Assessing the success and evaluating the benefits of government-sponsored regional internet-trading platforms for small and medium enterprises: A Western Australian perspective

The Internet has been viewed as an opportunity for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to efficiently compete in the global arena with their larger counterparts by overcoming distance and size. However, research has shown that actual uptake of Internet e-commerce by SMEs has been lagging behind that of larger companies. Fearing a growing digital divide between large companies and SMEs, some governments have taken specific measures to encourage SME participation in ecommerce. One of the more direct government initiatives to hasten the progression of SMEs on the e-commerce adoption curve is the creation, sponsorship and management of regional Internet trading platforms for these enterprises. Such a move is predicated on the belief that these platforms will offer SMEs a low-cost introduction to participation in Internet trading platforms without the need for significant technology investments, allowing them to reap benefits like lower costs, improved customer service and new levels of innovation through knowledge-sharing

Evaluating the role of business incubators in South Africa.

Master of Arts in Public Policy. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College 2015.The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of business incubators and business incubation programmes in South Africa. Worldwide, business incubation programmes are aimed at promoting economic development by supporting emerging entrepreneurs or start-up companies by cushioning them in their nascent phase of business development. South Africa only adopted business incubation as a strategy for promoting entrepreneurship and supporting SMMEs about two decades ago. This route was taken in order to build an inclusive economy whilst addressing a number of the country’s multifaceted challenges; therefore business incubation as a strategy had to yield rapid results. The study’s conceptual framework centred around how business incubators, through organisation and providing certain contingencies, cushioned SMMEs; and on how, through agglomeration, SMMEs were able to exploit the economies of scale and networking effects, as well as how they benefited from the positive externalities. The research methodologies adopted in this study comprise a multi-pronged approach made up of both secondary and primary research methods. The primary research methods include surveys, questionnaires and interviews with business incubation programmes based in KwaZulu-Natal. The study used small- micro- and medium-sized enterprises (SMMEs) or entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis, six were randomly selected from each of the fifteen business incubators in the province to take part in the survey questionnaire. The main findings of the study were firstly that South African entrepreneurs were faced with quite a number of challenges and these challenges were acting as a deterrence for a lot of people that wanted to consider entrepreneurship as a career path. Secondly, business incubators in South Africa were failing to fill in the gaps by mitigating against the challenges entrepreneurs faced. At best a number of these business incubators served duplicate roles as office parks with little value-added services. This study discovered that South Africa still needs to do a lot of groundwork if wanted to promote entrepreneurship and stimulate economic growth, but in the main, it was seemingly in the right direction policy-wise

The national telephone plan - numbering [1959]

This article was originally published in the Telecommunication Journal of Australia Volume 12 No 1, 1959. It describes one of the basic elements in the design of the system for the long-term development of the Australian telephone service the national numbering plan

Corporate Governance Implications of Foreign Stock Exchange Listing (or Cross-listing) for China’s Corporations

The first company from the People’s Republic of China listed outside Mainland China was an H-share enterprise listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 15, 1993. In the twenty years since then, the rapid development of the Mainland’s economy has created a climate in which China’s companies can internationalise, and some of China’s heavyweight State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) even tried to accelerate their overseas investment by means of transnational acquisitions and mergers. This thesis undertakes a detailed theoretical and empirical study exploring the corporate governance practices of Chinese companies that have listed on foreign stock exchanges; of particular interest has been the influence that foreign listing has exerted on the corporate governance practices of these Chinese companies. Several experts and scholars have provided valuable criticisms and remarks as part of the fieldwork for this thesis. A number of major propositions concerning the corporate governance of overseas listed Chinese companies are discussed and fieldwork data has been collected to test these propositions