Beyond embedded or not embedded: immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness levels

Purpose This paper aims to review the immigrant entrepreneurship literature to locate how researchers consider embeddedness to home and host countries beyond the “embedded” or “not” dichotomy. Design/methodology/approach The paper conducts a systematic literature review. The authors found 106 articles in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using a structured search and selection protocol. Findings Few articles perceive embeddedness openly as a gradual phenomenon. However, articles in the review use different approaches for considering relative levels of embeddedness, such as depth of social ties. In addition, some articles take a dual perspective or make multi-contextual comparisons to acknowledge immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness levels. These articles emphasise embeddedness as a gradual phenomenon to understand the complexity of immigrant entrepreneurs’ contextualisation better. Based on the review, the paper develops a model, considering embeddedness as an emergent result of the immigrants’ engagement with spaces, networks, markets and institutions of a given home or host context. It also accounts for the dynamic interaction between contextual factors as embeddedness levels change. Research limitations/implications The paper has located all relevant papers in the used databases. However, the systematic review protocol naturally limits its scope. Nevertheless, the developed model based on the review helps researchers develop a more comprehensive understanding of embeddedness and possibly ask novel questions. Social implications This paper can help policymakers improve their policies for the progressive social integration of immigrants, as it helps consider different embeddedness levels. Originality/value Researchers mainly consider individuals’ embeddedness as either “embedded” or “not.” However, we can also understand embeddedness at various levels, e.g. partial, increasing/decreasing and gradual. Significant changes occur in the embeddedness of individuals during immigration. Additionally, contextual relations intertwine immigrants’ entrepreneurial activity over time. The paper reviews embeddedness in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature, searching beyond the dichotomic use of embeddedness. Then, it develops a theoretical understanding of embeddedness levels.

Banking crises and financial instability: Empirical and historical lessons

The paper examines the importance of financial instability for the development of four Norwegian banking crises. The crises are the Post First World War Crisis during the early 1920s, the mid 1920s Monetary Crisis, the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Scandinavian Banking Crisis of 1987–1993. The paper first offers a description of the financial instability hypothesis applied by Minsky and Kindleberger, and in a recent dynamic financial crisis model. Financial instability is defined as a lack of financial markets and institutions that provide capital and liquidity at a sustainable level under stress. Financial instability basically evolves during times of overheating, overspending and extended credit granting. This is most common during significant booms. The process has devastating effects after markets have turned into a state of negative development.The paper tests the validity of the financial instability hypothesis using a quantitative structural time series model. It reveals upheaval of 10 financial and macroeconomic indicators prior to all the four crises, resulting in a state of economic overheating and asset bubble creation. This is basically explained by huge growth in debts. The overheating caused the following banking crises. Finally, the paper discusses the four crises qualitatively. Again, the conclusion is that a significant increase in money supply and debt caused overheating, asset bubbles, and thereafter, financial and banking crises, which in turn spread to other markets and industries and caused huge slumps in the real economy.

EFFECT OF TANGIBILITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AMONG MICRO FINANCE BANKS CUSTOMERS IN KENYA

Purpose: Financial markets and institutions are central to the process of economic growth. The provision of credit has increasingly been regarded as an important tool for raising the incomes of populations, mainly by mobilizing resources to more productive uses. However, microfinance institutions in Kisumu City Kenya are still far off from reaching the required customer satisfaction index. The main purpose of the study was to establish the effect of tangibility on customer satisfaction among micro finance banks (MFB) customers in Kisumu City. Methodology: This study was anchored on a Market based theory; Survival based theory and the Expectancy Disconfirmation theory. A correlation research design was used. Study targeted 10,300 MFB customers in Kisumu City. A sample size of 370 MFB customers was drawn from the target population using simple random sampling technique. The study used primary data from questionnaires. Findings: The findings indicated that Tangibility is associated with 63.1% of the variation in customer satisfaction, an increase in tangibility affects customer satisfaction by 0.341. The correlation analysis to determine the effect of tangibility on customer satisfaction shows a significant correlation existed (r = 0.631, p < 0.05). This shows 63.1% of the variations on customer satisfaction are associated with tangibles. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The organization needs to train employees on various aspects of tangibility. Systems should be in place that ensures certain aspects like security and quality are retained and improved throughout customers’ lifetime.

Evaluating Post Merger Pakistan Stock Exchanges’ Market Efficiency

The development and the formation of financial markets and institutions is indeed very instrumental for causing the robust economic growth. Although, as a fact the security prices are readily fluctuated by the market information known as market efficiency, making it a riskier investment. Subsequently, the investors accept the undiversifiable risk (Systematic risk) and cancel out the diversifiable risk (Unsystematic risk) through active diversified Portfolio Management, such a portfolio of securities, selected through market information reflects market efficiency. Thus, this study investigates the post- merger market efficiency for the Pakistan stock exchange as the three stock exchanges of the country has recently merged into Pakistan stock exchange. The analysis is based on event methodology, covering the pre-post-merger accumulated daily abnormal returns for a duration of 90 days (three months). Thus, the study proofs with respect to the accumulated daily abnormal returns, that the merger has increased the market efficiency. Consequently, the study supports the extant literature on merger and related market efficiency and provides another empirical evidence with respect to a developing country such as Pakistan. Rationally, the recent increase in the market efficiency will assure the supply of correct market information; consequently, boosting confidence of all investors and the regulators have a great opportunity to pursue continuous improvement in the present regulatory polices to promote healthy investment environment and increase the national revenue as well.

