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This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

This research should help determine whether development should focus on individual firms or will raising the national development level act like a rising tide and raise the performance of all corporations.

The comparative data used in this study come from 150 Australian (ASX200 index listed) firms and 150 Sri Lankan (Colombo Stock Exchange listed) firms. The research questions are answered via a quantitative research design that uses primary and secondary data.

The findings demonstrate that capital budgeting practices are more influenced by contingency features and sophistication in Australia and Sri Lanka. Also, Australian firms tend to use capital budget models with good-to-strong predictive power (except for ROE) and Sri Lankan firms tend to use capital-budget models with fair-to-poor predictive power. Further, the analysis of Australian firms yielded much stronger and more statistically significant results than the analysis of Sri Lankan firms.

In complex real-world situations, reconciling the outputs of a multifaceted approach to capital budgeting methods is more likely to give the depth and width of input needed to achieve an optimal capital investment plan.

The results of this study can provide rich information for stakeholders about new findings in capital budgeting (CB) practices and their contributions to firm performance in a comparative perspective.

Robotic process automation (RPA) has recently emerged as a technology focusing on the automation of repetitive, frequent, voluminous and rule-based tasks. Despite a few practical examples that document successful RPA deployments in organizations, evidence of its economic benefits has been mostly anecdotal. The purpose of this paper is to present a step-by-step method to RPA investment appraisal and a business case demonstrating how the steps can be applied to practice.

The methodology relies on design science research (DSR). The step-by-step method is a design artefact that builds on the mapping of processes and modelling of the associated costs. Due to the longitudinal nature of capital investments, modelling uses discounted cashflow and present value methods. Empirical grounding characteristic to DSR is achieved by field testing the artefact.

The step-by-step method is comprised of a preparatory step, three modelling steps and a concluding step. The modelling consists of compounding the interest rate, discounting the investment costs and establishing measures for comparison. These steps were applied to seven business processes to be automated by the case company, Estate Blend. The decision to deploy RPA was found to be trivial, not only based on the initial case data, but also based on multiple sensitivity analyses that showed how resistant RPA investments are to changing circumstances.

By following the provided step-by-step method, executives and managers can quantify the costs and benefits of RPA. The developed method enables any organization to directly compare investment alternatives against each other and against the probable status quo where many tasks in organizations are still carried out manually with little to no automation.

The paper addresses a growing new domain in the field of business process management by capitalizing on DSR and modelling-based approaches to RPA investment appraisal.

This study examines the effect of external debt and domestic capital formation on economic development in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies.

Using the Dynamic Common Correlation Effects (DCCE) technique and the Driscoll and Kraay fixed-effect technique, this paper conducts a multidimensional assessment of external debt and domestic investment on economic development across a panel of 35 SSA countries from 1995 to 2018. The data utilized are sourced from the World Development Indicators (2021) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) database (2021).

The results reveal that domestic investment has a positive impact on economic development in SSA countries, consistent across all three dimensions of the human development index (income, education and life expectancy). However, external debt exhibits an adverse effect on economic development, consistently yielding negative outcomes for life expectancy, education and income.

Based on these findings, the authors recommend that SSA economies implement appropriate policies, such as reducing bureaucratic requirements and addressing corruption, to enhance domestic capital investment. Additionally, efforts should be directed toward channeling contracted debt into productive sectors like road construction and electricity provision.

This study is among the first to assess the impact of domestic investment and external debt on the three dimensions of human development outlined by the UNDP. Furthermore, it employs a robust econometric method that considers cross-sectional dependence (CD).

Increased economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has given rise to increased demand for port development. Given the often scarce availability of national public funding, port institutional reform programmes have been implemented to pave the way for the inclusion of external port investors. Notwithstanding this fact, some sub-Saharan African Governments remain institutionally locked into the notion that state-owned enterprises remain an appropriate vehicle for port terminal operations. This, despite the fact that terminal operational concessions globally and within the continent of Africa are increasingly being managed by global terminal operators. Given this context, this study aims to evaluate different port valuation and funding strategies. Two research questions form the core of this research: what is the financial value of a concession? What is the most cost advantageous funding strategy? The methodology is applied to the development of a two-berth container terminal in SSA.

After reviewing a range of financial valuation and funding techniques, the study presents valuation and funding model applicability-fit tests. Thereafter, a suitable valuation technique is selected and applied to the case study providing a concession valuation. Different funding strategies are applied to the valuation model to determine the cost implications of each funding instrument given the local context and institutional constraints applicable to SSA. Finally, the study discusses the significance of the results to potential SSA port investors by highlighting the impact of each funding approach on key financial metrics.

The study presents a range of financial investment appraisal results for the case study concession in consideration of four specific funding strategies. The highest concession valuation could be attributed to a higher debt ratio as a principal funding strategy. In addition, this funding approach (100% debt) realised the shortest payback period and the highest internal rate of return values. The authors, however, maintain that the optimal funding strategy for a concession depends ultimately on the financial goals of the investor.

This research makes a contribution to the existing literature on port finance and development by presenting a structured approach to the evaluation of the valuation and funding techniques, which can be used in terminal development subject to the specific local context and institutional constraints (in this case applicable to SSA). The study provides practical insight into the potential cost of the considered terminal concession for private or public sector participants and a view of the most cost advantageous funding strategy available for interested investors.