Indian SMEs and Start-Ups

The environment plays a vibrant role in sustaining human life such that without a suitable environment, humans will find it difficult to survive. The 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana mandates an excellent and healthy environment for all. Hence, it’s a human right that must be upheld and needs a collective effort to sustain it. Thus, the state, government, and stakeholders must protect and manage the environment to implement sustainable development. The Ghanaian environment can support Ghanaians in line with implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs have since 2015 become the regulating framework driving global development discussions. This paper examines the nexus between environmental law enforcement and implementing SDGs in Ghana. The researchers adopted a complete interpretative document analysis for this study, which showed the careful but rigorous investigation of environmental law enforcement and SDGs. This technique confirmed the genuineness of the information studied and interpreted in the study. The study found that environmental law enforcement and the implementation of SDGs in Ghana are directly linked. Thus, the regulation aligns with the goals of 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, and 15 of the SDGs directly associated with environmental sustainability. Also, environmental law enforcement in Ghana through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concerning Environmental Protection and Management is protective and suppressive. This study further unravels that a supervisory outline is mandatory to enable sustainable development within Ghana’s environmental protection and law enforcement issues and to guarantee its alignment with SDGs. This should be established based on the participation of stakeholders. As a result, the researchers recommend that the government establish strong management and accountability in sustainable development by measuring, supervising, revising, and evaluating their growth towards meeting SDGs in environmental issues geared towards achieving SDG targets and frequently communicating their development to the public.

Corruption is a curse in Pakistan, neither public office nor any structure immune from this phenomenon. Inspired by this, the study commits to examine two significant research issues. First the study assesses to find whether corruption greases the wheel or sanding it. Second, the study commits to determine what causes corruption in firms. This study is based on the World Bank's enterprise survey, data of Pakistani firms. This study tries to associate the effects of corruption on firm performance after controlling for firm specific factors. We check two sets of variables; first set is the variables that cover firm specific characteristics and other is variable that cover intervention with government agencies. The overall conclusion depicts a mixed approach on corruption effects. Our evidence shows that there is a negative association of corruption on firm performance which supports that the hypothesis of ‘sand the wheels’ is widely applicable in Pakistan. The results conclude that younger firms, directly exporting firms, large size firms are more likely to experience a deteriorating effect on their performance. Our study interestingly shows that bureaucratic complexities faced by the firms increases the performance of the firms which supports ‘Grease the wheels’. Study finds that firms struggling in terms of sales growth, younger firms, firms in growing competition, large firms are more likely to pay bribes.

Studies have shown that the majority of the global population are migrating from rural to urban areas. People are leaving rural areas due to poor services such as poor broadband service. Fibre optic technology has been introduced as a solution to poor broadband quality. However, as a result of the peculiar characteristics of South Africa's rural areas, the majority of the telecommunication operators are hesitant to invest in ICT in rural areas because it tends to be much less profitable. Hence, the study of how cost-effective it would be to deploy a fibre optic network in rural areas as compared to the current wireless (LTE) network remains an open issue. This study investigates the cost-effectiveness of deploying a fibre optic network in the rural area of Mdantsane township, by analysing the installation and operation costs of fibre optic networks in comparison to the cost of wireless (LTE) networks. The finding of the study amongst others showed that while fibre optic networks seem to be great, however, they come at a cost. The cost of drilling and trenching associated with the deployment of fibre optic networks was reported as the key reason why the network deployment is costly. Hence, reducing the cost of drilling and trenching would reduce the cost significantly. The study suggests that, to lower fibre optic deployment costs, network operators should collaborate and share costs through a customised pricing model that benefits both the operators and rural internet users.

