Risk Taking and Start-up Capital: Exploring Gender differences in Uganda, through an International Comparison

This study sought to explain the gender differences with respect to risk taking behaviour and startup capital in Uganda, comparing with other countries. The start-up capital of businesses run by females is ostensibly smaller than those run by males in Uganda and in any other country. A number of reasons have been forwarded to explain this variance. Some researchers have linked the size of start-up capital to the risk taking behaviour among other factors. However there is insufficient local or Ugandan empirical research into this difference, given that much of the empirical research are based on western data sets. Data for this study was from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2003. A causal research design was used to establish the relationship between risk taking attitude and start up capital. A comparative design was also employed to compare the findings of Uganda with other GEM countries, Chi-square tests, and a two way analysis of variances were used to analyse the data. There are gender differences with respect to risk taking behaviour across all countries under study. However, the gender gap is wider in other countries than Uganda. On the whole, Uganda women are less risk averse as compared to those in other countries. The start-up capital requirement of Ugandan men is more than their female counterparts. In addition, Ugandan men invested more personal start up capital when they are risk averse. Among other recommendations, policy makers should sensitise females about viability of business start ups and encourage women access to ownership of property

Contract en conflict : Strategisch Management van Inkooptransacties

Dissertation of the University of Utrecht The reality of business relations is opposed to the assumptions commonly held by legal experts on the role of contract law in society, or so Macaulay (see his classic 1963 study) would have us believe. Empirical studies Macaulay conducted in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s show that business transactions were not planned down to the last little detail or stipulated in contracts nearly as much as expected. If there were any problems or differences of opinion, contracts were rarely used to settle them. Even in the event of significant disputes, legal procedures were rarely resorted to, and only very few cases were put before a judge. As time passed though, reservations did arise as to Macaulay’s observations. In fact ‘The Transformation of American Business Disputing’ (Galanter, Macaulay, Palay and Rogers 1991), a large-scale research program headed by Macaulay himself, focused on whether the pattern he had described was still valid a few decades later. Influenced in part by the increasing volume and complexity of transactions and growing competition among firms, one might expect (see Galanter, Macaulay, Palay and Rogers 1991: 18-19) the image of business relations that entail informally settling important issues over a meal or a drink to have gradually eroded. The internationalization of economic traffic, and the growing spatial and sociocultural distance between companies accompanying it are also thought to have led to a change in the picture described by Macaulay. To an increasing extent, contracts were thought to be taken seriously in the business world, and disputes were thought to lead to legal procedures between companies. No matter how plausible this might seem in the first instance, it was not confirmed by later research in the field (see Dunworth and Rogers 1996 on the situation in the United States). The picture presented by Macaulay might still well be valid today (Macaulay 1996, see also Jettinghoff 2001: 17-18 and 55-58). This is striking in view of the unmistakably growing opportunities and stimuli for opportunism. Successful long-term cooperation between companies is no trivial matter (Raub and Tazelaar 2000: 20). A transaction partner can supply a lower quality or expend less effort than agreed upon, certainly if the other partner has no easy way of observing or monitoring it. So despite the stimuli for opportunism, and despite the lack of attention for detailed contractual planning, how is it possible that parties can nonetheless do successful business, and jointly solve whatever problems might come up without the help of contracts or third parties? In answering this general question in this book, I focus specifically on transactions between buyers and suppliers. I divide the management of these transactions into two hypothetical stages, an ex ante stage before the agreement is signed, and an ex post stage afterwards. Based on this division, I then distinguish three topics, and examine each of them separately and in conjunction with each other. The first topic is ex ante management, which is focused on preventing problems and designing damage control measures if they do occur. Regardless of all the planning input, in practice there can still be problems after an agreement is signed. The second topic is thus the performance of the supplier. I consider the extent to which there are problems in implementing the agreement. The third topic has to do with what happens after problems occur in the implementation of the agreement, and pertains to how problems are dealt with. The question on ex post management plays a central role here: How are problems dealt with, and what is done to reduce the damage?

Does technology and Innovation Management improve Market Position? Empirical Evidence from Innovating Firms in South Africa

There is a growing recognition of the central role of technology and knowledge management for market success of organizations. Little is empirically know, however, about this relationship. Drawing on the South African Innovation Survey, a unique dataset on innovative behavior of South African firms in manufacturing and services, this paper investigates the question to what extent and in which ways do technology and innovation management activities affect firms’ market position. Findings show that conducting technology strategy activities pays out. Moreover, especially a combination of internal and external technology audits seems to be beneficial for organizational performance

Property rights and owner occupied housing investment in urban Ethiopia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the provision of formal land and building rights provides incentives to poor households to invest in their property in urban Ethiopia. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypothesis a natural quasi-experimental design was employed. Data were collected from a random sample of 210 households in a land formalization project and 190 households in a control group in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To control for selection bias propensity score matching was used to estimate group differences. Findings – The beneficiary group reported a higher investment level than did the control group. Households in the beneficiary group are statistically more likely to invest in new structures and housing maintenance, yet these effects are modest. Practical implications – Governments, donors, and land administration officials may use these findings to address contextual issues that need deliberate interventions to make formalization projects achieve its goals. Originality/value – Property rights research is preoccupied with changes in land rights and its response to investment in agricultural sector. The paper contributes to the limited literature dealing with property rights literature on urban setting. Moreover, empirical research has been hampered by the problem of causality and endogeneity while the study is designed in such a way to respond to the selection problem utilizing a natural experiment

Social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country: the effect of gender on access to and requests for resources

This paper addresses gender differences in the social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country. Social networks are often an important asset for accessing resources; however, they may also be a liability in developing countries, since entrepreneurs are often expected to support their contacts. Using a recent survey among urban and rural Ugandan entrepreneurs, we focus on the financial resources that entrepreneurs can obtain from their contacts on the one hand, and requests for financial support made to the entrepreneurs from these contacts on the other hand. Our results show that there are gender differences associated with access to, and requests for, financial resources