Sustainable Energy and the Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises in Ghana

2016 ◽  
pp. 773-790
Author(s):  
Ruby Melody Agbola ◽  
Evans Sokro

The chronic shortage of petroleum fuels, especially gasoline and LPG, and the prolonged and indiscriminate power outages coupled with the recent increment in fuel prices appear to be taking their toll on Ghanaian businesses; hence, some have questioned the degree of security, reliability, and long-term sustainability of the country's energy need. The chapter assesses the impact of the recent power outages on the growth and profitability of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The study employed a survey design consisting of structured questionnaires involving a total of 190 SMEs across the country. An eight item Likert scale used to assess the impact of the energy crisis on three key measures of business growth revealed a strong positive correlation between the power outages and reduced profitability but a weak correlation with business expansion by way of market development and a statistically insignificant relationship between the power outages and growth in number of employees.

Author(s):  
Ruby Melody Agbola ◽  
Evans Sokro

The chronic shortage of petroleum fuels, especially gasoline and LPG, and the prolonged and indiscriminate power outages coupled with the recent increment in fuel prices appear to be taking their toll on Ghanaian businesses; hence, some have questioned the degree of security, reliability, and long-term sustainability of the country's energy need. The chapter assesses the impact of the recent power outages on the growth and profitability of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The study employed a survey design consisting of structured questionnaires involving a total of 190 SMEs across the country. An eight item Likert scale used to assess the impact of the energy crisis on three key measures of business growth revealed a strong positive correlation between the power outages and reduced profitability but a weak correlation with business expansion by way of market development and a statistically insignificant relationship between the power outages and growth in number of employees.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
Yunusa Ademu ◽  
Folashade Olufunke Obaje ◽  
Rotimi Grace Gift Otitolaiye

This study aimed at determining the effects of knowledge management and creation capability on the performance of SMEs in Kogi State. The research survey design was adopted for this study. For data analysis, descriptive and inferential analytical techniques were used. The analytical techniques employed are survival analysis and multiple regression analysis (stepwise). Findings showed that socialization has a significant effect on the competitive advantage of both Small and Medium Enterprises in Kogi State; externalization has a significant effect on the competitive advantage of Medium Enterprises in Kogi State; the combination of resources can predict the competitive advantage of both Small and Medium Enterprises in Kogi State. Findings further showed that combination, internalization, socialization, and externalization strongly and significantly predict the business growth of SMEs in Kogi State. The study concluded that the ability of SME owners to manage knowledge can translate into a better chance of achieving the enterprise's goals. The study recommended that SME owners should channel their knowledge creation towards socialization and a combination of resources; owners of Medium Enterprises should take advantage of knowledge creation through externalization to facilitate sustainable competitive advantage in Kogi State. Furthermore, SME owners and economic stakeholders should find alternative ways of promoting effective knowledge management and creation in Kogi State.


Author(s):  
Guilherme de Farias Shiraishi ◽  
Saulo Dubard Barbosa

One of the biggest challenges faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) concerns the capacity of the entrepreneur to formulate strategies within a formal organizational structure. Very often, important knowledge about the business remains solely in the deeper levels of the entrepreneur's mind and cannot be accessed by any stakeholder. As a result, many of the good ideas that entrepreneurs have end up dying with them. This hinders business growth, business model replication, and successful succession in family businesses and SME's in general. Therefore, it is important to investigate ways to structure within the firm the strategies generated in the entrepreneur's mind, in order to prepare SMEs for growth and long-term sustainability, above and beyond the minds, hands, and lives of their founders. Our chapter explores this general theme by offering methodological insights on how to extract and formalize the tacit knowledge coming from SME founders. We focus on the formulation of strategies based on the marketing knowledge and life experience of the entrepreneur.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1180-1191
Author(s):  
Marta Christina Suciu ◽  
Christian Năsulea ◽  
Diana Florentina Năsulea

Abstract The digital transformation allowed for new business models to emerge. As e-commerce seems to be the future of retail, an increased number of entrepreneurs are trying to better leverage advertising in a way that leads to a sustainable business model on medium to long-term. Retail enterprises are spending huge amounts of money on search engine and social media paid advertising in order to make their products visible and thus, become more profitable. However, the academic literature suggests contradictory findings on the effectiveness of paid advertising. While it seems that for already established companies like e-Bay, shutting off paid campaigns doesn’t proportionally decrease the website’s traffic, for other large companies with more competitors the findings show the opposite, meaning that most of the traffic goes down when paid-campaigns are shut off. The aim of our paper is to assess the impact of paid campaigns on the long-term revenues of small and medium enterprises activating in e-commerce. Is investing in paid advertising at the beginning enough to build a business model that can sustain itself or does less advertising translate directly in less sales? We conduct a study for a number of Romanian e-commerce businesses in order to determine the effectiveness of paid advertising and its impact on the long-term revenue stream. Our findings contribute to the existing research through valuable data on small and medium size enterprises and can help business managers make more informed decisions when it comes to their paid advertising budget and strategy.


