by Le Thi Nuong
Original Research
The extant literature on the relationship between determinants of women-owned SMEs' performance points to a lack of clarification of the link between demographic factors and the performance of women-owned SMEs generally in Vietnam and particularly in Thanh Hoa province. This research effort aims to explore the relationship between demographic characteristics (including Age, Education, Experience, Marital status, and Family background of SME owners) and the performance of women-owned SMEs in Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam. Data were collected from 300 female entrepreneurs by a self-structured questionnaire through a mail survey, using a stratified random sampling technique. Four aspects of the BSC balanced scorecard are used as dependent variables. Multivariate regression analysis is applied to study the impact of demographic characteristics on the business performance of enterprises. Research results show that education, experience, and family background impact the business performance of women-owned SMEs in Thanh Hoa province. However, the research found no relationship between age and owners' marital status and firm performance.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 157-163. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-7
Pub. Date: July 24, 2022
1473 Views8 Downloads
by Hui-Sung Kao and Ming-Jiun Tsai
Original Research
This study discusses the effect of supplier-customer relationships in the supply chain on operational risk and takes into account earnings management to explain the increment and modulation effect on supply chain relationship and operational risk. With listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies in Taiwan from 2009 to 2018 as subjects, this study finds in its empirical results that in supplier-customer relationships, suppliers may obtain related information in due time and adopt a better cooperation mode in the supply chain to reduce operational risk when they have a higher key customer concentration. However, in such a case, their operational risk may increase with a higher key customer concentration if enterprises take real earnings management to manipulate earnings.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 147-156. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-6
Pub. Date: July 21, 2022
1477 Views5 Downloads
by Stephen Muathe, Paul Sang, Lucy Kavinda1, George Kosimbei, Sammy Letema, Simeon Nyachae, Salima Kiriago, Kenneth Chelule, Erustus Ouko, Margaret Mutua and Samuel Maina
Original Research
Over the last 10 years, maturity of the business landscape has unlocked new opportunities in Africa, especially the entry of accelerators, incubators, and other start-up ecosystem players. These organizations are constantly adapting their models to respond to the ever-changing needs of the ventures they support. Therefore, there is need for existing literature to keep abreast with this vitality to strengthen the ecosystems in Kenya. The paper analyses the drivers, challenges and opportunities within the start-up ecosystem in Kenya. The paper is based on cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Human-centred purposive and proportionate stratified random sampling techniques were used to select a sample of 74 respondents who filled an electronic survey; coupled with interview of 50 start-ups ecosystem players. Descriptive statistics and content analysis was used in data analysis. The study reveals that Kenya has made significant strides in the start-up scene, however, there is a heavy concentration of activity in Nairobi the capital city, leading to disparity within the country. Opportunities for collaboration are bypassed in favour of duplication of programs and consequently funds that should ultimately support entrepreneurs are spread thin. a number of challenges bedevilled start-ups, access to financing and risk capital, lack of sector coordination, weak start-up culture, me too businesses, insufficient policies and guidelines on incubation and commercialization, and lack of a robust monitoring, evaluation and learning system. The study recommends that the national government should provide matching funds for venture capital, standardization and decentralization of innovation and incubation centres countrywide, central database for start-ups and sensitization and awareness-building programs on intellectual property rights among start-ups.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 138-146. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-5
Pub. Date: July 19, 2022
2564 Views6 Downloads
by Gladwell Murigi and Morrisson Mutuku
Literature Review
The idea of storing and managing data on virtualized servers has been brought to life by cloud computing technology allowing apps, individuals and organizations all over the world to connect to data and computing resources anywhere and at any time. Users of cloud computing can share processing power, storage space, bandwidth, memory and software. Because cloud computing is so simple to use, consumers no longer need to invest much in IT infrastructure. However, cloud computing comes with its own challenges with cloud security and privacy being the biggest concerns. Many organizations are uncomfortable with storing their data and applications on systems they do not control. In addition, since cloud services are accessed via internet, there is risk of attack by hackers. It was therefore important to assess security issues and challenges in cloud computing among public institutions in Africa. This study adopted a systematic review of literature. During the selection of studies to be used in a systematic review, the search for empirical studies was done in an extensive manner. Multiple or numerous sources, both printed and computerized were searched.. This study selected studies that were less than 5 years old. In addition, the study selected studies conducted in Kenya, other countries in Africa and around the world. To ensure the quality of the studies, the