Collected Papers: Entrepreneurship

These collected papers serve as a student exercise in critical thinking. The aim is to explore and discover knowledge relating to differing aspects of entrepreneurship. Critical thinking skills, academic writing and the ability to build arguments are all skills we consider an essential part of our student progression. Our students understand critical thinking as an intellectually disciplined, cognitive process which involves the reflective, active analysis and evaluation of knowledge and arguments in order to develop their own defensible knowledge and arguments. Reading and writing are enquiries that require an action rather than just repeating what has been previously stated or done, it is an act of discovery. It is for this reason we are not offering definitions of entrepreneurship or explanations of any aspects of the challenges in entrepreneurship education and practice, we will leave this to our students. Whether our approach to entrepreneurship education on this particular module serves to empower and emancipate or to just challenge and explore, might be open for debate. It can be argued that entrepreneurship education should be a way of action rather than a specific subject area . We don’t disagree, but in this instance embrace the subject area as a means to building knowledge, skills and exploring the subject area with our students

Shaping Innovativeness and Creativity with Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between e-HRM and a firm’s ability to becomeinnovative and creative, and then develop a conceptual framework. The proposed framework aims to add to theunderstanding of the way e-HRM creates competitive advantages and contributes to sustainable business performance.Through the exploration of relevant literature a conceptual model underpinned by a combination of the dynamiccapabilities, organisational learning and knowledge management theories is proposed. This paper proposes an answer tohow e-HRM can influence business performance. The authors suggest that e-HRM can be linked to organisationalinnovativeness and creativity through its potential to influence employee innovativeness and employee creativity, whichmay in turn lead to superior business performance. The paper may help the HR function to better understand anotherway e-HRM can be used to contribute to sustainable business performance. This paper contributes to the existingknowledge by shedding some light on the processes through which e-HRM can influence sustainable businessperformance. The proposed framework is an original complete model that could support future research

Solid Waste Management: A Critique of Nigeria’s Waste Management Policy

Solid waste management is the application of techniques that will ensure the orderly execution of the functions of collection, transfer, processing, treatment and disposal of solid waste. The ever increasing global concern on environmental health demands that wastes be properly managed and disposed of in the most friendly and acceptable way. This is to minimise, and were possible, eliminate its potential harm to humans, plants, animals and natural resources. Solid waste has become an important issue in Nigerian. Piles of wastes are often found by roads, rivers and many other open spaces in the cities, and this is causing significant health and environmental problems. The discovery of a major toxic waste dumped by a foreign company at Koko town near Warri in Delta State, Nigeria in 1987 led to the establishment of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) by Decree No. 58 of 1988. FEPA regulates the collection, treatment and disposal of solid and hazardous waste from municipal and industrial sources, and makes Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) mandatory for any major development project likely to have adverse impact on the environment. FEPA Act has been repealed and replaced with National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency. This study presents a critique of the current solid waste management practices, policies and laws in Nigeria. Primary and secondary data were gathered by sending semi-structured questionnaire to key informant persons and dump site visit. Content analysis was utilized especially for the secondary data since bulk of the data come from secondary material. It is evident that solid waste management in Nigeria is plagued with inefficient collection methods, insufficient coverage of the collection system, improper disposal, lack of institutional arrangement, insufficient financial resources, absence of bylaws and standards, inappropriate technology, etc. While the policies and laws are fragmented and are formulated not on nationally generated baseline data, participation of the people in the policy formulation and implementation is lacking, enforcement and monitoring of laws and policies is inadequate. It is therefore necessary that the legal (policies and laws), institutional, political, socio-cultural, financial, economic and technical aspects of solid waste management be given optimum attention with all seriousness.Suresh S. Surendra

A Rhetoric on the Quest for Effective Leadership in Organisations

This conceptual paper is an evaluation of the leadership agenda in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiary companies, and presents a platform for developing a capacity for change through effective leadership. This is based on the notion that in today’s business environment, there is an increasing demand for effective leaders who understand the complex nature of businesses/organisations and their continuous changing environment as suggested by Tseng (2010). The changing business environment requires leaders who are intellectual, sensitive, and have the ability to empathise with others. D’Amato et al. (2010) suggest that effective leaders are those who can motivate their followers to strive for excellence as depicted in the 21st century management goals. The paper critically examines the leadership styles and management practices in the NNPC and the study makes several important contributions to the field of leadership and management, especially in the NNPC and its subsidiary companies. The paper begins with an introductory background on leadership styles at the NNPC. It integrates relative concepts of organisational learning and leadership from an empirical perspective. This study gives a thematic analysis of basic leadership theories which empirically proves that adopting Transformational and Transactional leadership theories in the organisation may establish a strong relationship between leaders/managers and followers. Through this research, organisations within the public sector in Nigeria can improve their learning, accelerating business growth and innovation

A Rhetoric on the Quest for Effective Leadership in Organisations

This conceptual paper is an evaluation of the leadership agenda in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiary companies, and presents a platform for developing a capacity for change through effective leadership. This is based on the notion that in today’s business environment, there is an increasing demand for effective leaders who understand the complex nature of businesses/organisations and their continuous changing environment as suggested by Tseng (2010). The changing business environment requires leaders who are intellectual, sensitive, and have the ability to empathise with others. D’Amato et al. (2010) suggest that effective leaders are those who can motivate their followers to strive for excellence as depicted in the 21st century management goals. The paper critically examines the leadership styles and management practices in the NNPC and the study makes several important contributions to the field of leadership and management, especially in the NNPC and its subsidiary companies. The paper begins with an introductory background on leadership styles at the NNPC. It integrates relative concepts of organisational learning and leadership from an empirical perspective. This study gives a thematic analysis of basic leadership theories which empirically proves that adopting Transformational and Transactional leadership theories in the organisation may establish a strong relationship between leaders/managers and followers. Through this research, organisations within the public sector in Nigeria can improve their learning, accelerating business growth and innovation