Search results

This paper sets out to examine the reasons why 599 entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria started their small businesses. It aims to compares ten motivations across three countries and by gender.

Ten Likert‐style questions were used to determine start‐up motivations. The mean scores were calculated and compared to test for significant differences. A factor analysis was conducted to see whether the ten items could be synthesized into distinct factors. Then, the factors were compared across countries and by gender.

The strongest motivator across countries was the opportunity to increase income. A factor analysis found three motivation factors: a family factor, an external validation factor, and a self‐betterment factor. The three countries showed significant differences with Ghanaian entrepreneurs rating the family factor as more important. The item analysis showed that female entrepreneurs were less motivated to create a business as a legacy or for external validation.

The list of motivations here is non‐exhaustive. The addition of other motivation items could change the results. Results should not be generalized to other countries or other regions of the countries surveyed.

Since motivations differ across countries and gender, countries can benefit from developing country‐ and gender‐specific programs to encourage business creation. For instance, Nigeria and Kenya should develop stronger succession laws so that businesses can be inherited by family members. Ghana and Nigeria might stimulate more enterprise development by providing public recognition for entrepreneurial behavior.

This is the first cross‐country study of the motivations of entrepreneurs in sub‐Saharan Africa.

This study assessed the relationship between the completion of an internship assignment prior to graduation and subsequent employment in a career‐oriented job after graduation. Subjects for the study were 163 seniors graduating with a business degree from a large public university in the mid‐Atlantic region of the USA. Results showed that the completion of an internship assignment was linked with finding career‐oriented employment, but was not related to a higher level of confidence over personal fit with the position that was selected. The article presents implications for future research and discusses practical issues related to the use of internships and other forms of anticipatory socialization in the career management activities of college students.

The passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 followed hard on the collapses of Enron and WorldCom. Waste makes haste. Official reports for US government agencies worried that the legislation may have impaired New York's competitiveness as a venue for international capital transactions. But a threat from a seemingly different direction – the subprime shakeout – exposed bigger issues. This paper aims to raise questions about many of the assumptions made in the discourse about the relative competitiveness of US and European capital markets.

Building on Healy and Palepu's analysis of Enron, it compares the root issues at Enron with a preliminary view of the sources of the subprime crisis to build an outline for regulatory response.

Remedies in Sarbanes‐Oxley failed to address several of the ailments in evidence in Enron. The haste of making “Sarbox” may have led us to waste an opportunity to prevent or reduce the impact of the subprime debacle.

The comparison of the seemingly unrelated cases reveals similar ethical gaps and regulatory lapses, suggesting a different type of legislative and regulatory response may be needed. It makes suggestions for further research to guide future policymaking.

The campaign for striker replacement legislation, which began in the late 1980s and had effectively ended by the mid-1990s, was the most important political battle over labor legislation since the defeat of the Labor Law Reform Bill in 1978. Striker replacement was the AFL-CIO’s top legislative priority in the early 1990s and, coming quickly after the passage of NAFTA, which labor had opposed, the defeat of its campaign solidified organized labor’s reputation for failure in legislative battles. As yet, however, the political campaign for striker replacement legislation has attracted surprisingly little attention from industrial relations scholars.

This study aims to investigate growth stage of an entrepreneurial venture born within Thai university and also to explore the future growth strategy which is formulated by the departmental team and at the same time is influenced by the school’s administrators.

Single case study approach was used to explore the growth of dental school’s internal venture aimed to produce low-cost pharmaceutical supplies. The interview data were matched with relevant entrepreneurship literatures to build theory from case study.

There is a clash in terms of growth strategy preferred by the parental organization and department-level team who found the venture. The dental school’s administrators expect their internal venture to be fully commercialized as spin-off according to typical academic entrepreneurship scheme. Differently, the entrepreneurial team prefers keeping the departmental venture inside to serve its socially entrepreneurial motivation with modest growth.

The case evidence implies different schools of thought that could influence the growth of university-based entrepreneurial venture. The university’s entrepreneurial development scheme thus is to incorporate such differences to move its departmental venture forward for sustainable growth.

The cases describe the demise of Arthur Andersen, a firm that had long set the industry standard for professionalism in accounting and auditing. Once an example of strong corporate culture with a commitment to public service and independent integrity, Andersen saw its culture and standards weaken as it grew explosively and changed its mode of governance. The (A) case describes a crisis precipitated by the admission of Waste Management, a major Andersen client, that it overstated its pretax earnings by $1.43 billion from 1992 to 1996. The resulting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation ended with Andersen paying a $7 million fine, the largest ever levied against an accounting firm, and agreeing to an injunction that effectively placed the accounting giant on probation. Students analyze the causes of Andersen's problems and advise Andersen leadership. The (B) case covers Arthur Andersen's relationship with Enron, one of the great success stories of the “new economy” boom. When Enron's aggressive use of off-balance sheet partnerships became impossible to hide in autumn 2001, news reports stated that Andersen auditors had engaged in extensive shredding of draft documents and associated communications with Enron. Students are asked to act as crisis management consultants to Andersen CEO Joe Berardino. The (C) case details Andersen's collapse following its indictment and conviction on criminal charges of obstructing justice in the Enron case. Its conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on narrow technical grounds, but by then Andersen had ceased to exist, eighty-nine years after Arthur E. Andersen had taken over a small accounting firm in Chicago. Students can focus on the impact of media on a reputational crisis.

Students will: Identify the teachable moment in a crisis that leaders can leverage as an opportunity to improve a firm's reputation or core identity, to reinforce values, and to drive change, Understand the impact on crisis management of the media landscape and regulatory decision-making, Realize the fragility of corporate cultures and the need to actively maintain them, especially during difficult times,

Education is the main training grounds for citizenship. With the decline of military conscription, it has the mission of instilling a sense of national civic consciousness (see Janowitz's, 1983, critique; also Merle, 2010). But it also inculcates world cognitive perspectives as well. Hence, “global citizens” emerge. They carry much larger macro frames of reference that go beyond the nation-state. This change adds another layer of complexity to national identity.

Pebble Technology Corporation (Pebble) was an early entrant into the smartwatch industry. Pebble’s Founder, Eric Migicovsky, began thinking about creating a smartwatch in 2008 while still an undergraduate engineering student. After selling about 1,500 prototype watches, he was accepted into Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator business start-up program. Finding it difficult to attract investors, Migicovsky launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised a record-breaking $10.27m on Kickstarter. The case concludes shortly after Apple’s unveiling of its soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. The case provides an opportunity to evaluate Pebble’s various strategic options at the time of Apple’s announcement.

The authors observed over 30 h of video and audio recordings of speeches, interviews and other events involving Pebble’s founder, other Pebble executives, investors and competitors. These recordings are all publicly available. Whenever possible, the authors also reviewed the Twitter feeds, Facebook sites and personal websites of Pebble’s top executives over time. Similarly, the authors followed Pebble’s official website, corporate blog and Kickstarter campaign websites. The authors also drew from numerous media reports. Due to the public nature of the data, no company release is provided nor has any information been disguised in any way.

The case is designed for both undergraduate and graduate students for courses in strategic management.