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The purpose of this paper is to identify the contextual work factors in Ethiopia and to evaluate the relative influence of each of these factors on job satisfaction (JS) of employees.

The study draws on a sample of shop floor workers from the leather products manufacturing industry in Ethiopia. Data were collected using a structured survey questionnaire and focus group discussions. After testing scale reliability and validity, multiple linear regression was used for the analysis.

The study results suggest that the JS is mainly explained by extrinsic factors. Pay is found to influence overall job satisfaction (OJS) at least four times of other work factors. Training opportunity and ethnic diversity showed unexpected negative relationship with OJS.

Given the importance of understanding JS in labor-intensive industries, and paucity of research on the topic in Ethiopia, the study provides practical insights and groundwork that can guide practitioners to understand the drivers of JS in the region. Moreover, the study adds to the empirical literature that may yield important insights on organizational behavior for under-researched emerging economies, particularly for the eastern part of Africa, where nations share similar cross-cultural norms, economic and ethnic settings.

Technological outsourcing requires possessing the technological capability level by enterprises taking the outsourced activity and further mandates build-up capabilities. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing nations such as Ethiopia are usually equipped with low level of technological capability and could benefit from government-supported or government-initiated outsourcing networks. The current study aims to preliminarily assess performance of outsourcing initiative taken by the Hibret Manufacturing and Machine Building Industry, a subsidiary of a national corporation, in developing technological capability of SMEs in Ethiopia.

The study used a qualitative research approach through interviews with the parent company officials and owners of SMEs and site visit to these SMEs. Findings are organized in a way to draw lessons to be learned from technological outsourcing examined.

Technological learning, acquisition of new technologies, market access and process innovation are few capabilities achieved by the involved SMEs. To facilitate and harness these opportunities and further assist in policy ratification, a conceptual framework has been presented and elaborated.

Further investigation into outsourcing procedure and biases are expected to shed further light onto the outsourcing initiative by the parent company. This study drew results from investigation of the SMEs involved. Additional investigation of other SMEs is expected to reveal additional insights.

There is a dearth of literature focusing on exploration of technological outsourcing in low-income developing countries, such as Ethiopia, to build SMEs’ technological capabilities. This research presents insightful contribution to strategic outsourcing to build local technological capability in developing economies.

Quality awards, commonly, have basic criteria and sub-criteria to evaluate applicants based on the quality management principles and philosophies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the method of selecting award winners and its consequences.

Award winners’ and non-award winners’ performances of the Ethiopian Quality Award are the study groups. The criteria and sub-criteria evaluation results of the award were collected and analysed by the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System.

The research assumed that award winners’ performances are exceptionally outstanding. However, the result does not justify the assumption. Hence, the drawback of aggregating multivariate performance measures in a quality award is proven. Mahalanobis distance is proposed as alternative approach to evaluate and select organizations.

The outcome of this research will help award givers, evaluators and participants to understand the real difficulty to select very few organizations among applicants. Furthermore, it helps to consider the possible error when aggregating individual performance.

Aggregating performances is a common practice in quality awards evaluation process but this paper proved its drawback.