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The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which Porter’s five competitive forces (PFCF) framework, among other factors drive the choice of response strategies adopted by public universities in Kenya.

The study design was descriptive and utilized a cross-sectional survey of all the public universities in Kenya by administering a structured questionnaire to the top management team. Additional primary data were collected through observations and interviews. Secondary data were also collected in order to corroborate the data collected from the primary sources.

PFCF framework influenced the choice of response strategies adopted by the public universities “to a great extent”, the most influence being the threat from new entrants. The influence of the choice of response strategies by PFCF framework was independent of the age and category of the universities. Pressure from stakeholders, changes in government policies and regulations, reforms in higher education, unethical response strategies by some universities and university location also influenced the choice of response strategies.

The study collected data from the top management team only; however, other stakeholders could have given additional information not reported here. Further, the research only considered public universities and not all higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kenya, and was cross-sectional, hence generalization and application of the results over a long time, respectively, may be limited.

The value of this study lies in HEIs achieving a competitive advantage and shaping strategic policy direction in the face of changing environment and global commodification of higher education.

Current public universities in Kenya have adopted a business-like approach in their operations in view of changing environment and have adopted coping strategies. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence the choice of response strategies is important for improvement of quality, efficiency and effectiveness as well as in policy formulation and serve as a guide to strategic management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of using computers to obtain information on the farm household’s production and consumption based on a field survey of farm households in the northern China.

The most important methods applied are instrumental variable (IV) method and propensity score matching (PSM) method. Estimators of IV, PSM and nearest neighborhood matching approaches are considered together to check the robustness of empirical results.

This paper careful impact evaluation results suggest that the use of computer not only improves the size of arable land rented in but also reduces family labor input intensity and the probability of selling agricultural outputs at farm-gate markets. Moreover, it also stimulates transportation, garment, housing and insurance expenditures per capita.

The database of this research comprises cross-section data, which does not support a cross-time comparison.

These results imply that it is vital to expand the coverage of computer use in rural areas. This may suggest that the importance of improving computer access is crucial for stimulating rural consumption increase. Furthermore, the need for the expansion of internet network coverage in western areas is also of importance.

First, the authors directly estimate computer usage impacts on a broader range of production and consumption indicators by including land-relative investments, variable investments, labor input and household’s expenditure and provide rigorous impact evaluations on the impact of access to computer. Second, the authors use IV and PSM methods to correct self-selection bias, going beyond the single equation approach in other studies. This enables us to identify the causal relationship between computer usage and farmer’s production and consumption decisions.

The purpose of this study is to provide human resource (HR) practitioners of multinational companies aspiring to invest in these two countries with guidelines for attaining organizational effectiveness through people.

This study develops and tests a multiple criteria decision-making model with data collected in the banking sectors of India and Mozambique. It compares the job engagement, team building and innovation strategy preferences of Indian personnel with those of Mozambican employees.

The findings of the study reveal the differences in the perceptions of the respondents of both countries regarding the importance of the strategies for organizational effectiveness.

Despite several contributions, the study has certain limitations too. Although utmost care was taken to avoid the issue of common method variance, the cross-sectional self-reported design of the study might be adversely affected by common method bias (MacKenzie and Podsakoff, 2012). Hence, future research might be conducted using different designs, such as diary studies or longitudinal studies. Future research might also be conducted making use of organizational productivity case studies to demonstrate the practicability of customizing the HR strategies using the multi-attribute decision-making approach.

This body of work is an addition to the existing literature on cross-national studies in the field of HR management (HRM) and adds to the limited literature on HRM in the least developed countries. The study is designed to provide guidelines for the HR practitioners of multi-national companies in these two countries to help them achieve enhanced organizational effectiveness. This should be of particular interest to the HR managers of the Indian companies aspiring to invest in Mozambique.

Research in the area of HRM is mainly limited to the developed and developing nations, with very few studies centering on emerging economies. While most cross-national studies on organizational effectiveness are also largely focused on developed and developing nations, this study is unusual, in that its focus is on a fast-developing nation (India) and an emerging economy (Mozambique).

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the growth mechanism of Indian sugar industry by deploying quantitative and qualitative metaphors.