Author(s):  
Svetlana L. Sazanova

Entrepreneurship plays an important role in the modern global economy; the share of products of small and medium enterprises in the gross product and exports not only of the developed but also of developing countries is growing. Innovation processes cover all sectors of the economy, and more and more people are involved in entrepreneurial activity, which contributes to the penetration of entrepreneurial thinking and business values in all areas of the socioeconomic life of society. The Institute of Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly prominent role in the institutional environment of socio-economic systems. This actualizes the problem of studying the relationship of the institution of entrepreneurship with the institutions of law, culture, management. This requires a methodology that allows you to explore the impact on the institute of entrepreneurship not only economic, but also non-economic factors. The methodology of the “old” institutionalism possesses such a tool, it is structural modeling (pattern modeling), which allows to explore the diversity of interrelationships of the institution of entrepreneurship with other components of the institutional and economic environment. The article explored the features of the development of the institution of entrepreneurship in Russia, established the relationship between the institution of entrepreneurship, values, motives and incentives for entrepreneurial activity, built a structural model of the institution of entrepreneurship based on the methodology of the old institutionalism (pattern modeling). The structural model of the institution of entrepreneurship reveals the relationship between the institution of entrepreneurship, the values of entrepreneurial activity, its motives and incentives; as well as the relationship between the institution of entrepreneurship with the institutions of governance, cultural and religious institutions, legal institutions and society.


Author(s):  
Mwinyihija M.

Africa’s renaissance is inevitable and rapidly emerging as a reality in tandem with the continent’s continued exploration of its natural resources in a more sustained way than previously done. Currently, the clarion call is to value add, avoid plundering and involve its population through the SME’s to adapt modern methods of entrepreneurship. During the study, critical aspects that are envisaged to trigger the growth and development of Africa, included the entry of major countries of the continent into the global emerging markets such as MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). For the leather sector, certain socioeconomic indicators such as the youthful participation in the value chain, ownership status, literacy levels and acquired experiences are all contributing to a vibrant sector. It was observed that these indicators if well aligned with individual member states of African Union Commission and structured than productivity and competitiveness of leather products will be attained. As such, ease of either foreign direct investment, local recapitalization and development of the SME’s could become feasible. Indeed, with the emergence of over 300 million youth at middle level income level is construed to start building on the impact of the continents purchasing power. Therefore, Africa needs to respond by address on development of ICT, develop affordable financial support to provide stimulus packages to SME’s (Small and Medium Enterprises) to transform, improve on inter and intra trade to optimize on unexplored synergies and enhance mobility of persons with in Africa as preamble to Africa’s renaissance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 298
Author(s):  
Muhamad Marwan

The aim of this study is to determine the impact of networking on SME’s ability to access government financial support through legal channels in Asia Pacific. This study is quantitative in nature in which the data has been gathered from 281 employees and managers working in SMEs through survey questionnaire. The SEM technique was utilised for the purpose of analysing and testing the mediation effect. The study found that there is a partial mediation of government financial support through legal channels among the relationship between networking with officers and access to finance. This study is restricted to the SMEs operating in the region of Asia Pacific.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-41
Author(s):  
Colin Agabalinda ◽  
Alain Vilard Ndi Isoh

The study investigated the direct effects of financial literacy (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) on financial preparedness for retirement and the moderating effect of age among the small and medium enterprises in Uganda. Primary data was collected from a sample of n = 380 selected from the SME workforce. Descriptive analysis was run on SPSS, while validity and reliability of the measurement items yielded satisfactory composite reliability scores and average variance explained (AVE) scores for all items. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses and multi-group analysis conducted to test for the moderating effect of age on the relationship between financial literacy and retirement preparedness. The results revealed that knowledge and skills were significant predictors of retirement preparedness. However, ‘attitude' was not a significant predictor, and age had no moderating effect on the relationship between the study variables. These findings present practical implications for policymakers and financial educators in a developing country context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shubham Pathak ◽  
Jorge Chica Olmo

AbstractNatural disasters have been a significant hurdle in the economic growth of middle-income developing countries. Thailand has also been suffering from recurring flood disasters and was most which are severely affected during the 2011 floods. This paper aims to identify the various factors that impact the speed of disaster recovery among the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) severely affected by the floods in Pathumthani province in central Thailand, and how it is related to its speed decision of neighbours SMEs. The methodology adopts a spatial econometric model, to analysis and understand each of the chosen factors’ impact. The findings include the impact of disaster resilience, mitigation and planning at the SME level as well as the government level. The absence of accurate perception of actual risk, flood insurance and disaster management planning before the 2011 floods had contributed to the severity of the impacts during the 2011 floods.


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