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The purpose of this study is to assess the role of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) as a catalyst to all things good in great economies; however, sadly, Nigeria has been unable to unlock SME development and the many benefits. The paper’s examination revolves around SMEs and entrepreneurial development, employment generation, government policies and financial aid and its availability. With the intention of establishing the relevance of government role in creating vibrant economies via thriving SMEs and its ripple effect on employment generation.

The study adopts a survey design, using a questionnaire for data gathering and percentile, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) for data analysis.

The study established a significant direct relationship between entrepreneurship development and infrastructure development and employment generation. Also, there was a significant direct relationship between government policies and infrastructure development. However, surprisingly, there was an insignificant relationship between government policy and financial aid and accessibility.

The government’s role in SMEs’ survival and entrepreneurship development is invaluable. The government must live up to their bidding and create an enabling environment to promote SME and entrepreneurship growth. Only this will transform the economy and minimize unemployment to its barest minimum.

The study’s research model is an interesting contribution to the body of work in SME and entrepreneurship development. The study is also an original attempt at having a good representation of the South-Western part of Nigeria, as research in high impact journals is usually domiciled in one state.

This paper examines the port of Mombasa’s attempted implementation of computer-based terminal operating systems (TOS); the challenges faced and the outcomes. In addition to enhancing its operations efficiency, a key motivation for the technology was to facilitate better integration and connectivity to the Belt and Road as a key gateway along the key route. It utilised a qualitative single-case methodology, involving a combination of semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations and content analysis of relevant policy documents and reports provided by the port. The paper finds that the attempt to adopt and implement TOS at the port mostly failed as a result of a complex combination of technological, organisational and environmental factors. Most importantly, the wider business environment was ill equipped with the necessary information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to support effective implementation. There was also a general lack of appropriately skilled workers to support and drive the same.

We explored whether employees in smaller, younger firms would be more ethically compromised, and whether employee identification moderates this relationship.We collected survey data from 154 working professionals enrolled in an MBA program in the southeastern United States. We found that employees of smaller, younger firms selected more compromised ethical choices than employees of larger, older firms. Contrary to our expectations, employee identification had no effect in smaller, younger, firms, yet in larger, older firms, identification actually reduced ethical compliance, suggesting that there is not a simple relationship between identification and ethical compliance.

The study investigated the strategic contribution of COVID-19 preventive measures in building corporate reputation in the hospitality industry when mediated with ethical branding.

The hypothesized model was developed and tested using a cross-sectional research design among 404 customers of hospitality organizations (i.e. hotels and restaurants). The collected data were analyzed quantitatively using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that COVID-19 preventive measures are important drivers in building or rebuilding corporate reputation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also showed that ethical branding acts as a mediator between COVID-19 preventive measures and corporate reputation.

The study used a nonprobability sampling technique, i.e. convenience sampling and a cross-sectional survey research design. It is therefore necessary to be careful when generalizing the findings.

The study recommends that managers in hospitality organizations should ensure proper and effective compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures during service delivery. Among others, the study highlighted areas for further study to include an investigation using a longitudinal approach to observe behavioral changes toward COVID-19 preventive measures and their consequences on the overall corporate reputation of the hospitality industry. This recommendation is based on the fact that, currently, new cases and mortality rates have decreased considerably. As a result, customers in the hospitality industry have started to have different opinions about complying with COVID-19 preventive measures.

The study is among new endeavors to investigate drivers that can rebuild and sustain the corporate reputation of hospitality organizations during a pandemic like COVID-19.

The purpose of this study is to account for a recent non-mainstream econometric approach using microdata and how it can inform research in business administration. More specifically, the paper draws from the applied microeconometric literature stances in favor of fitting Poisson regression with robust standard errors rather than the OLS linear regression of a log-transformed dependent variable. In addition, the authors point to the appropriate Stata coding and take into account the possibility of failing to check for the existence of the estimates – convergency issues – as well as being sensitive to numerical problems.

The author details the main issues with the log-linear model, drawing from the applied econometric literature in favor of estimating multiplicative models for non-count data. Then, he provides the Stata commands and illustrates the differences in the coefficient and standard errors between both OLS and Poisson models using the health expenditure dataset from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment (RHIE).

The results indicate that the use of Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimators yield better results that the log-linear model, as well as other alternative models, such as Tobit and two-part models.

The originality of this study lies in demonstrating an alternative microeconometric technique to deal with positive skewness of dependent variables.

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence to support an emerging theory that interpersonal conflict is the primary cause of workplace stress among a self-selected sample of Irish construction managers.

Eighteen construction managers working in Ireland were recruited for this study. Using semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis as the research methodology, the causes of their workplace stress were investigated.

Participants reported that the principal cause of their workplace stress was high levels of interpersonal conflict between colleagues. The effects of this interpersonal conflict included avoidance behaviour, ill health, absences from the workplace and loss of productivity issues. Deadlines, penalty clauses, lack of appreciation, cliques, costs, communication, temporary contracts and delays were also reported stressors.

A limitation of the study is the small sample of 18 construction managers and the limited geographical area.

The social implications of this study could be to clearly identify that interpersonal conflict may be under reported in the construction industry, and there is a possibility that it is being misclassified as other workplace behaviours such as bullying, harassment and workplace violence. If this is so, this could aid future researchers in addressing this challenging workplace behaviour.

The current consensus in the literature is that the three main causes of workplace stress are bullying, harassment and violence. However, the role and importance of interpersonal conflict as reported in this study, with the exception of North America and China, is not reflected in the wider health and safety research literature. In addition, interpersonal conflict and its reluctance to be reported is largely absent from construction safety research. The findings of this study may be explained if the workplace stress research community is currently misclassifying interpersonal conflict as a manifestation of bullying, harassment or violence. If this is the case, interpersonal conflict needs further research. This is to establish if this cause of construction-related workplace stress needs to be reconsidered as a standalone phenomenon in the wider family of challenging workplace behaviours.