Public-Private-Academic Cooperation as a Trust Building Mechanism

The chapter will be a case study from an Ordoliberal perspective of the conception, implementation and policy output of the newly created Private Council of Competitiveness (PCC) in Guatemala, a country wracked by mistrust of the public sector by the private sector. The PCC was founded as a private sector initiative, in conjunction with academia, to work with the government to spawn new efforts aimed at augmenting Guatemala's national competitiveness, by fomenting innovation, entrepreneurship and closer ties between academia and the public and private sectors. The chapter utilizes first hand interviews with the members of the PCC and key public sector players, academics, and other top representatives from the private sector to show how working together built the trust necessary to make the PCC a successful working body with the potential to produce important initiatives in matters of competitiveness, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Rethinking Competitiveness

The present chapter analyzes the different areas concerning competitiveness. This analysis is based on the two visions of competitiveness. The first vision establishes that the only form of competitiveness is to engage in lowering costs and therefore establishing a competitive advantage through costs. The second vision is a more integral one that sees a competitive advantage in the capacity of the workers in the specialization of labor. This second vision enforces the idea of investing in education and health to compete in more profitable markets. Based on these visions, the question to ask is: Is Central America ready?

Remittances

International remittances to developing countries are growing and are more than foreign direct investment or the official development aid. More of the 3.2% of global population are living abroad and the trends will increase in the next decades, involving skilled and no skilled workers. Developing countries in Latin America receives 15% of all international remittances and six countries (México, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras) in the region received more of the 70% of all the remittances in 2013. By coincidence, this six countries have a lack to develop and large pockets of poverty, much of which is concentrated in those areas from which migrants come. The remittances are palliatives to poverty in their countries and help their families to reduce their poverty. In many cases, the remittances are the seed for new small and medium enterprises in Latin America, with not enough access to financial services.

Opportunities and Challenges for Entrepreneurial Activity and Non-Entrepreneurial Engagement in Colombia

This chapter explores various aspects that might be associated with entrepreneurial activity and non-entrepreneurial engagement in Colombia between 2010 and 2012. These ratios were calculated from the GEM-Colombia report between 2010 and 2012. Aspects were obtained from the National Expert Survey (NES) of the GEM project and from the Doing Business Study. Sommer's d correlation was used to test significant association. Results show that in general, context conditions in Colombia are adequate to start a business. Positive aspects include public policies to stimulate business creation, skilled specialist teams and reduction in processes required to formally establish an SME. Yet further substantial advance need to be made in terms of access to financial resources, access to technology that is relevant for microbusinesses, implementation of innovation policies and education in entrepreneurship. This is required to enhance the creation of high growth businesses that result in a knowledge-based economy in contrast with a prevalent traditional economy as is the case at present.

Building Trust in Politics

This chapter studies the process of trust building in politics by using large data set on political behaviour in Latin America. The results yielded by developed models indicate specific elements as the most influential on the popular trust in institutions. These observed determinants were enclosed in five macro classes: cohesion of society; economic factors; electoral transparency; efficiency of judicial organs; and crime diffusion. The analysis of the public support in governments and parliaments revealed that certain variables have a direct impact on the stability of the Latin American democracies, while other factors merely determine the likelihood of a government's reappointment.

Mobile Financial Sectoral System of Innovation

With the increase of economic growth in Latin America, the mobile finance (m-finance) sectoral system of innovation model is applied as an analytical framework in order to focus in on the technological infrastructure and regulatory structure. The SSI approach links innovation to the interactions of the different actors in the system. Innovation is either the process of creating or the recombining of knowledge for some new use to become an outcome of that process. Innovation does not sit within the boundaries of an organization nor does it sit neatly at one level, but instead it is a multifaceted construct. Therefore, this chapter presents aspects of the sectoral system of innovation (SSI) of mobile finances within the Latin America region.

Corruption in Latin America and How It Affects Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

Foreign direct investment has aided in a significant manner the economic development of Latin America since the early 1990s because capital in this region is limited (Blanco, 2012). Despite some criticism literature on FDI has overwhelmingly demonstrated that FDI has positive effects on host countries (Tan & Meyer, 2011) especially in Latin America (Wooster & Diebel, 2010). Authors researching the effects of FDI in Latin America have stated that this investment helps to growth on productivity (Blonigen & Wang, 2005) and thus, might help developing countries to begin their road to development. Therefore, scholars have devoted great efforts to understanding the determinants of FDI to Latin America and a brief overview will be provided in this study.This paper will present a detailed account of FDI flows to the region, a clear definition of corruption and how it is manifested in Latin America. After these definitions, suggestions are provided to deal with the problem of corruption in the region.

Online Tools for the Modern Entrepreneurs Fueled by Trust

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as an emergent region has showed a high economic growth at the recent history. Its economic growth has been higher than the world general performance during a half of a century. Since 1960 to 1980, LAC was the region with the highest economic growth per decade. Unfortunately, the great economic growth stopped with the Debt Crisis which macroeconomic non desirable effects were sensible during the next decade. As a solution at international level. One of the barriers to start a business is the financial factor. The crowdfunding is a group of people dedicated to create a network in order to get financial help from people that are willing to support a business idea.

Theoretical Aspects on Bottom of the Pyramid in Emerging Economies

Despite the growing body of literature on the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), much remains unclear and more research is needed in a number of areas as this chapter will highlight. Firstly, the broad literature is reviewed which includes looking at definitions and different strands of research undertaken in the field. The chapter then presents three key sectors that the authors believe have the most potential to aid poverty alleviation, while proposing that other types of studies can be conducted for other sectors that are more likely to lead to consumer satisfaction. Points of departure are offered, before discussing microfinance and then latterly in the context of Latin America. The chapter uses secondary data to show key countries and institutions serving the BoP, and to highlight important aspects that merit further attention. Implications for policy makers and practitioners are offered, and this is followed by a number of directions for future research.

Antecedents of Stakeholder Trust in Business Development in Latin America

Trust is the expectation of honest and co-operative future behavior based on commonly shared norms (Fukuyama, 1995). In Latin American region, people who believe that most people can be trusted ranges from 4 to 19% as compared with 34% for USA and 60% for China and Sweden (World Values Survey, 2010-2014; Jamison, 2011; Cardenas et al., 2009). Trust consists of a mix of inter-personal trust and institutional trust. An understanding of business culture, national culture and religion is essential for developing trust in business relationships (Hurtado, 2010; Searing, 2013; Weck, 2013, Ransi and Kobti, 2014). Trust among various business stakeholders within a firm or between firms in a local, national or international setting is an essential component of business development activities that are rooted in the relationships between exchange partners (Barron, 2014; Taylor, 2013; Friman et al., 2002;). The monitoring mechanisms on trust, i.e., “trust but verify” are conductive to maintaining trust in a business relationship (Kusari, et al. 2014).