scholarly journals Challenges Faced by Petty Traders in Accessing Loans from Financial Institutions: Evidence from the Upper West Region of Ghana

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Charles Adusei ◽  
Festus Adu Attafuah ◽  
Isaac Tweneboah-Koduah
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
High Interest Rate ◽  
West Region ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Coefficient Of Concordance ◽  
Pearson Correlation Matrix

Access to finance is a key determinant for business start-up, development and growth for small businesses. This paper focused on the challenges faced by petty traders in accessing loans within Wa Central in the Upper West Region of Ghana with a sample of eighty-one respondents for both the questionnaire and the interview.  The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation matrix and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance. The study showed evidence that high interest rate charged; demand for collateral and poor records keeping by petty traders were the challenges of accessing loans. The paper suggests that petty traders must keep proper records and the need for financial institutions to reconsider its stringent eligibility criteria for petty traders, Finally policy makers must create an enabling operating environment for micro enterprises to flourish.

scholarly journals THE OPERATIONS OF SAVINGS AND LOANS AND THE PERFORMANCES OF BUSINESSES IN ACCRA

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 80-96
Author(s):  
Isaac Mantey ◽  
Christopher Lartei Aryee ◽  
Justice Agyei Ampofo
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Savings And Loans ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Entire Amount ◽  
High Level ◽  
To Receive

Savings and Loans operations in Ghana represent significant development and performance of most businesses and therefore maintaining these Savings and Loans operations is important. However, there seems to be paucity of studies on the operations of savings and loans companies’ effects on the performances of businesses in general and Greater Accra in particular. This research seeks to bridge this knowledge gap by analyzing the operations of savings and loans companies’ effects on the performances of businesses in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The study will be guided by three research objectives. Study methods include the use of questionnaire for data analysis. A total of 40 respondents (20 staff of Savings and Loans companies and twenty (20) small business operators (men and women) who took part in this study were randomly purposively selected. The results indicate that small businesses in Accra township sourced start-up capital from savings and loans companies, personal savings and support from friends and families. It also emerged from the study that the business operators that were unable to receive entire amount requested from the financial institutions attributed it to failure to meet the credit requirements, failure to provide the required collateral security and the absence of active account with the financial institutions. Again the study found that credit received by the business operators in Accra township was utilized for the expansion of business. The study further found that business operators in Accra township are confronted with several challenges in accessing credit facilities from Savings and Loans Companies. These challenges include bureaucracy, lack of opportunity to take second loan, high risk and uncertainty, high level of interest rate on credit, low level of knowledge about credit sourcing and shorter repayment period. It is recommended that to enhance small and medium business operators in Accra township access and acquisition of credit facilities from Savings and Loans companies should be efficiently utilized. Keywords: Operations, Savings and Loans, Performance, Businesses, Accra.

First Steps towards Self-Employment – Microcredit for Enterprise in Scotland

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil McHugh ◽  
Morag Gillespie ◽  
Jana Loew ◽  
Cam Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Enterprise Development ◽  
Grameen Bank ◽  
Economic Strategy ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Poor Communities

While lending for small businesses and business start-up is a long-standing feature of economic policy in the UK and Scotland, little is known about the support available for those taking the first steps into self-employment, particularly people from poorer communities. This paper presents the results of a project that aimed to address this gap. It mapped provision of support for enterprise, including microcredit (small loans for enterprise of £5,000 or less) and grants available to people in deprived communities. It found more programmes offering grants than loans. Grants programmes, although more likely to be time limited and often linked to European funding, were generally better targeted to poor communities than loan programmes that were more financially sustainable. The introduction of the Grameen Bank to Scotland will increase access to microcredit, but this paper argues that there is a place – and a need – for both loans and grants to support enterprise development across Scotland. A Scottish economic strategy should take account of all levels of enterprise development and, in striving towards a fairer Scotland, should ensure that the poorest people and communities are not excluded from self-employment because of the lack of small amounts of support necessary to take the first steps.

