Value of formalisation for women entrepreneurs in developing contexts: a review and research agenda

Formalisation is constantly being proposed as of great benefit to business expansion and success. This claim however has not been previously tested through a review of the empirical evidence, especially in relation to the large number of women in the developing world that operate in the informal economy. Therefore, our aim in this review is to systematise the current empirical evidence on gender, the informal economy and formalisation using a narrative synthesis of 76 papers. The papers were analysed along three main analytical themes – identity, institutions and, constraints and preferences, highlighting their conceptualisation in studies of different academic disciplines – economics, sociology, entrepreneurship and development. The review calls for more accurate accounts of formalisation decisions by widening the lens through which formalisations decisions are conceptualised. These should take account of the rich contextual and temporal dimensions central to these decisions, and recognise that gender alone is not a sufficient factor in explaining women’s choices in the informal economy. The review also highlights limitations in relation to the limited conceptual and empirical evidence on which development priorities such as formalisation are set. We propose a research agenda that centres on the need for conceptual frameworks that are more sensitive towards the multi-dimensional contexts of women’s choices

LIBRARIANS PERCEPTION OF BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE POLICIES: BENEFITS FOR UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is an initiative that permits library staff to use a personally owned device to perform official tasks and access electronic library information. The most frequently used personally owned devices are mobile phones, tablets, iPad and laptops. The practice of encouraging personally owned computing devices within professional organizations is becoming more and more acceptable, as this practice enables the organisation to transfer the investment costs of desktop hardware into their employees (Pillay, 2013). The university libraries are faced with difficult economic times and university budget cuts (Tenopir & Kaufman, 2010). Hence, BYOD encourages library staff to use their personal devices to carry out official tasks, this will reduce the cost of hardware purchase and maintenance. Despite the fact that university libraries are faced with budget cuts and BYOD has been reported in many organisations as one of the ways to reduce the cost of hardware purchase. It has been observed that university libraries in Nigeria have not yet fully adopt BYOD policies. It is on this background that this study investigates librarians perception of BYOD policies; identify perceived benefits and shortcomings of BYOD to University libraries in Nigeria. The specific objectives of this study are to find out the knowledge of BYOD among librarians, establish the availability of BYOD policies and perceived benefit of BYOD to the university libraries in Nigeria. A descriptive survey research design will be adopted for this study and a self-structured questionnaire will be used as the major instrument for data collection. The questionnaire will be distributed to the respondents during the Annual Nigerian Library Association Conference that will be held in July 2018 in Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria. The choice of administrating the questionnaire at this venue is due to the fact that this conference draws many participants from all the libraries in Nigeria. The target population of this study comprises all 152 and a simple random sampling technique will be used for sample size. The data collected for this study will be subjected to inferential and descriptive statistical analysis using percentage, frequency count, standard deviations and means. The data will be analyzed using SPSS version 22.Covenant Universit

Capital Flight and the Economic Growth: Evidence From Nigeria

This research examined the impact of capital flight and its determinants on the Nigerian economy using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to analyze data source from the period of 1981 to 2015. The variables included current account balance, capital flight, foreign direct investments, foreign reserve, inflation rate, external debt, and the real gross domestic product. It was to examine the existence of a long run relationship among the variables studied. The result indicates that capital flight has a negative impact on the economic growth of Nigeria. Therefore, there is a need for government to implement policies that will promote domestic investment and discourage capital flight from Nigeria

STRATEGIES FOR THE PRESERVATION OF ELECTRONIC RECORDS IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY STAFF IN NIGERIA

This study attempts an empirical investigation of strategies for the preservation of electronic records in university libraries in Nigeria. The main objective of this study is to ascertain the strategies used by the University libraries in Nigeria to preserve electronic records. The study employed descriptive research design. The population comprises one hundred and sixty nine (169) librarians from university libraries in Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used and the instrument for data collection is semistructured closed and open-ended questionnaire. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, charts with simple percentages. Statistical Package for Social Science version 22 are used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that (= 1.63±SD= 0.660) majority of university libraries in Nigeria do not have in place preservation strategies for electronic information records. 94.1% of librarians do not possess requites skills for preserving electronic information records. Lack of manpower and other infrastructure are identified as the major inhibiting factors (= 3.90±SD= 0.418). The study also found out that there is a significant relationship inhibiting factors of preservation and preservation strategies adopted by university library staff in Nigeria (r=-0.305, N= 169 and P< 0.01)

Entrepreneurship education as human capital: implications for youth self-employment and conflict mitigation in sub-Saharan Africa

Previous research has focused on stable developed economies to predict that human capital and entrepreneurship education (EE) provision at the higher education (HE) level will positively affect entrepreneurial success. This article draws on the outcome of recent EE projects in two HE institutions in a conflict-torn northern Nigeria as a proxy to advocate the introduction of entrepreneurship as a compulsory component into the secondary school curriculum in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using semi-structured interview data, it is found that the provision of EE at secondary education level could help to facilitate human capital development and assist efforts to curb youth unemployment. Specifically, the study suggests that EE comprises both generic and specific human capital that increases an individual’s ability to identify and exploit opportunities, particularly for young people, and in doing so helps to reduce their vulnerability to poverty and involvement in armed conflict. Suggestions for future research and policy considerations are provided

