effects indicator that is showed the technology transfer to domestic firms and human capital skills upgrading.Findings The paper finds that there was a little contribution of exports and imports to TFP growth in these countries during all the periods of study. It confirms that high physical capital input growth resulted in high gross domestic product GDP contribution and low TFP contribution with insignificant technological progress experiences by most of these countries, with the exception of Japan and to some extent, South Korea.Originalityvalue In this respect, the trade spillover effects had transferred technology and developed human capital skills to a greater extent in the cases of Japan and Republic of Korea and their economies considered to be productivity driven economies.

Saleh Mohamad Ahmad, Nassr; Abd AlSalam Mohmes, Kamal

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276633

Purpose The consideration of corporate environmental responsibility CER has been in existence for more than a decade now, rising to prominence as a result of the upsurge in environmental auditing EA. Despite the many international claims that auditors are positioned to play a pivotal role in the design and conduct of EA, no previous study has been undertaken in the Libyan context. The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into the preparedness of Libyan financial auditors to handle EA within the conventional auditing framework.Designmethodologyapproach The paper comprises an exploration of the views and experience of 93 practitioners in the 27 largest auditing offices in Tripoli. A questionnaire was chosen for this study. It was pretested by nine members of staff in accounting departments at Libyan universities and 11 practitioners. The final Arabic copies of the questionnaire were distributed in the final survey. The number of questionnaires distributed was 93 and the response rate was 87.1 per cent usable questionnaires 81.Findings The results of this research are reflective of contemporary international studies, suggesting that, although the Libyan financial auditors recognised the influence of environmental issues on the different stages of auditing, they are conspicuously absent from EA. This can be attributed to their lack of competence in such an area a lack of professional standards and guidance a lack of research in this area EA not being required by laws limited public demand for environmental reports and the low level of environmental disclosure by Libyan companies.Originalityvalue It is envisaged that this initial study will add to the limited literature on EA in developing countries and provide a useful framework for further studies, especially those in the Arabic region.

Dare Kolawole, Oluwatoyin

2012 World Journal of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1108/20425961211276642

Purpose Poverty, inequality and unemployment challenges need to be adequately addressed if sustainable human development is to be achieved. Although these key issues are not mutually exclusive, the purpose of this paper is to identify factors influencing rural employment promotion REP in southern Nigeria.Designmethodologyapproach A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 60 rural communities in southern Nigeria. In all, 300 interviewees were sampled and interviewed using structured and unstructured interview schedules. Descriptive statistical techniques such as frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation, etc. were used to describe and summarise the data. Probit analysis was employed to make deductions through the use of STATA package.Findings The result showed a pseudo R2 value of 0.3581, which is quite reasonable for qualitative dependent variable models. At p 0.01 level of significance, education z2.02, farm size z2.39 positively influenced the drive towards rural employment generation. Also, at p 0.01 level, the availability of banking institutions z1.94 and support from the family members z2.17 did strongly predict REP. Other predictors of REP were the disaggregated units of project typeorientation, which are production z1.67 and serviceoriented ventures z1.98 and they both had strong and positive influence on REP at p 0.05 and 0.01 levels of significance, respectively.Research limitationsimplications The research only focused on southwestern Nigeria. Other geopolitical and ecological zones in the country would need future research exploration to allow for a countrylevel generalisation of findings on rural employment.Practical implications The findings of the study have practical implication for future employment initiativeproject implementation in Nigeria and in similar socioecological contexts elsewhere. They serve as a baseline on which future research and development work could rely.Social implications The information generated in the study could serve as working tools for propoor policy conceptualisation, formulation and implementation in developing economies and probably elsewhere. If genuinely implemented, it could enhance rural peoples wellbeing and quality of life.Originalityvalue As an original research, the paper offers new insights on crucial issues that influence rural employment promotion in Nigeria and probably elsewhere with similar sociocultural, ecological, political and economic contexts in the South.