Search results

Automated assembly is moving to smaller and more flexible systems and components, offering greater ability for redeployment and adaptability to device assembly as small as micro electromechanical systems.

This study aims to examine the entrepreneurship profiles of migrants and refugees relying on a neo-configurational approach that increases understanding of causal complexity, equifinality and causal asymmetry patterns to high entrepreneurial intentions in the two groups.

Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the authors analysed 52 respondents – migrants and refugees. The findings show the existence of equifinality in which different configurations can lead to high and low entrepreneurial intentions, underlying that traumatic experiences have a major role in entrepreneurial intention. It also demonstrates that core conditions are associated with refugee’s configurations and causal asymmetry. The cross-sectional character of this research impedes the searching for a better causal relationship. The lack of studies that approach the subject of refugees makes it challenging to develop a robust theory in this sense.

The paper highlights five main configurations – two related to migrants’ profile and three related to refugees’ profile – that enable expanding the current knowledge and practices to better customize practices to increase entrepreneurial intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research using a configurational approach to explore migrant and refugee entrepreneurship intention profiles.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of income and geographic diversification on the double bottom line of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries where conventional and Islamic MFIs coexist. The idea is to explore whether diversification impacts MFIs' financial performance and outreach differ for Islamic microfinance.

The authors test the effect of diversification and business models of MFIs on their performance and poverty outreach. The authors’ data set is an unbalanced panel sample of 81 (Islamic and conventional) MFIs in MENA countries covering 1999–2018, comprising 743 MFI-year observations.

The authors find that increasing income diversification in microfinance and focusing on rural areas decreases the financial performance of MFIs in MENA countries. Islamic MFIs benefit from income diversification by increasing their financial performance. The results provide evidence of a nonlinear relationship between income diversification and the financial performance of MFIs. Although conventional MFIs improve their depth of outreach by diversifying their income, Islamic MFIs have a lower breadth of outreach because they show a higher degree of income diversification.

This research contributes to the ongoing debate of whether MFIs should focus on or diversify their services to Islamic microfinance. Therefore, the findings of this study are practically crucial for MFIs' stakeholders to understand the contribution of diversification strategies in improving the Islamic MFIs to achieve both financial and social objectives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first research that addresses the impact of diversification strategies in Islamic microfinance. Additionally, using a panel data set of conventional and Islamic MFIs in MENA countries spanning 1999–2018, this study provides empirical evidence on the diversification versus focus issue from the microfinance industry and the subset of Islamic microfinance.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.

The purpose of this article is to determine the future proportion and variants of usage of human intellect and artificial intelligence (AI) in entrepreneurship of industry 4.0 that fits social entrepreneurship the most. It could be convergence (simultaneous utilization during the same entrepreneurial processes with the emphasis on unique features by the terms of the competition) or divergence (usage during different business processes by the terms of labor division).

The authors determine the influence of usage of human capital and AI on the efficiency of social entrepreneurship. The authors identify the perspective directions of usage of AI in social entrepreneurship and evaluate the readiness and interest in the implementation of these directions of concerned parties. The authors also model the optimal proportions and the variant of usage of human intellect and AI in social entrepreneurship in the conditions of Industry 4.0 in the future (until 2030).

It is found that social entrepreneurship will use the opportunities of Industry 4.0 for optimization of its activities until 2030, but will refuse from full automatization, using human intellect and AI at the same time.

The most perspective directions of application of AI at social companies are a collection of social goods and services, marketing studies and promotion of social goods and services. Neither convergence nor divergence of human and artificial intellectual capital does not fully conform to the interests of concerned parties. The most preferable (optimal) variant of usage of human intellect and AI in social entrepreneurship in the Industry 4.0 is human intelligent decision support.

This paper aims to determine the trends and prospects of the development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries.

The methodology includes trend, regression, and correlation analysis and scenario (imitation) modeling and elaborates on perspectives and recommendations for further development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asia.

Despite the active development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries (its share in the structure of GDP of these countries constituted 2.6% on average in 2018), it accounts for a small contribution to domestic development of socio-economic systems. These countries of Asia in 2018 were peculiar for low level of social freedoms (70th position in the world), low level of healthcare (51st position), moderate level of ecological effectiveness (61.33 points out of 100), moderate level of education (0.767 points out of 1) and low level of development of infrastructure (39 points out of 100). In the provision of social freedoms and healthcare, social entrepreneurship is least developed and is peculiar for a tendency for a decrease. The difference between demand and offer of social entrepreneurship causes an imbalance of the market of social (non-profit, volunteer and charity) services in these countries. This imbalance is to be overcome with the recent tendency of digitization of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries.