Purpose – to investigate the features of quality management of electronic services in Ukraine in the context of digitalization intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Research methodology – analysis of statistical data published in traditional media, analysis of annual monitoring studies of private commercial companies, the study of the regulatory framework, published in free access to the Internet research on the problem of managing the quality of electronic services, as well as the author's sociological research, which allows assessing the level of e-services in Ukraine. Findings – there were highlighted the main criteria for business development in a fundamentally new digital environment of communication and social interaction, due to the intensive development of IT technologies, which implies the introduction of innovative methods of working with consumers in virtual environments based on messenger platforms. The conducted sociological research made it possible to highlight the reasons for the decline in the quality of service provision due to weak cyber protection, imperfection of the regulatory framework in the context of determining quality criteria, the legal unresolved issue of responsibility for disclosing personal data of consumers, a low level of digital culture of citizens, a fairly large volume of false content, dissatisfaction with the speed of the mobile Internet. Research limitations – the lack of systematization of the types of electronic services, the imperfection of the methodology for organizing the system for managing the procedure for the provision of services, the lack of regulatory certainty, which makes it possible to establish responsibility for quality and confidentiality. An interdisciplinary approach has led to the development of key determinants for evaluating e-service delivery. Highlighted business problems when working on Internet platforms, the elimination of which will improve the quality of electronic services. The economic, social, legal, and technical prerequisites for reducing the quality of e-services have been established, as well as a comparative analysis of the technical capabilities of mobile providers providing coverage and penetration of the Internet in the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic urged the implementation of new corporate digital strategies which are, in fact, no longer an option but compulsory. Given the context, this study aims to raise the following question: Are the micro and small companies matured enough to face the challenges of digital transformation due to the Covid-19 pandemic? This study has an exploratory approach in order to answer this intriguing question which seems to be a global concern. Data were collected by applying online questionnaires to 256 managers of micro and small enterprises in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The main findings showed that half (50,2%) of respondents considered their enterprises to be in a medium level of digital maturity and 39.13% considered themselves highly prepared to face the challenges of digital transformation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the study showed that it seems to be an inversely proportional relation between managers’ age range and level of digital maturity of companies. Young managers are much more open for new technologies than old ones.

The constant evolution and dependence of technologies on corporate business activities and processes brought an increase in electronic transactions in company processes and, consequently, a need for transformation in the project portfolio of the Internal Audit area. Based on these needs, technological tools such as Data Analytics appear as technical support options for audit project managers to extract, model, improve and optimize the analysis and scope of the data. The purpose of this report was to present how the implementation of technological Data Analytics tools contribute positively to increasing the efficiency of the internal audit project portfolios. The results showed that the implementation of this type of technology during internal audit projects and processes could reduce the intensity of the work, expand its reach in the results and increase the efficiency of production in time and cover the cycles of audited processes. The use of Data Analytics has positive advantages for the AI ​​project portfolio and for the future of the area, such as better project planning, greater resource management, more comprehensive scope definition, agility in the execution of audit work, traceability and record of analyzes performed and performance increase.

The permanent conflict between the search for food for the needs of society and the use of existing resources for production is frequently noticed because of advances in communication, statistical and surveys on the subject and the numbers of malnourished people in the world. Drought represents a major long-term challenge for land and water management, locally and globally, and hinders efforts to reduce poverty and hunger. The problems that justify this conflict are diverse. Studies point to causes for inadequate agricultural practices, such as excessive irrigation and deforestation, especially in scarce water ecosystems. Significant changes in water quantity and quality are evident across the world. These impacts and the changes present an ongoing risk to coupled human and natural systems and related ecosystem services. The climate change, increased production, population growth and increased consumption are justifications for the inappropriate use of water. Factors of urbanization, such as the construction of buildings, the need for a combustion vehicle for locomotion and transportation of goods, and the growing increase in paved streets, are other reasons for the loss of water. The forecasts for the next two decades is shortage of water and food, particularly in developing economies. Future growth with food and water depends on changes in guidance on how to use water in a variety of personal and production activities. This article proposes analyze this question, amplified with identification of waters owner and create a policy for the management of water.