The research paper has been composed through comprehensive primary research survey using a structured questionnaire, and qualitative discussion following semi- structured interviews with industry professionals on emerging issues across the whole value chain of sugar industry. Respondents regarding primary survey were selected using the purposive sampling, and this collected quantitative information has been verified on the lenses of multiple stream modelling (MSM).

To support the data analysis, MSM – a policy-making framework has been developed which found that government being a central construct exerts a profound presence across whole value chain; in suppliers’ mechanism, marketing of sugar and sugar mills’ infrastructural expansions. Nationwide uniformity in sugar policy instead of states’ monopolistic policies, rational and mutual benefits-based decisions collectively by the government, mills management and sugarcane growers, and diversification in production processes are enumerated as the proposed solutions against the chronical industry problems.

This study enriches extant Asian sugar industry literature. For policymakers, the proposed results should be of help in identifying specific policies to support the competitiveness of local systems and individual manufacturing companies in the Indian sugar industry suggesting that the development of growth mechanisms can contribute simultaneously to improve the financial, market and operational performance of both individual firms and supply chains.

Cyclicality in production, rising sugarcane farmers’ problems and resulting severe financial distress of mills are some of the topical issues of Indian sugar industry, and the study has explored these issues factually, quantitatively and qualitatively in proximity of industry professionals and described in this depository with the help of document analysis.

The study directs attention to the psychological conditions experienced and knowledge management practices leveraged by faculty in higher education institutes (HEIs) to cope with the shift to emergency remote teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing attention on faculty experiences during this transition, this study aims to examine an under-investigated effect of the pandemic in the Indian context.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis is used to analyze the data gathered in two waves through 40 in-depth interviews with 20 faculty members based in India over a year. The data were analyzed deductively using Kahn’s framework of engagement and robust coding protocols.

Eight subthemes across three psychological conditions (meaningfulness, availability and safety) were developed to discourse faculty experiences and challenges with emergency remote teaching related to their learning, identity, leveraged resources and support received from their employing educational institutes. The findings also present the coping strategies and knowledge management-related practices that the faculty used to adjust to each discussed challenge.

The study uses a longitudinal design and phenomenology as the analytical method, which offers a significant methodological contribution to the extant literature. Further, the study’s use of Kahn’s model to examine the faculty members’ transitions to emergency remote teaching in India offers novel insights into the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on educational institutes in an under-investigated context.

This paper aims to examine adaptive livelihood strategies used by small-scale fishing households in the two coastal communities in Central Vietnam under the context of climate change-related stressors.

Field data were collected through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods including a review of secondary data, key-informant interviews, group discussions and household surveys with 300 sampled fishing households. The qualitative data support the analysis and discussion of quantitative data.

The results showed local households’ perception of the presence and influence of multiple non-climate and climate stressors on their fishery-based livelihoods in terms of employment and income in many ways. The affected households exerted to develop a diversity of adaptation methods within and out of fishing to sustain their livelihoods and cover a deficit in household income. The household socio-demographic characteristics particularly education, labour force, fishing equipment and social support played significant importance in characterising the categories of adaptation strategies among the survey households. The role of local governments in creating an enabling environment for local-level adaptation, as well as protecting marine and coastal ecosystems was rather limited despite their recognized importance.

The paper provides an empirical case of how small-scale fishing households in coastal communities in Central Vietnam are adapting to climate-related stressors. It suggests policy should promote livelihood diversification opportunities and address household-level constraints for adaptation. Fisheries management plan is urgently needed to control illegal fishing activities for sustainable use of coastal and marine fishery resources and the appropriate mechanism is important to stretch local governments’ resources for better supporting local-level adaptation.

While several studies have indicated the critical role played by the ability of countries to exploit knowledge as an economic resource, it would appear that there have been very few studies conducted on understanding the practices adopted by governments in relation to exploring knowledge, particularly in Africa. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevailing knowledge management practices and technological solutions used by governments to support knowledge management.

To address the research objective of this study, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used. The interviews were conducted with both senior and junior county officials from five counties in Kenya, with a total of 31 county officials participating. Further, various county documents were analysed both to seek convergence and corroborate the interview findings.

