Impact Investing and Inclusive Business Development in Africa: A research agenda

Impact investing aims to create sustainable social and environmental impacts for investee enterprises and communities as well as adequate financial returns. As an attractive emerging market investment strategy, it involves development finance institutions and philanthropic foundations partnering with mainstream private venture capital to create impact funds with the goal of catalysing inclusive market-based enterprise development in low income countries. In this paper, we present findings from a scoping study discussing the nature and operations of impact funds in African economies and the associated research opportunities on this topic. To facilitate the assessment, we reviewed the existing literature on impact investing, considering this along three interrelated perspectives, namely 1) impact investing as development finance policy for economic development, 2) impact investing as a development in socially responsible investing, and 3) impact investing as capacity-building for inclusive business development in African economies. The interplay of these perspectives shapes the constitution and operational strategies of specific impact funds and provide a conceptual context for understanding impact investing at country level. Drawing on interviews, email exchanges and roundtable discussions with representative global and country-specific (Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Kenya) stakeholders our analysis makes three contributions to the impact investing debate. First we explore a model for understanding the ways in which impact funds are being channeled into inclusive businesses in Africa and the associated catalytic effects on poverty alleviation, social and economic development. Second we identified and tested access to, a range of impact funds and associated sector-specific inclusive businesses for future case writing – hopefully ‘failures’ as well as ‘successes’. Finally, we reflect on some of the unanswered managerial and policy-related questions that require a more rigorous inquiry-led appraisal to better understand and enhance the contribution of impact funds to inclusive business development in Africa

Gender Roles in Ming Dynasty China: The Water Dragon Classic

This paper considers the relationship between spatiality, emotions and gender from the theoretical perspective of traditional Chinese thought in the early art/science of fengshui (wind and water). The discussion is based on translations of the seminal Form School fengshui text: Mi chuan shuilong jing (the Secretly Passed down Water Dragon Classic), compiled by the renowned scholar Jiang Pingjie in the late Ming dynasty (circa. 1600 CE). The discussion concludes with what light these traditional concepts might shed on present day gender roles and business in China, specifically in relation to the oversimplification of the Confucian basis of Chinese culture in the business literature.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Sharing information benefits the meat industry

Cronic health problems of livestock, seldom detected on farms, reduce the efficiency of abattoirs and returns to producers. But a major project providing information to producers from abattoirs is indicating how everyone could benefit from feedback

Control of cheesy gland in sheep

Cheesy gland is a widespread problem in Western Australian sheep flocks. Less than 1 per cent of flocks are free of this disease, and all sheep in one line of 550 cull ewes slaughtered at Katanning Abattoir were infected. A study of what affects new cheesy gland . infection found that shower dipping and keeping sheep under cover after shearing increased new infections. Farmers who shower dip sheep should consider vaccinating them against cheesy gland. Sheep should be let out into the open as soon as possible after shearing. The total cost of the disease in Australia is about $30 million annually, so it is important that efforts to increase cheesy gland control continu

Can Historical Research into Fengshui Tell Us Anything about Business in China?

The commodification of higher education has been led by business schools in Australia, and they have been accused of teaching merely technique and preaching greed in their manifesto of career and revenue generation. The study of history has been a casualty in this push for the techniques rather than the substance of business. This paper argues that even historical research into a subject as arcane as the traditional Chinese art/science of fengshui can lead to a greater understanding of the context of business in China and therefore of Chinese business practice itself.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Gender Roles in Ming Dynasty China: The Water Dragon Classic

This paper considers the relationship between spatiality, emotions and gender from the theoretical perspective of traditional Chinese thought in the early art/science of fengshui (wind and water). The discussion is based on translations of the seminal Form School fengshui text: Mi chuan shuilong jing (the Secretly Passed down Water Dragon Classic), compiled by the renowned scholar Jiang Pingjie in the late Ming dynasty (circa. 1600 CE). The discussion concludes with what light these traditional concepts might shed on present day gender roles and business in China, specifically in relation to the oversimplification of the Confucian basis of Chinese culture in the business literature.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Controlling sheep meat disorders

https://researchlibrary.agric.wa.gov.au/bulletins/1089/thumbnail.jp

Reflective journals and critical thinking

This paper considers the efficacy of using reflective learning journals to encourage critical thinking, both for English speaking background and non-English speaking background students. The paper is a preliminary study into 122 journals based on qualitative research into some 750 learning journals completed over the past seven years for the first year Faculty of Economics and Business unit of study ‘Communication and Critical Analysis’, which has both English and non-English speaking background streams. It was found that the use of learning journals very much enhanced the understanding of critical thinking in a course centred on critical analysis from the perspective of history and philosophy of science and the language used to express such analysis in English

Do bookmakers possess superior skills to bettors in predicting outcomes?

In this paper we test the hypothesis that bookmakers display superior skills to bettors in predicting the outcome of sporting events by using matched data from traditional bookmaking and person-to-person exchanges. Employing a conditional logistic regression model on horse racing data from the UK we find that, in high liquidity betting markets, betting exchange odds have more predictive value than the corresponding bookmaker odds. To control for potential spillovers between the two markets, we repeat the analysis for cases where prices diverge significantly. Once again, exchange odds yield more valuable information concerning race outcomes than the bookmaker equivalents

A critical and Integrated View of the Yeast Interactome

Global studies of protein–protein interactions are crucial to both elucidating gene function and producing an integrated view of the workings of living cells. High-throughput studies of the yeast interactome have been performed using both genetic and biochemical screens. Despite their size, the overlap between these experimental datasets is very limited. This could be due to each approach sampling only a small fraction of the total interactome. Alternatively, a large proportion of the data from these screens may represent false-positive interactions. We have used the Genome Information Management System (GIMS) to integrate interactome datasets with transcriptome and protein annotation data and have found significant evidence that the proportion of false-positive results is high. Not all high-throughput datasets are similarly contaminated, and the tandem affinity purification (TAP) approach appears to yield a high proportion of reliable interactions for which corroborating evidence is available. From our integrative analyses, we have generated a set of verified interactome data for yeast