Modelling stated preferences is an almost mystical science and as there is no data explaining how the sustainable feature in homes would effectively encourage homebuyers to invest in sustainable housing, it is important to investigate the buyers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable housing. The study of stated preferences often requires the use of specialised software or proprietary programs, which can be difficult and/or expensive to use. This study proposes to re-purpose the ‘support.CEs’ package, a program written in the R programming language, from its agronomic roots to measure home buyer preferences for sustainable housing. These are demonstrated through a stated preference discrete choice experiment of choosing model houses with differing levels of energy savings, renewable energy generation, landscaping, soundproofing, ventilation, and price differences. A pilot study was performed using an online survey, constructed using the LMA design tool provided in the ‘support.CEs’ package. The survey was also separated into six blocks of six questions each to reduce the cognitive burden on respondents. The survey was distributed through social media channels. Preliminary results with a limited sample of 20 respondents with mixed income, age, and occupational demographics, analysed using the package’s clogit function, that performs conditional logit estimations, have shown that the results have a statistically reliable adjusted rho-squared value and that all coefficients show the expected signs. From this study, it can be concluded that the ‘support.CEs’ package can be used to model home buyer preferences and that adequate blocking allows for the measurement of a higher number of variables despite having smaller sample sizes. 

The study evaluates five technologies or technological arrangements: internet, social networks, internet of things, blockchain and artificial intelligence. These technologies are in different degrees of maturity and make up the new wave of technological innovation, the effects of which will cause severe changes in the economy, in labor relations, in employment and in society in general. The objective of this research is to carry out a basic assessment of these technologies in terms of their characteristics, implications and impacts on human and social relations, expanding the analysis to understand the ethical issues and human values involved, with an emphasis on the Brazilian reality. The method used is an exploratory, multidisciplinary research, which uses as references, among others, articles from the social sciences and philosophy, the basis for ethics. The first topic discusses the ethical helplessness in which we live today, followed by the analysis of the contexts of technologies and the moral dilemmas involved. The final topic presents the assessment of human values and virtues present in the interaction with the technologies analyzed.  

Attempts to preserve the bond with customers and to create means to increase firms captured value is a persistent management concern and subject of extensive academic research. From the service-dominant logic perspective, no value is created until the beneficiary of the service, often the customer, uses the products or services of a firm in its particular context. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show that there is a direct relationship between member usage and customer retention in continually delivered services. Data were extracted in the context of physical fitness business. The proposed model included price and membership length to evaluate membership renewal. Using logistic regression and unidirectional ANOVA, the results show that frequency of use was the most relevant variable related to customer retention. Surprisingly, price and membership length showed no impact on retention. We discuss these findings in the perspective of value creation.  

The research aims at developing a fundamental technique for modelling balanced criteria system necessary to create encapsulations, within unified network protocols, to monitor every existing change in the business process or create their simulations (inheritance) and polymorphism in business process management. The research topicality is related to the description of modern transformations concerning the modelling of business processes associated with the data deepening with the need to adapt them to object-oriented programming in order to automate management. Therefore, there is an ongoing introduction and use of complex formats of network presentation of data with a unified language, which: balance the basic criteria of each “workflow” (based on systemic improvement of methods and tools for modelling workflows, their efficient and fast processing); maximize their benefits for the implementation of optimization solutions. In the process of designing the technique we used the methods of network modelling, network theory, which are aimed at solving problems of balancing the criteria of business process management. The process of network modelling with a unified language is implemented in the research, which is focused on the production of balance in the systems of business process management criteria. Basic attention is paid to the transition from analytical search of balance according to the workflow criteria to a graphic one. The proposed technique of modelling balanced criteria system for business process management is focused on large data volumes, so its basic processes were implemented using cloud computing service — math.semestr. The obtained results allow to form systems of balanced criteria, which are easily perceived in business process management and are effective in the conditions of continuous growth and distribution of information on numerous nodes of workflows. The proposed approach to modelling the system of balanced criteria of business process management is promising in terms of automation of business process management. 

