A Tangled Web: The Perceived Influence of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Legislation on Corporate Social Investment in South Africa

Since 2004 South Africa has had in place legislation that regulates the responsibilities of business to the transformation of society, and this regulation includes an element that relates to corporate philanthropy.To date, however, very little has been documented about the influence of this legislation on corporate philanthropy. A new research report by Halima Mahomed, A Tangled Web: The Perceived Influence of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Legislation on Corporate Social Investment in South Africa, aims to partially fill this gap. The research explores the perceived influence of the legislation on issues such as the extent, flexibility and approaches to giving; highlights the limitations that arise from the structure and framework of the legislation; and interrogates some of its unintended consequences.As discussions on the feasibility of regulatory mechanisms gain traction in other places, it is hoped that this research will help to raise key issues for consideration and exploration

From export entry to de-internationalisation through entrepreneurial attributes

Purpose: This study examines export behaviour from a broad perspective considering the influence of entrepreneurial attributes on export entry, export sustainability and de-internationalisation in Romanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach: Based on theoretical underpinnings from the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm and the Institutional Economics (IE) framework, the proposed hypotheses are tested with a rich survey dataset of 319 Romanian SMEs. The data are analysed by means of a multinomial logit regression. Findings: The study reveals that exporting is not a single event and that variables commonly used to study export propensity linked to the entrepreneurial attributes have a differential influence over the export decisions. More concretely, export entry is positively impacted by the presence of management studies and an entrepreneurial team while sustainment in the international arena is strongly and positively influenced by decision-makers’ prior labour experience. De-internationalisation is explained by the entrepreneurs’ fear of business failure. The conclusions of this study point towards a holistic view of export policy-making revealing relevant implications for SMEs’ internationalisation. Originality/value: This study enriches the international business literature by simultaneously examining different export decisions, namely export initiation, sustainability and de-internationalisation, at the SMEs’ level in a Central and Eastern European (CEE) emerging market. The paper also highlights the dynamic character of entrepreneurial resources and suggests that at distinct stages in the international development of a SME, different entrepreneurial attributes may play a significant role.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Planning strategically, designing architecturally : a framework for digital library services

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks, and delivery channels of the modern library. Further, IT components do not function in isolation from one another, but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes, and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy, and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual paper provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced

The role of higher education in enhancing social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship and Higher Education (HE) seem to form closer relationships. This paper concerns with the role of HE in enhancing social entrepreneurship, as it is implemented in the context of Dorset, UK, and Avalon, Canada. By utilising the theoretical dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation, the paper develops a framework of interpretation for its empirical context. In summarising its findings, it argues that the role HE can play for social entrepreneurship in both cases is highly regarded however there are a number of hurdles that will need to be overcome

Social enterprise as a socially rational business

What is the goal of social enterprise policy? Is it the creation of a ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘more-than-profit’ business movement? In institutional policy circles, arguments are shaped by the desire to protect assets for the community, while entrepreneurial discourses favour a mixture of investment sources, surplus sharing and inclusive systems of governance. This article uses data from a critical ethnography to offer a third perspective. Human behaviour is a product of, and support system for, our socio-sexual choices. A grounded theory of social and economic capital is developed that integrates sexuality into organisation development. This constructs business organisations as complex centres of community-building replete with economic and social goals. By viewing corporate governance from this perspective social enterprise is reconceived as a business movement guided by social rationality with the long-term goal of distributing social and economic capital across stakeholder groups to satisfy individual and collective needs.</p

A legacy handbook for enterprise

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of enterprise activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area

Challenging the Enterprises' Business Model: helping entrepreneurs to understand and interpret opportunities and threats

Christopher Brown, Diane Morrad, ‘Challenging the Enterprises' Business Model: helping entrepreneurs to understand and interpret opportunities and threats’, paper presented at the 15th Annual Edineb Conference, Malaga, Spain, 15-18 June, 2008.Enterprises are presented with ever increasing challenges regarding marketplace uncertainty and ambiguity. They face competitive pressures from local and international sources, their competitors are constantly tweaking products and services to jostle ahead of them, and their customers expect responsiveness and innovativeness to their expressed and latent needs. The enterprises’ very success, and survival, depends on their ability to change their business, market and product strategies to fit these challenges. Underlying these business, market and product strategies is the enterprises’ business model. Simply, business models are an organisation’s understanding and interpretation of how they currently, and in the future, achieve their revenue and profit streams. These business models, used by the senior management and employees, are often based on outdated perspectives of both how the marketplace works and the changing business and customer values expected by their demanding stakeholders. In SMEs the creation, development and creative deconstruction of business models is most often driven by the founding entrepreneur, or subsequent corporate entrepreneurs brought in to provide professional management of these rapidly growing businesses. Interestingly, more recent research has strongly linked entrepreneurs’ mindset, or mental models (Zahra, Korri et al. 2005), associated with the challenges to the enterprise, with their drivers for innovation and changes in their enterprises’ business models. Certainly research has identified the potential value changes, business and customer, that can often facilitate the construction and deconstruction of business value-based innovations (Munive-Hernandez, Dewhurst et al. 2004), and then reflecting these in their overall business processes. This paper discusses the research study, undertaken by the authors, to explore the link between entrepreneurs’ understanding and interpretation of business opportunities and threats, and the potential influence in challenging their mindset business model. The paper begins by discussing the two broad approaches to modelling enterprise strategies and the resulting integrated business models: innovation and process orientations.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio