Search results

The paper aims to investigate challenges facing small-, medium- and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs) in public procurement in Botswana from the view of a buyer.

The researchers conducted consultative workshops, succeeded by focus groups and follow-up telephone interviews, to collect and validate data. A total of 75 procurement officers from central government ministries and local governments participated in the study.

Results indicate that SMMEs find it difficult to deal with public procurement because of lack of capacity, unfair bias against SMMEs, inefficient government payment systems, unfair competition from their larger and established counterparts and centralized public procurement. The paper recommends a comprehensive integrated framework, improvement of SMME capacity and adopting policies to ensure greater public procurement market access.

This paper aims to compare the Greek and Chinese rhetorical traditions and explore their influences on today’s business and marketing communication across relevant cultures. In particular, it uses the Aristotelian persuasive orientations as reference points to introduce the Chinese rhetoric, and interpret cultural differences in persuasion from a historical and sociocultural perspective. It has been found that Greek and Chinese rhetoric and persuasion were developed to meet the needs of the social and cultural environments and this rule still applies to today’s business communication. The logical approach has been emphasised in the English rhetorical tradition while both qing (emotional approach) and li (logical approach) are the focus of persuasion in the Chinese tradition. This difference is also the root of cultural differences in modern business communication. Findings from both English and Chinese texts and data are examined to substantiate our focal argument.

Recently, efforts to fight discriminatory behaviour in many sports and to eliminate racial preferences among fans have intensified. However, uncovering discriminatory preferences may not be easy as they may be deeply rooted and even unconscious. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issues.

Unfortunately, professional soccer and fantasy sports participation serves as a vehicle for explicit racial discrimination at a micro-level, but does it translate to the macro-level through fantasy team selection? The current study explored the potential of implicit racial discrimination in Czech participants in the English Premier League.

Discriminatory behaviour in this context is defined by a consumer demonstrating preference for a white player over a non-white player in the fantasy soccer labour market when both players are performing at equal levels. Controlling for additional factors such as nationality and historically dominant team biases and accessing a more homogenous sample, the results confirmed previous research that racial discrimination cannot be found in team selection decisions among fantasy soccer participants in the Czech Republic. The manifestations of racism are still present at Czech stadiums and among Czech athletes. This contradiction is the major finding of this paper.

Previous research found no evidence of racial discrimination among participants controlling for some game factors. However, the study had many limitations including a heterogeneous sample and not controlling for additional factors of participant bias. Given those concerns, the current study analysed line-up decisions of English Premier League participants, but did so with participants solely within the Czech Republic, a more homogenous sample, controlling for additional important factors that could impact racial discrimination among fantasy participants.

Public procurement presents substantial market opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which can contribute to their economic growth. However, limited dynamic capabilities often pose challenges for SMEs to participate effectively in public procurement markets. Drawing on dynamic capability (DC) theory, this study explores whether financial capability (FNCP) influences SMEs’ ability to leverage their technological capability (TECC) and marketing sensing capability (MKSC) and actively engage in public procurement.

Data for this study were collected from 248 SME managers in the Ilala District, Tanzania, using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey and stratified random sampling technique. The proposed hypotheses were tested empirically through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the Hayes PROCESS macro.

TECC and MKSC demonstrated significant positive associations with SME participation in public procurement (SMPP). Moreover, the interaction between TECC and FNCP as well as the interaction between MKSC and FNCP demonstrate a significant positive effect, suggesting that FNCP strengthens the impact of TECC and MKSC on SMPP.

The scope of this study was limited to SMEs in the Ilala District of Tanzania, hence affecting the generalizability of the findings to other contexts. More importantly, the study findings enrich the understanding of DC theory, signifying that the integration and reconfiguration of MKSC, TECC and FNCP add significant value to SMPP.

The findings suggest that policymakers, support institutions and SME managers should focus on enhancing SMEs' MKSC and TECC to improve their participation in public procurement. In addition, improving SMEs' access to financial resources can further strengthen these effects, enabling more inclusive participation in public procurement.

The study contributes to the literature on SMPP by highlighting the critical roles of MKSC and TECC. It also underscores the importance of FNCP as a moderator in these relationships, which has not been addressed in the existing literature. By integrating these factors, the study offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the dynamics that influence SMPP from financial, technological and marketing perspectives, particularly in developing economies like Tanzania.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on supply chain management (SCM) practices in small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) and outlines the key insights.

The paper describes a literature‐based research that has sought understand the issues of SCM for SMEs. The methodology is based on critical review of 77 research papers from high‐quality, international refereed journals. Mainly, issues are explored under three categories – supply chain integration, strategy and planning and implementation. This has supported the development of key constructs and propositions.

The research outcomes are three fold. Firstly, paper summarizes the reported literature and classifies it based on their nature of work and contributions. Second, paper demonstrates the overall approach towards the development of constructs, research questions, and investigative questions leading to key proposition for the further research. Lastly, paper outlines the key findings and insights gained.

Survival of SMEs will be determined first and foremost by their ability to provide/produce more, at less cost, in less time, with few “defects”. The key to this is effective SCM. The issue is much explored in the context of large enterprises but less attention is paid to SMEs. Paper aims to surface out some facts for the same. Originality/value The paper reports‐classifies the literature and development of construct and propositions.

Postgraduate students who are more mature and have greater job experience are more likely to be inclined towards entrepreneurship. However, postgraduate students face various barriers such as lack of funds, fear of failure and lack of social networking that may hinder their entrepreneurial inclination. The barriers faced by these postgraduate students may also exhibit different dimensions compared with barriers faced by existing entrepreneurs. This study aims to examine the relationship between perceived barriers to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial inclination.

Based on a survey‐based methodology, data were collected from a sample of 267 postgraduate students from various Malaysian universities. Respondents' perception towards five barriers to entrepreneurship (aversion to risk, fear of failure, lack of resources, lack of social networking, and aversion to stress and hard work) and their entrepreneurial inclination were assessed.

The model R‐squared indicated that 31.5 percent of the variation in the entrepreneurial inclination is explained by the five perceived barriers. The highest ranked barrier to entrepreneurship was lack of social networking followed by lack of resources and aversion to risk.

The findings in this study cannot be generalized to non‐student populations since it covers only postgraduate students. The quantitative approach used was unable to uncover in‐depth information on the various barriers. A qualitative approach may be more appropriate to obtain further details.

This research provides interesting insights into the entrepreneurship barriers faced by postgraduate students from a developing nation where such research is lacking.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the researches reported in literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and determine the avenues by which lean anchorage can be improved in LSS implementation.

The literature on lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and LSS was reviewed. The literature has been reviewed from four major perspectives. The findings of this review were used to find the methods for the improvement of lean anchorage. The proposed model is explained with a hypothetical case study.

The major finding of the exploration reported in this article is that the lean anchorage in LSS process is found to be weak and it has to be enhanced for improving the effectiveness of LSS approach. The results derived from the hypothetical case study have been presented.

The researches on LSS from the perspective of implementation in small- and medium-sized enterprises have been explored. But the lean anchorage method proposed could be extended to other organizations also.

The findings of this literature exploration pinpoint the need for enhancing the efficacy of LSS approach.

This article has identified and presented systematically four major perspectives of LSS. The deficiency has been identified and the improvement methods have been proposed. Hence, the contributions of this article are original and valuable.