This study aims to find the influence of corporate governance on firm performance for the listed non-financial firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for the period 2005-15.  The article has measured corporate governance by the large boards with more independent directors, independence of audit committee, ownership concentration, non-existence ofCEOduality, and presence of foreign and institutional investors. To address this endogenous nature of institutional ownership and performance in this study we have used instrumental variables (IV) techniques using a two-stage least square (2SLS) by instrumentalizing institutional ownership with firm size and firm age. The study found that firms with large and independent boards outperform their counterparts. Similarly, the study found that firms having the joint position ofCEOand chairperson performs lower than counterparts. In Pakistan firms with foreign and institutional owners better than others. We found that firms with concentrated owners have a lower level of agency problem and ultimately perform well. Furthermore, we found that firms with a lower level of agency problem type II (measured via ownership concentration contestability) perform better in Pakistan. 

This study aims to validate the personal values that push up entrepreneurs to idealize startups in Brazil. The research respondents are incubated at SEBRAE’s centers, a Brazilian support service for micro and small companies, in Alto do Tietê region, São Paulo, Brazil. The empirical quantitative research used the PQV values scale, the Portrait Questionnaire Value, which evaluates individual values based on Schwartz's model of human values. Continuing the studies of this author, this research is made considering ten types of personal values and four areas that present the following indicators: 1. Conservation (conformity, tradition and security); 2. Openness to change (self-direction, stimulation and hedonism); 3. Self-enhancement (achievement and power); 4. Self-transcendence (benevolence and universalism or philanthropy). The scale contains 40 statements and describes people with different aims, interests and aspirations. A multidimensional scale (MDS), with the aid of R software, analyzed the results in order to position the values dimensions. The hypothesis that the predominant latent values are from the openness to change area was confirmed. Thus, the conclusion is that personal values related to openness to change, such as: self-determination, stimulation and hedonism or pleasure, are latent values in the entrepreneurs interviewed. These values are related to freedom, creativity, audacity and pleasure in their projects. 

Sustainable urban mobility adds a new dimension to the circulation of goods and people in the city: sustainability. The increasing number of individual motor vehicles is an accurate urban mobility diagnostic, by highlighting strengths and weaknesses, to guide public policies aimed at improving the quality of urban life. In this paper, the Sustainable Urban Mobility Index has been discussed and then applied to evaluate the sustainable urban mobility in Campinas (SP, Brazil). For the period 2010-2014, the index shows a persistent insufficiency in the sustainable urban mobility of this city, even if there was a slight improvement in the period. This is due to the environmental dimension, considering the increasing fuel consumption. It is therefore necessary to look for possible solutions involving primarily collective transportation and non-motorized one, especially for short distance.

Apart from the ever- increasing population of most tropical urban cities, high ambient temperature, deteriorated comfort conditions, highly polluted environments are but a few of the problems these cities are confronted with. In the long run, increase energy demands both for production and the provision of comfortable spaces becomes necessary even though it’s a very scarce resource. It is widely known that Urban heat island (UHI) can significantly affect building’s thermal performance and as such, this study was conducted to find out how green roof which is a mitigating factor can reduce the thermal discomfort in indoor spaces. By means of dynamic simulation in EnergyPlus software, a numerical comparative analysis between eight scenarios was done in a tropical climate of Ghana, taking into account climatological, thermal, and hydrological variables. Two factors: Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Soil depth were the main determinants of the comparative analysis.  From the results, 5 out of the 8 scenarios was seen to all have performed better leading to a 1.5°C temperature reduction. Out of the 5, LAI5/70-150mm and LAI2/500mm suggest that at every point, there could be a reduction in indoor temperature if either LAI is larger or substrate depth is deep. A larger LAI and a deeper depth could also produce a favorable results (LAI5/500mm) though after a certain threshold, their effect weakens. Based on the findings, it is highly recommended that green roofs becomes part of the solution towards the fight against indoor thermal discomfort and not mechanical ventilation which could have a dire consequence on an already scare resource which is energy.