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The purpose of this paper is to explore how authentic leadership and transactional leadership styles in Ghanaian telecom firms influence employees’ creativity, and the effect that climate for innovation and work-related flow have on such influencing relationship.

Guided by the implicit theory of leadership, and using questionnaires, data were collected from 335 employees in five mining firms and analyzed descriptively and inferentially.

It was found that managers in the telecom firms use transactional leadership styles and authentic leadership styles to enhance employees’ creativity. The work climate fostered employees’ creativity and encouraged their innovation. The prevalence of work-related flow enhanced employees’ job performances. The innovative climate mediated the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ creativity, but moderated the effect of transactional leadership on the employees’ creativity. Work-related flow also moderated the effects of both authentic and transactional leadership styles on employee creativity. It is concluded that managers in telecom firms influence their followers’ creativity by altering their leadership styles in accordance with the given situation to achieve organizational goals.

The study sample was drawn from a single sub-sector of the Ghanaian economy. This represents a limitation, for which the findings cannot be generalized. Replications and extensions of the study in different industrial sectors will help test the robustness and generalizability of the findings.

This study has shown that managers of telecom firms in Ghana can cultivate and nurture the creativities of their employees toward increased performances by creating conducive psychosocial work climate that supports innovativeness, and use the requisite authentic and transactional leadership skills in the conduct of their managerial functions.

The aim of this study is to examine how market orientation, innovation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) jointly impact business performance.

This study adopts a quantitative research design. Research evidence was collected via a questionnaire‐based survey of marketing managers and executives of telecommunication companies in Ghana. The hypotheses developed following a review of scholarship on marketing, strategy and corporate citizenship were tested through regression analysis.

The results indicate that firms' degree of market orientation and CSR have significant impact on innovation, which then influences business performance. Furthermore, market orientation has direct significant effect on CSR, which tends to mediate the influence of market orientation on business performance.

The use of longitudinal research that combines managers' evaluation with a survey of consumers, employees, and other relevant stakeholders is suggested to confirm the results of this study.

This study suggests that innovation and CSR are two key ingredients for transforming market orientation into a successful business strategy. Managers are to note that even “doing good” (a CSR initiative) requires a sense of innovation for it to trigger any significant financial performance for the business.

This study introduces a model in which the relationship between CSR, market orientation, and performance is mediated by innovation. The empirical evidence enhances the existing literature on marketing, corporate citizenship, and strategy.

The digital divide is supposed to place disadvantaged economies like Ghana in a position where using information and communication technology for development might not be an immediate reality. The purpose of this current study is to argue that the adoption of e‐business practices has benefit for small Ghanaian exporters' organizational improvement, and begin a first‐level investigation in that regard.

This study was exploratory and focused on a sample of active, non‐traditional exporters in Accra. This sample represented the best typology of small export firms in Ghana that had been regular exporters from 2000‐2004. In all, 60 firms responded to questionnaires on e‐business and exporting. Analysis of the data was mainly by means of descriptive statistics.

One‐way ANOVA analysis revealed that the export firm internationalization (measured by export intensity) has no bearing on the level of e‐business involvement or perceptions of the strategic value of e‐business. However, export firms who were more involved in e‐business had a higher perception of the usefulness of e‐business to their export operation. One‐way ANOVA analysis also revealed that for the export firms involved in some e‐business activity, the more internationalized they were, the more importance they attached to e‐business as providing some sort of organizational improvement leverage.

Given the exploratory nature of this study, more research is needed to study internal and external barriers to e‐business adoption by these firms, as well as the relationship between e‐business adoption and performance.

One of the first e‐business studies focusing on export firms on the disadvantaged end of the digital divide.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate social responsibility is incorporated into marketing strategy for a leading telecommunications firm (MTN) in Ghana. The paper examines the corporate social responsibility practices of this firm by focussing on various dimensions of stakeholder interests, norms and values.

A conceptual framework was adopted from the extant literature and used as the basis for the single case study analysis. The authors interviewed senior management of the company and also analysed corporate social responsibility (CSR) information posted on the company's website.

MTN has a strong commitment to social responsibility programmes. A separate independent unit, dubbed, “MTN Foundation”, has been established with its own Board of Directors and management team to manage CSR‐related programmes. However, there seems to be lack of coordination of activities of other departments such as marketing and human resources which are of equal interest to major stakeholders. Again, in an effort to identify stakeholders' interests, there appears to be a lack of a proactive approach in examining the actual needs of prospective beneficiaries of CSR programmes of the company.

The paper serves as a guide to managers in the planning and implementation of social responsibility programmes within the context of developing countries and also adds to the relatively parsimonious literature on CSR practices of firms operating in Africa.

This study aims to investigate the nexus between gender-diverse boards and cost of debt in the developing economies context. Specifically, the authors examine whether firm size moderates the relationship between female board representation and cost of debt, regardless of the industry type.

The authors use panel data from 17 non-financial listed Ghanaian firms over the period 2007–2017, ordinary least square, two-stage least square and generalised method of moments estimations to test the hypothesis.

The authors find that board gender diversity is positively related to cost of debt. Further evidence suggests the interaction of firm size and board gender diversity displays a negative association with cost of debt.

The study evidence suggests larger non-manufacturing firms with gender-diverse boards attract lower cost of capital in an environment with lax enforcement of rules and regulations in corporate governance.

Lenders consider the size and industry of firms in pricing debt. This has implications on UN Goal 5, highlighting that shareholders of larger non-manufacturing firms benefit immensely from board gender diversity in the context of debt.