Digitization occupies the last position among the factors of the development of social entrepreneurship. Tax stimulation of social entrepreneurship is preferable, so it is recommended to pay primary attention to it until 2022, for the provision of the balance of the market of social services.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the macroeconomic significance of transaction costs in microfinance intermediation and explain how the deposit mobilization and micro lending impact the microfinance transaction costs. It presents some empirical evidence as building blocks for the theory of financial intermediation that aims at strengthening the efficiency of financial intermediation in the context of preferential credit and or the microfinance sector.

The study uses the panel data consisting of different groups of banks in India (such as public sector banks, private banks and foreign banks) data across a period from March 1993 to March 2009 to estimate the panel VAR model to determine the determinants of transaction cost model in financial intermediation. The study also uses the panel Granger causality analysis to test the direction of causation to know the behavior of the operating expense of the banks in their financial intermediation process.

The study reveals that there is a positive direct relationship between operating expense and priority sector lending by banks. The findings show that the transaction costs act as a barrier for the banking firms in microfinance intermediation; and, the banks are able to manage the transaction costs of microfinance intermediation with an increase in overall deposit mobilization and increased non-microfinance lending. The study recommends that there is a need to upscale the functional efficiency of microfinance intermediaries.

This study offers to bridge the research gap and adds novel information to the literature on microfinance intermediation. It is the first empirical paper showing the macroeconomic significance of transaction costs in microfinance intermediation.

This paper aims to investigate whether revenue diversification affects the financial sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs).

The study uses a worldwide panel data set of 443 MFIs in 108 countries for the period 2013–2018 and two-step system Generalized Method of Moments estimation model.

The study finds that revenue diversification has a significant and positive effect on the financial sustainability of MFIs.

The findings of this study actually offer important managerial and policy lessons on MFIs’ financial sustainability. Microfinance managers and policymakers should consider revenue diversification as a strategy through which MFIs can attain financial sustainability instead of overreliance on donations and government subsidies

Unlike previous studies that examined revenue diversification in the context of banking firms, this study contributes to literature by examining the impact of revenue diversification of the financial sustainability of MFIs.

The aim of the paper is to analyze whether performance measures and their factors for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Muslim countries are significantly different from those in their non-Muslim counterparts, central to the Islamic scholars' argument that religious and cultural norms in Muslim countries may drive the preference of Islamic microfinance over conventional microfinance.

Using a cross-sectional dataset of 2,138 firm-years for 754 different MFIs across 83 countries, 33 Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) member Muslim countries and 50 non-member countries, we analyzed the MFI performance based on three sets of measures: outreach, loan recovery and profitability and overall financial performance measures, with respect to two sets of explanatory variables, namely, country-specific and firm-level variables.

Results show that country gross domestic product size is positively related with profitability, and the percentage of women borrowers is also significant in driving loan recovery and firm profitability in the OIC sample, but they are otherwise not significant for the rest of the world sample.

This study contributes to the understanding of the core argument in the motivation of Islamic MFIs, which is whether cultural and religious factors are important for MFI success in Muslim countries.

This study introduces a variable that measures the difference between a country's independence year and their OIC membership year as a proxy for the “country religious inclination” of a Muslim country. Results suggest that countries with delayed membership in OIC show lower inclination to popular Islamic beliefs and higher market penetration of conventional microfinance outreach. Positive relationships among a country's religious inclination and loan loss ratios and loan provisions are also consistent with the moral hazard hypothesis that few religious communities may be more prone to default.

A widely used approach for solving the two‐dimensional semiconductor‐device equations through the Finite‐Element method employs a linear approximation of the electric and quasi‐Fermi potentials over a triangular mesh; this approach combines the flexibility of FE method with the simplicity of a piecewise linear representation of the unknowns. Owing to the strong dependence of carrier densities on the position, a careful evaluation of integrals involving these quantities is desirable; this problem arises, for example, when the very common Galerkin's or Ritz's method are used, and is differently treated in the Literature. In this paper it is demonstrated that, if a minor approximation on the intrinsic carrier density is done, an analytical evaluation of the above integrals over each triangular element can be performed, which takes into account the correct dependence of carrier densities on the electric and quasi‐Fermi potentials; the results may be used to avoid heavy mesh refinements, which make the solution procedure costly both in CPU time and in memory storage. Practical applications to some specific devices will be shown elsewhere; the procedure and the final formulas are presented here in a rather general way, thus allowing a possible application to different problems which may be solved with FE method.