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The purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between information and communication technology (ICT) and remittances affect the doing of business.

The focus is on a panel of 49 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000–2012. The empirical evidence is based on the generalized method of moments.

While the authors establish some appealing results in terms of net negative effects on constraints to the doing of business (i.e. time to start a business and time to pay taxes), some positive net effects are also apparent (i.e. number of start-up procedures, time to build a warehouse and time to register a property). The authors also establish ICT penetration thresholds at which the unconditional effect of remittances can be changed from positive to negative, notably: for the number of start-up procedures, an internet level of 9.00 penetration per 100 people is required, while for the time to build a warehouse, a mobile phone penetration level of 32.33 penetration per 100 people is essential. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess linkages between ICT, remittances and doing business in SSA.

Facing the challenges posed by the pandemic of COVID-19, this paper aims to contribute to the resilience of businesses through the development of a real options approach (ROA) that provides alternatives and opportunities for a decision process under situations when future events and outcomes are unknown and not capable of being known from current information.

This paper involves a stochastic modelling process in generating a set of absolute option values, using available data and scenarios from the COVID-19 pandemic event. The modelling and simulations using ROA suggest how strategic portfolios resolve the growing problem during the endemic to all but in the most isolated societies.

This study finds the emergent correlation between circuit breakers and lockdowns, which have brought about a “distorted gravity” effect (inverse growth of global businesses and trades). However, “time-to-build” real options (i.e. deferral, expand, switch and compound exchange) start to function in the adaptive-transformative capabilities for growth opportunities of both government and corporate sectors. Significantly, some sectors grow faster than others while the compound exchange remains primarily challenging. Clearly, the government and corporate sectors are entangled, inevitably, the decoherence allows for the former to change uncertainty in the latter; therefore, government sector options change option values in the corporate sector.

The ROA by empirically focusing on both government and corporate sectors demonstrates under conditions of uncertainty how options in decision-making generate opportunities that hitherto have not been recognised and exercised upon by research in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, the ROA provides an insightful concatenation (capability–behaviour approach) that drives resilience.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

Investment decisions by agribusiness firms are costly and subject to high volatility and uncertainty. In many cases, the project value is not only determined by its cash‐flows stream and financial side effects but also by the presence of substantial future uncertainty such as project implementation delay and growth opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an agribusiness project taking into account these two options and to illustrate the how risks that evolve over time can affect sequential investment decisions in the oleic oil industry in Tunisia.

The methodology used to capture the investment project value and analyze the impact of lags between the initial investment decision and its implementation on project value is based on a decision tree method and binomial lattice method (which adds growth option). The project valuation is based, first on actual data at the time of the initial decision and second the authors use the full information to report on the true value of the investment opportunity as real time evolved.

Findings show that time to build is a very important factor in valuing an agribusiness especially when efficiency is strongly governed by climatic conditions and international market uncertainty. Our real options approach shows that production delays can deteriorate the follow‐on project value by as much as 53 percent. The implicit growth option falls to only 27 percent of the total project value while it was about 58 percent according to the standard forecast. The delay in project implementation not only affects the firm project financing costs and the loss of revenue, but also it contributes to modify the initial marketing strategy.

The paper is a first application of real option approach to the oleic oil industry. The methodology used in the paper can be adapted by practitioners and investors to adequately value oleic projects.

This study investigates the influence of experience – organisational tenure, international experience and springboard role – upon Chief Executive Officers’ (CEOs) time to the top and the time taken by CEOs to reach that position. As work and careers are embedded in economic and institutional environments, although prior Western career studies have explored this relationship, this study aims to determine the suitability of experience as a human capital attribute to explain CEO career success in Latin American firms.

169 Latin American firms were considered (America Economia, 2014). Biographical data about CEOs were manually collected and systematically crosschecked, and multiple hierarchical regressions were employed.