The authors contribute to the board gender diversity and cost of debt literature by demonstrating that firm size and industry type matter in the developing economies context.

In line with the slogan “Africa rising”, the paper responds to the calls to shed light on the management knowledge of Africa, especially on the internationalisation of process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Africa. This paper aims to explore the critical incidents that trigger the export initiation of SMEs from the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana.

The study is based on the qualitative multi-case study research approach, coupled with the critical incident method and uses 36 case firms from the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana.

From the interview transcripts, it was found that being in the receipt of unsolicited order, wining government award and having international orientation are among the critical incidents that catapult SMEs in the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana to initiate export business.

The study is based on the interpretivist qualitative method; therefore, future studies could extend the results by improving the sample size and use statistical methods.

Based on the findings, it is recommended that what is needed to improve export participation of SMEs from Ghana is entrepreneurial orientation. Implicitly, public policy must promote entrepreneurship education, i.e whether the government expects to see improvement in export involvement of SMEs from Ghana. Such initiatives will catapult most entrepreneurs from their comfort zones to take advantage of the various critical incidents in the external business environment and become exporters.

The contribution of the paper is that unlike previous studies that use objective quantitative measures to examine the issue from other settings, the present paper uses the critical incident method which is proven to delve deeper into the phenomenon. Another contribution is that it sheds light on the internationalisation process of manufacturing SMEs from an under-researched and a new geographical context.

This paper sets out to examine the relationship between the perceptions of the strategic value of e‐commerce and e‐commerce adoption among 107 owners/managers of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in a transitional economy, Ghana.

The membership of the top 100 Ghanaian businesses, called the Ghana Club 100 (GC 100), and non‐traditional exporters (NTEs) was surveyed using a structured questionnaire in face‐to‐face interviews. Principal axis factoring with varimax rotation was employed to identify and estimate the constructs in the model, followed by an exploratory factor analysis to test for the inclusion of all items in the model. Finally, canonical analysis was employed to study the interrelationships among the sets of multiple dependent and multiple independent variables. By so doing control for moderator effects existing among various variables was effected.

Organizational support was the strongest predictor on the perceived strategic value (PSV) construct, followed by managerial productivity, and decision aids. Perceived usefulness, compatibility, external pressure and organizational pressure were found to be statistically significant determinants of e‐commerce adoption. These findings are consistent with prior studies. Additionally, it was found that ease of use was also influential in the e‐commerce adoption decision of Ghanaian SMEs.

The study shows the value that SME owners/managers in a transitional economy place on e‐commerce, and the role envisaged for it. The study also provides an insight into the e‐commerce adoption in a transitional economy context. Owners/managers of SMEs in other developing countries may find the study useful in making decisions relating to e‐commerce adoption. The impact of the perceptions of e‐commerce and e‐commerce adoption on firm performance in transitional economies is a worthy area for future research. Replication of the study in other transitional economies is therefore warranted.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between service innovation, customer value creation (CVC) and customer satisfaction (CS) with specific emphasis to Ghanaian telecommunication operators.

Assuming a positivist philosophical approach with a quantitative data analysis technique, the study samples 510 registered adult customers of at least one telecommunication network in Ghana. An exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to assess and confirm the proposed scales validity and the relationships of the research model.

The study unveiled that a service firm’s ability to achieve CS is dependent on how telecommunication operators harness and deploy their service innovation activities. In addition, the study showed that CVC mediates the relationship between service innovation and CS. Thus, service innovation must create value for customers in order to enhance CS.

By relating the study findings to firms’ innovation strategies, managers can improve the strength of their service offerings to achieve CS by spending more on consumer research, market research and increased customer interactions.

Considering the uniqueness of this study in a Ghanaian context, the research draws on two influential theories, which are signaling theory and expectation disconfirmation theory to examine the differential role played by service innovation in enabling telecommunication operators in Ghana, to create customer value in order to achieve CS amidst the constraints in the business environment.

This paper uses data about the challenges and difficulties confronting organisations and leaders to advance a dualized meaning of corporate leadership in the context of a developing country. The purpose is to describe a leadership frame that is locally contextualised, thereby bringing conceptualisation and thought closer to action, reified reality and applicability.

This research was designed as a series of three studies starting from an applied/interventionist standpoint. The first study used data from applied diagnostic interventions, the second used qualitative interviews and the third used open‐ended questionnaires. Data were collected from 25 Ghanaian organisations and 29 corporate executives.

Drawing on a range of everyday issues such as poor attention to customers, pressure from stakeholders (such as political overlords) and leaders' “love” for perks, the paper develops a notion of leadership as “engagement” and as “system development”.

The data are exploratory and the sample size may be considered small.

The paper discusses implications for leadership research and leader development in a developing country like Ghana.

The aim of this article is to describe and assess the use of the Internet by exporters in a development setting. The findings from two surveys in Ghana reveal that the exporters have reached the e‐mail stage and are moving into the Web site stage. At this stage, the main barriers to an increased use are reported to be training, means to finance equipment and running costs, with access problems coming third. The change from face‐to‐face interaction to digitalized interfaces is also a barrier to the spread of Internet use. The Internet is used for pre‐sales activities and the e‐mail for daily communications. The strategy is reactive with high hopes of being discovered rather than active search of their own. The policy and managerial implications are that training and financial packages must be provided and business associations must be active in creating portals of relevance to the exporters, and pressure put on the government to increase infrastructural investments.