study selected studies with abstract, introduction, objectives, methods, results/findings and conclusions. The study concludes that challenges and security issues in cloud computing among public institutions include data breach, account hijacking, data loss, denial of service attacks, cloud abuse, malicious insiders, phishing attacks, portability restrictions, backdoor channel attacks, cloud malware injection attacks, shared technology vulnerabilities and lack of confidentiality of corporate data. The researcher therefore recommends that the governments should come up policies to govern and improve cloud computing adoption among public institutions. In addition, the study recommends development of policies to protect data from external hackers and malicious individuals. Policy makers should develop clear policies that require the cloud service providers to safeguard privacy and also security of data they are managing on behalf of institutions. Moreover, the policy makers should come up with policies that guide the provision of penalties to security failures. Also, public institutions should establish an information and communication technology department to come up with strategies to protect data in their organizations.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 131-137. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-4
Pub. Date: July 17, 2022
1675 Views6 Downloads
by Moses Kwadzo and James Kofi Annan
Original Research
Several concerns have been raised about child labor use in the fishery sector of Ghana. While some have argued that child labor should be abolished because it endangers the lives of children, others maintain that the use of children in agricultural work promotes their socioeconomic development. This study sought to assess the nature of child labor in Ghana and examine its effects on the academic outcomes of students in junior high schools in the Elmina community in the Central Region in Ghana. A total of 242 students from two junior high schools in the Elmina fishing community completed questionnaires for the study. The questionnaire results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent-sample t-tests. The findings revealed that 104 of the 242 students were involved in various fishery activities, including sorting, selling, dressing, and smoking of fish. The students were found to be working 12.3 hours per week and 3.3 days per week on average. Contrary to expectations, the independent-sample t-tests showed no statistically significant difference in aggregate examination mean scores for students involved in and students not involved in fishery activities. This observation could be attributed to the fact that the majority of the students involved in fishery activities engaged mainly in fishery activities that can be described as child work rather than child labor. This study recommends that households engaged in fishing consider limiting their children to light and regular fishing activities if the need arises to engage them, to avoid distraction from their education.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 124-130. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-3
Pub. Date: July 17, 2022
3626 Views5 Downloads
by Richard Muthoka, James Kilika and Stephen Muathe
Original Research
Active collaboration in strategic alliances is quantified using the model of inter-organizational network structures, which is applied to measure the effect of the level of collaboration in strategic alliances formed by Small and Medium Enterprises in the manufacturing sector. The study's target population comprised 74 manufacturing SMEs in Kenya, and the respondent included the firm's CEO and senior managers. The study used stepwise methods for the regression analysis of the mediating effect proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986). The study findings indicated that manufacturing SMEs in Kenya practice strategic alliances to a moderate extent (Mean=3.78; S.D=0.66), level of collaboration is practiced to high extent at (M=4.24; S.D=0.41), while the level of firm performance is at the level of moderate extent (M=3.68; S.D=0.77). The finding of the study hypotheses shows a positive and significant effect of strategic alliances on firm performance, while the level of collaboration has a significant partial mediating effect on the relationship between strategic alliance and firm performance. The study concluded that collaboration is relevant in strategic alliances formed by manufacturing SMEs in Kenya since the strength of the relationship between strategic alliance and firm performance depends on the level of collaboration. Though impactful at the managerial level of manufacturing SMEs, the study findings have also proposed suggestions on the complementarities among multiple theories suitable to explain the phenomenon of strategic alliance and firm performance.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 113-123. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-2
Pub. Date: June 01, 2022
1787 Views6 Downloads
by Hui-Wen Yang and Shih-Chieh Fang
Original Research
R&D collaboration with academia is widely perceived as the important way to develop breakthrough innovation and sustain competitive advantage in the knowledge-intensive industry. The outcome of collaborative innovation depends on the firm’s strategy and management to overcome the challenges from different institutional logic and different disciplinary of knowledge domains. Based on literature review and a longitudinal study, we explored how firm effectively develop and maintain R&D partnership with academia. We highlighted the dynamics of collaborative sensemaking in the interdisciplinary collaboration. This study provided inspiration for practitioners to manage R&D partnership and achieve the desired outcome of industry-academia collaboration.
Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2022, 10(3), 105-112. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-10-3-1
Pub. Date: May 12, 2022
1626 Views2 Downloads