Organisational tenure and lifetime experience were found to reduce the time to the top. International experience delays the time to the top. International assignments closer to HQ do not exert an influence on time to the top. In multilatinas, promoted CEOs who have held Corporate springboard roles get faster to the top than those having held Divisional positions. Findings offer partial support to the human capital theory experience in Latin America, stressing the relevance of cultural, socio-economic and institutional factors.

The identification of career success predictors may enhance the career decision-making processes of individuals and organisations.

This study contributes to human capital and career literature, being the first one to explore the relationship between experience and time to the top in CEOs working for Latin American firms.

The purpose of this article is to see how women who run their own businesses create and hold together teams within their companies.

A case study was conducted and interviews were carried out with four female owners of small‐businesses. Interviews were also conducted with their employees and their customers. The field research resulted in a categorization of the four businesses we studied.

Only one of the companies succeeded in creating a genuine team, the category that we call the “friends”. It took them a long time to achieve, which is rarely mentioned in literature on this topic. Creating mutual concepts is a complicated process. The other categories are called “circle of acquaintances”, the “family” and the “colleagues”. The circle of acquaintances had not succeeded in creating a team amid the turbulence they work within, while the family is not prepared to take the time that is needed to create a team. A process has been started for the staff in the colleagues category aimed at creating a team once they have understood the importance of good internal relations.

In practice it takes time to build team‐based working methods in small businesses. Employees require training but many small business owners don't think they have time for it.

The more collective methods that characterize the friends category are not normally the subject of research into small businesses where focus is usually on the owner of the company. The working methods at this company were more collective than usual and this is not commonly seen in research into this area.

This two-year study illuminates the experiences of technology coaches (digital learning coaches [DL] and science technology engineering and mathematics/literacy coaches [STEM/L]) as they engaged in their own professional learning (PL) facilitated by a faculty researcher.

Technology coaches from different school districts and their respective colleagues participated in book studies as part of their PL. They reflected and debriefed individually and collaboratively with a researcher facilitator. Data were collected through interviews, field notes at meetings, observations, researchers’ reflections and artefacts. Qualitative data analysis methods were employed.

The findings offer a glimpse into (1) benefits of cross-district collaboration, (2) challenges finding resources for coaching, (3) career-long desire to learn and (4) time to build and sustain cross-collaborations.

Conclusions suggest that DL and STEM/L coaches benefit from their own dedicated, differentiated programme of PL supported by each other (as from other districts) and a researcher facilitator. Educational implications are offered for researchers and other school district stakeholders for consideration for them to foster coaches’ collaborative PL.

Importantly, this project is an exemplar of how to support coaches’ PL and growth through researcher facilitation of cross-district collaborative learning.

The purpose of this paper is to construct option pricing models for real estate development by considering and incorporating institutional arrangements, direct interactions and financial constraints in the model. It extends the application of real option theory from the framework borrowed from financial option pricing, and considers the case where a development company has restrictions from outside environment and financial constraint. It explores the effects of these additional practical factors on real asset project value and development timing. This paper makes contributions to bridge the theoretical models and practical applications.

Real estate development is modelled in the binomial option pricing framework with the considerations of time‐to‐build, foregone rent if delaying, institutional environment and capital budgeting. The investment timings are derived from the models and sensitivity analysis is conducted to explore the effects of these factors.

Apart from the factors in traditional option pricing theory, this paper confirms that the contractual covenants, positive synergies between properties and financial status of the firm, which enhance or restrict real flexibility embedded in the development land, influence project value and investment timing. Numerical examples illustrate the effects of these factors. It is argued that the valuation of real options should place emphasis on industry‐specific characteristics and start from the perspective of the firm rather than individual options.

The models constructed in this paper and the results can be directly used in the practical real estate development.

This paper incorporates many practical factors in real estate development which are not investigated in previous studies. It values the option project from the firm perspective rather than project perspective as previous studies. It also shows the effects of institutional arrangement and firm factors on project value and development timing.