Anti-corruption in History

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Wellbeing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Over Time

Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of case studies on how past societies and polities, in and beyond Europe, defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda. It is a timely book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem, undermining trust in government, financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path to Denmark”—a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subjects of corruption and anticorruption have captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country’s image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. A wide range of historical contexts are addressed, ranging from the ancient to the modern period, with specific insights for policy makers offered throughout.

scholarly journals Combining disparate data sources for improved poverty prediction and mapping

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (46) ◽  
pp. E9783-E9792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neeti Pokhriyal ◽  
Damien Christophe Jacques
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Learning ◽  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Gaussian Process Regression ◽  
Multidimensional Poverty ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Multidimensional Poverty Index ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Disparate Data ◽  
Single Data

More than 330 million people are still living in extreme poverty in Africa. Timely, accurate, and spatially fine-grained baseline data are essential to determining policy in favor of reducing poverty. The potential of “Big Data” to estimate socioeconomic factors in Africa has been proven. However, most current studies are limited to using a single data source. We propose a computational framework to accurately predict the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) at a finest spatial granularity and coverage of 552 communes in Senegal using environmental data (related to food security, economic activity, and accessibility to facilities) and call data records (capturing individualistic, spatial, and temporal aspects of people). Our framework is based on Gaussian Process regression, a Bayesian learning technique, providing uncertainty associated with predictions. We perform model selection using elastic net regularization to prevent overfitting. Our results empirically prove the superior accuracy when using disparate data (Pearson correlation of 0.91). Our approach is used to accurately predict important dimensions of poverty: health, education, and standard of living (Pearson correlation of 0.84–0.86). All predictions are validated using deprivations calculated from census. Our approach can be used to generate poverty maps frequently, and its diagnostic nature is, likely, to assist policy makers in designing better interventions for poverty eradication.

scholarly journals Resources or Capabilities: A Study of Startup Emergence within Applied Research Universities in India

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kshitija Joshi ◽  
Krishna H S ◽  
Muralidharan Loganathan
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
National Chemical Laboratory ◽  
Chemical Laboratory ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Resource Based View ◽  
Academic Environments ◽  
Intangible Resources ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Institute Of Technology

Over the past decade, the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem has witnessed a steep growth in the number of incubators within academic environments. While most of these have focused on provision of tangible and intangible resources, the understanding about processes and routines that transform these resources into capabilities, which ultimately translate into successful start-up emergence has been lacking. Based on the resource-based view and the dynamic capabilities approach and using the cases of two academic incubators in India (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and National Chemical Laboratory, Pune), this paper analyses the pre-incubation level processes that have resulted in their enhanced opportunity recognition potential. This study adds to the literature in the area of dynamic capabilities in the context of academic incubation. The study has important implications for both incubation setups as well as policy makers.

scholarly journals Universities and Entrepreneurship: An Overview of Albanian Public HEI-s on Entrepreneurial University Model Aspects

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
Bruna Papa ◽  
Ervin Demo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Entrepreneurial University ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Public Higher Education ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Institutional Level ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Future Challenges

Abstract Albanian higher education sector has undergone various changes in the last years. Such changes have brought different implication and challenges for higher education institutions. HEIs need to find new and innovative ways to be able to respond properly and play their role in the society. This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the staus quo of 5 public higher education instituions, that took part in the study, in regard to 6 aspects of the entrepreneurial university model.Interviews were conducted using HEInnovate tool as a theoretical guideline and questions were asked by being grouped in 6 categories: on aspects such as governance and lidership, internationalization, knowledge exchange, human and financial resources, entrepreneurial education and start up support and measures, were conducted in order to have a general overview and identify potential areas of improvement. Entrepreneurship needs to be supported and formilazed by the top lidership and effective organizational structure that promotes entrepreneurshop at all levels of the institution, financial stream needs to be diversified, blended learning needs to be encourgaed and promoted and public HEIs need to increase their international cooperation and presence. The study shows that HEIs need to implement new practies in order to better be prepared to face the current and future challenges. The findings and recommendation can be used to present measures to be undertaken both at institutional level of HEIs and at the level of policy makers in Albania.