Financial technologies for bank financial stability management in economical turbulence conditions

The development of the global economy is characterized by an increase in turbulence and the restoration of a cyclic crisis component of development. An important driving force for the development of the economy is the financial stability of the bank, which manifests itself at all levels – from the micro level to the global economic system. The market of banking services is the most dynamic segment of the financial market, where the number of subjects and spectrum of products, the level of service and technologies is constantly changing. The priority instrument for managing the financial stability of the bank in the conditions of turbulence of the economy is a financial engineering, which is a system of synergistic functioning, pre-developed and implemented combinations and processes (namely the interaction of financial innovations, financial technologies and financial instruments) in financial management of the bank due to the release of innovation resource reserve. to ensure the financial stability of the bank. Financial innovations include financial instruments and financial technologies. Financial technologies are technologically supported by financial innovations, which can lead to new business models, programs, processes or products that have a significant impact on financial markets and institutions that provide financial services. It is proposed to manage the financial stability of the bank in the conditions of turbulence of the economy of Ukraine to introduce a process approach that is focused on improving the motivation of banking institutions and a clear distribution of their responsibilities; achievement of internal transparency for guidance, obtaining information in real time due to the development and strengthening of the system of current and prospective control; improving the quality and predictability of the results of work; providing trust of stakeholders to banking institutions and confidence in the financial stability of its functioning; minimization of expenses and reducing the terms of organization of technological cycles of banking operations. In order to ensure the financial stability of the bank on the basis of financial technologies, the state of turbulence of the economy should be taken into account, react promptly to its changes that require enhanced control.

Poverty traps across levels of aggregation

Poverty trap studies help explain the simultaneous escape from poverty by some households and regions alongside deep and persistent poverty elsewhere. However, researchers remain divided about how important poverty traps are in explaining the range of poverty dynamics observed in various contexts. We build a theoretical model that integrates micro-, meso-, and macro-level poverty traps, allowing us to analyze the ways in which multiple layers of poverty traps interact and reinforce each other. Through this simulation model, markets and institutions arise endogenously and help certain individuals escape poverty, while others remain persistently poor. In addition to one’s own productivity and initial capital levels, we explore how individual opportunity and income can be heavily determined by market access and institutional factors beyond one’s control. Using simulation results from controlled experiments, we can identify the role played by meso- and macro-conditions (that correspond to local markets and country-wide institutions, respectively) in helping individuals escape poverty. Our results suggest that even in a parsimonious model—with optimizing, forward-looking agents operating in a world with only one trap at each level—local and national context matters immensely and combines to determine individual opportunity in complex ways.

Moralizing the Production and Sale of Student Papers in Uganda

Sociologists have shown that moral understandings of market exchanges can differ between historical periods and institutional settings, but they have paid less attention to how producers’ moral frameworks vary depending on their unequal positions within both markets and institutions. We use interviews and ethnographic observations to examine the vibrant market of research shops selling academic work to students around two of Uganda’s top universities. We identify three groups of researchers—Knowledge Producers, Entrepreneurs, and Educators—who construct different professional identities and moral justifications of their trade, and who orient their market action accordingly. We demonstrate that these identities and moral frameworks reflect an interplay between the institutional contexts and the social class positions that researchers occupy within this illicit market. Knowledge Producers and Entrepreneurs both experienced a sense of “fit” with their respective institutional cultures, but the former now see their work as compromising ideals of research, whereas the latter capitalize on what they view as a broken system. Educators, disadvantaged at both institutions, articulate a framework countering the dominant institutional cultures and sympathetic to underperforming students. This approach illuminates how institutional contexts and individual class positions within them influence producers’ moral frameworks, leading to differentiation of the market.

Fertilisers in the Long 19th Century and Beyond: Usage, Commercialisation and Production (c 1800–1939)

The introduction to the volume provides an overview of processes in the industrialization of agriculture in the 19th and 20th centuries with regard to fertilisation. It explains the interplay between the intensification of fertiliser usage and agricultural output which enabled immense population growth. It shows how chemical discoveries surrounding nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus (NPK) eventually led to a diversification of markets and the formation of big fertiliser businesses. Indeed, every specific fertiliser chain was linked to a wide set of markets and institutions, as to stakeholders with various and potentially conflicting interests. This issue aims to shed light on this aspect within several regions across Europe and beyond.

Moralizing the Production and Sale of Student Papers in Uganda

Sociologists have shown that moral understandings of market exchanges can differ between historical periods and institutional settings, but have paid less attention to how producers’ moral frameworks vary depending on their unequal positions within both markets and institutions. We use interviews and ethnographic observations to examine the vibrant market of research shops selling academic work to students around two of Uganda’s top universities. We identify three groups of researchers— Knowledge Producers, Entrepreneurs, and Educators—who construct different professional identities and moral justifications of their trade, and orient their market action accordingly. We demonstrate that these identities and moral frameworks reflect an interplay between the institutional contexts and the social class positions that researchers occupy within this illicit market. While Knowledge Producers and Entrepreneurs both experienced a sense of “fit” with their respective institutional cultures, the former now see their work as compromising ideals of research, whereas the latter capitalize on what they view as a broken system. Educators, disadvantaged at both institutions, articulate a framework countering the dominant institutional cultures and sympathetic to underperforming students. This approach illuminates how institutional contexts and individual class positions within them influence producers’ moral frameworks, leading to differentiation of the market.This article is forthcoming at the American Sociological Review.