The study findings revealed that no systematic knowledge management practices existed in the county governments in Kenya, which were investigated. On the few occasions that the study did find evidence of knowledge management practices, these practices were isolated, informal, uncoordinated and rarely documented and/or communicated. Furthermore, the study found that there were inadequate policy frameworks in place to support knowledge management practices. The study also revealed a scarcity of relevant technological solutions tailored to support knowledge management practices.

It was, thus, hoped that this research would promote an understanding of the prevailing local circumstances that hinder the effective utilisation of knowledge management practices and systems. The study recommends that county governments develop the capabilities required for creating and sustaining an enabling knowledge management environment through frameworks and policies that foster knowledge management practices and systems. The findings have practical implications for the way in which county governments in Kenya and other developing countries may improve their knowledge management practices and adopt appropriate technological solutions to support such practices.

Much of the existing literature on knowledge management is focussed on exploring such practices in large businesses. Studies centred specifically on the analysis of knowledge management practices in county governments in Africa, and how technological solutions may be used to build such practices are conspicuously lacking in the relevant literature.

While many studies have discussed the regulatory constraints that hinder industrial development in sub-Saharan Africa, little attention has been paid to the behavior of those firms that succeed despite a challenging business environment. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by focusing on specific strategies of a subset of successful industrial firms in Kenya.

The paper draws on two data sets. First, a quantitative data set based on a survey of food processing firms provides an overall profile of the sub-sector and the strategies employed by successful Kenyan firms. Second, qualitative in-depth case studies unpack the concept of strategy from the perspective of the firm, with the aim of showing the links between vision and strategy and the adaptive nature of firm strategy.

The quantitative data set reveals that the most important strategies used by agri-processing firms are differentiation strategies (selling at a premium), cost reduction strategies and niche strategies. A second major finding, based on the case study interviews, is that Kenyan firms adopt a combination of strategies to cope with the volatile business environment and grow their market. Furthermore, the qualitative interviews reveal that the vision of the leader is linked to firm strategy and firms follow an adaptive approach to strategy development.

The paper’s original contribution is the conclusion that while the existing typologies of strategy were acknowledged by respondents, their actual strategies were composites resulting from adaptive strategy development. This conclusion was made possible by the paper’s mixed methods approach.

The purpose of this paper is to establish if indeed human resource management (HRM) practices drive organizational learning capability and, in turn, fortify small and medium enterprises (SMEs) performance. The purpose of mediation analysis is to see if the influence of organizational learning capability is stronger than the direct influence of HRM practices on SME performance.

Data was collected from managerial-level employees of SMEs using questionnaire survey. This study used the Partial Least Squares approach to structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationship, as it involves the relationships among multiple variables.

Of the HRM practices, incentive and compensation and team working seem to be important for firm performance. As for organizational learning capability, only openness and experimentation and managerial commitment have a direct positive impact on firm performance. The results of the mediation analysis established organizational learning capability as a mediator, albeit partially.

Although prior research revealed a positive relationship between HRM practices and performance, this study illuminates the black box in-between, as few studies have established its importance in the relationship between HRM practices and firm performance. The findings provide more consensus on the ongoing debate on the linkages among HRM practices, SME performance and organizational learning capability.

Background: Climate change has been increasingly recognized as a global crisis with effects on gender roles. Recently, communities surrounding Lake Mburo national park, Uganda have been experiencing frequent severe droughts. It was against this background that the study was designed to understand the effect of climate change on gender roles.

Methods: This cross sectional study reviewed the effect of climate change on men and women's gender roles using a pragmatic research paradigm based on a thematic review model using participatory methods and a structured questionnaire.

Results: The study found that men and women's gender roles were altered during extreme dryness. Men played their roles sequentially focusing on one single productive role, while women played their roles simultaneously, balancing the demands of each role with their limited available time. Effect of climate change affected productive roles more in Kiruhura district than Isingiro district. There was migration of both men and women in search of water and pasture for livestock in Kiruhura district which distorted gender roles of women. Consequently, women and girl children had a heavier load and were the most people affected by climate change effects in these districts.

Conclusion: Gender roles of communities surrounding Lake Mburo National Park were affected and altered by the effects of climate change. Therefore, institutions offering climate services to local communities should consider gender in decision making, access to resources, information and knowledge during participation in climate change mitigation and adaptation.