Bringing the Street Back In:Considering Strategy, Contingency and Relative Good Fortune in Street Children’s Access to Paid Work in Accra

A sociology of street children has emerged defined by its rejection of the dominant narratives of child welfare organisations that identify the street as the root cause of children’s immiseration and improper socialisation. In its place, sociological analysis has undermined the value of conceptualising street children as a coherent group on the street and in a parallel move has looked to conceptually reposition street children away from assumptions of passivity and neglect, towards a foundational insistence that the starting place for analysis is the positioning of street children as active and strategic social agents. It is the adequacy of this latter concern that is the focus of this article. By reintroducing the location of children within the social relations of the informal street economy, this article draws upon extensive and long-term qualitative research examining the lives of street children in Accra, Ghana. The argument here is that sociological notions of strategic action and efficacious agency seem ill-suited to accounting for the dilemmas and difficulties that street children’s quests for paid work inevitably involve. Rather, it is relative good fortune within the radical uncertainty of the social relations of the informal street economy that seems much more appropriate to accounting for how these children are integrated into wor

Reintegration of child soldiers in Burundi: A tracer study

Background Substantial attention and resources are aimed at the reintegration of child soldiers, yet rigorous evaluations are rare. Methods This tracer study was conducted among former child soldiers (N=452) and never-recruited peers (N=191) who participated in an economic support program in Burundi. Socio-economic outcome indicators were measured retrospectively for the period before receiving support (T1; 2005–06); immediately afterwards (T2; 2006–07); and at present (T3; 2010). Participants also rated present functional impairment and mental health indicators. Results Participants reported improvement on all indicators, especially economic opportunity and social integration. At present no difference existed between both groups on any of the outcome indicators. Socio-economic functioning was negatively related with depression- and, health complaints and positively with intervention satisfaction. Conclusion The present study demonstrates promising reintegration trajectories of former child soldiers after participating in a support program

Just compensation? The price of death and injury after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh was the most deadly disaster in garment manufacturing history, with at least 1,134 people killed and hundreds injured. In 2015, injured workers and the families of those killed received compensation from global apparel brands through a $30 million voluntary initiative known as the Rana Plaza Arrangement. Overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Rana Plaza Arrangement awarded payments to survivors using a pricing formula developed by a diverse team of ‘stakeholders’ that included labour groups, multinational apparel companies, representatives of the Bangladesh government and local employers, and ILO actuaries. This article draws from anthropological scholarship on the ‘just price’ to explore how a formula for pricing death and injury became both the means and form of a fragile political settlement in the wake of a shocking and widely publicised industrial disaster. By unpacking the complicated ‘ethics of a formula’ (Ballestero 2015), I demonstrate how the project of creating a just price involves not two sets of values (ethical and financial) but rather multiple, competing values. This article argues for recognition of the persistence and power of these competing values, showing how they variously strengthen and undermine the claim that justice was served by the Rana Plaza Arrangement. This analysis reveals the deficiencies of counterposing ‘morality’ and ‘economy’ in the study of price by reflecting upon all elements of price as situated within political economy and history

Building democracy from below : lessons from Western Uganda

How to achieve democratisation in the neopatrimonial and agrarian environments that predominate in sub-Saharan Africa continues to present a challenge for both development theory and practice. Drawing on intensive fieldwork in Western Uganda, this paper argues that Charles Tilly’s ‘democratisation as process’ provides us with the framework required to explain the ways in which particular kinds of association can advance democratisation from below. Moving beyond the current focus on how elite-bargaining and certain associational forms may contribute to liberal forms of democracy, this approach helps identify the intermediate mechanisms involved in building democracy from below, including the significance of challenging categorical inequalities, notably through the role of producer groups, and of building trust networks, cross-class alliances and synergistic relations between civil and political society. The evidence and mode of analysis deployed here help suggest alternative routes for supporting local efforts to build democracy from below in sub-Saharan Africa

Illegal Fishing and Fisheries Crime as a Transnational Organized Crime in Indonesia

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is increasingly drawing international attention and coastal states strengthen their efforts to address it as a matter of priority due to its severe implications for food, economic, environmental and social security. As the largest archipelagic country in the world, this is especially problematic for Indonesia. In this already complex geographical and security environment, the authors test the hypothesis that IUU fishing and fisheries crime(s) classify as transnational organized criminal activities. The article argues that IUU fishing is much more than simply a fisheries management issue, since it goes hand in hand with fisheries crime. As a result, although the two concepts are quite distinct, they are so closely interlinked and interrelated throughout the entire value chain of marine fisheries, that they can only be managed effectively collectively by understanding them both within the framework of transnational organized crime. To make this argument, the research utilizes qualitative and quantitative data collected from approximately two thousand trafficked fishers, rescued in 2015 from slavery conditions while stranded in two remote Indonesian locations: Benjina on Aru island and on Ambon island. The article’s findings also unveil new trends relating to the inner workings of the illegal fishing industry, in four different, yet interlinked categories: recruitment patterns and target groups; document forgery; forced labor and abuse; and fisheries violations. The paper concludes by confirming the hypothesis and highlights that IUU fishing provides the ideal (illegal) environment for fisheries crimes and other forms of transnational organized crimes to flourish