scholarly journals VALUE CO-CREATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF A START-UP COMPANY

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junic Kim ◽  
Hwanho Choi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Social Media Tools ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Social Media Strategy

This research examines social media users’ value-creation processes and the drivers of a start-up company’s successful social media strategy. This research primarily aims to understand start-ups’ effective utilization of social media and value co-creation processes. Although utilizing social media has become key for many organizations, start-ups and small businesses often suffer from a lack of understanding and knowledge of the utilization of social media tools. Therefore, this article uses a case study on the relationship between a social media platform and users’ value co-creation to offer a conceptual framework for start-ups to consider in utilizing social media. Our research reveals that four core drivers of social media success include experience, satisfaction, expression, and sharing ability. Each of these drivers in turn contains conditions for understanding users’ value-creation process and the creation of drivers for successful social media strategies. The research contributes to literature by providing a detailed review of users’ value co-creation as a part of a start-up’s successful social media strategy.

scholarly journals Doing Well By Doing Good In The Community: Evidence From Some South African Small Businesses

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
D. Y. Dzansi
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Business Practice ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
High Degree ◽  
African Setting ◽  
Do So

<p>Researchers and policy makers worldwide are convinced that only clear empirical evidence of the economic benefits of business social responsibility (BSR), rather than normative assertions, can motivate small businesses enough to accept and adopt it as an integral business practice. Unfortunately, empirical research so far has yielded mixed results, such that smaller businesses are right to be skeptical about adopting BSR. This paper reports the findings of empirical research on patterns of BSR engagement practices and growth in firms’ sales and gross profit among small and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in a South African setting. This is to determine how a small firm’s economic performance varies (if at all) with the degree of its BSR performance and the kind of BSR activity it engages in. The results suggest a high degree of BSR activity among firms with substantial portions of profit dedicated to BSR. However, contrary to expectations, very weak (minor) link was found between BSR performance and economic performance among the sample of small businesses on some but not all dimensions of BSR considered in the study. Nonetheless, it is recommended that managers and owners of small businesses be encouraged to adopt and practice BSR. Even if they do not do so for economic reasons, they would be right to do so to ‘atone’ for the widely acknowledged detrimental impacts of business on society. </p>

Assessing housing preferences of young civil servants in Malaysia: do location, financial capability and neighbourhood really matter?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nor Ezatie Mukminah Muhammad Zamri ◽  
Mahazril ‘Aini Yaacob ◽  
Norazah Mohd Suki
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Housing Demand ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Financial Capability ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
Housing Preferences ◽  
Content Type

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the key factors that influence the housing preferences of young civil servants in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 400 respondents who fulfilled the eligibility criteria of civil servant working in Malaysia aged between 20 and 40 years, and currently renting a house, or staying with friends, immediate family or relatives. Data were analysed via exploratory factor analysis and Pearson correlation. Findings The results reveal that financial capability is the factor that most strongly influences the housing preferences of young civil servants, followed by neighbourhood and location. Young civil servants are highly inclined to consider the monthly repayment amount as the most important issue when deciding to buy a house. Furthermore, they prefer to buy a house in a neighbourhood that ensures high security and protection against crime. Practical implications Housing developers should develop affordable housing in suitable neighbourhoods and locations to match homebuyers’ preferences to avoid a mismatch between housing demand and supply, which is obviously one of the greater risks of unsold homes. Originality/value Given the lack of focus on this precise research sample (i.e. young civil servants), the study is justified in terms of its originality, as it examines a specific cohort by focussing on the correlations of location, financial capability and neighbourhood with housing preferences of young civil servants in Malaysia. These insights are invaluable, as this group has not been the specific focus of research.

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