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The study investigates the role of e-commerce adoption on Ghana’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) business performance.

A sample of 309 owner-managers of entrepreneurial SMEs was employed using LISREL to determine the nature of the underlying relationships among the study constructs.

The findings show that adopting e-commerce significantly improves SMEs' performance. The study also found that trust effectively mediates the relationship between e-commerce adoption and SME business performance. Finally, the study found that firm agility moderates the relationship between e-commerce adoption and business performance.

The study recommends SMEs in Ghana seeking to grow their businesses capitalize on e-commerce capabilities to enhance their business performances while ensuring trusting relationships, especially in the delivery of e-commerce services consistently, to improve their contribution to overall business performance.

The findings would help managers of SMEs in Ghana to deliver optimum value in their e-commerce operations to improve their business performances in an uncertain world.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of service quality (SQ), customer satisfaction (CS) and customer loyalty (CL) in Ghana’s health sector and a comparative analysis of private and public hospital SQ.

A convenient sample of 1,236 respondents was generated from both private and public hospitals. The study utilises an asymptotic distribution free estimation technique in CB-SEM using LISREL to test the relationships, while Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test was used to determine the differences in SQ performances between private and public hospitals.

The study found a significant positive relationship between SQ and CS. Also, the study found a significant positive relationship between CS and CL. Finally, SQ was found to be better in private hospitals, resulting higher CS and CL.

The study highlights the significant role SQ plays in generating CS and CL to guide healthcare provider policy decision making to improve healthcare delivery. It also serves as a guide to patients to make informed decisions regarding the choice of alternative hospitals.

The study provides a useful guide to strategy and policy formulation in the healthcare sector by exploring the potential viability of SERVQUAL-related model as a relevant tool for assessing SQ in Ghana’s health sector. The results also identified SQ gap between private and public hospitals and thus have implications on how hospitals should strategise to improve their SQ.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of brand preference on the relationship between bank advertising and customer loyalty in Ghana’s banking industry.

A total number of 600 respondents participated in the study. Convenient sampling technique was employed to select a cross-section of customers from the universal banks currently operating in Ghana. Structural equation modeling technique of PLS was used to test the nature of relationships in the research hypotheses.

The study found a significant positive relationship between advertising effectiveness and brand preference. Also, there is a significant positive relationship between advertising and customer loyalty. Again, there is a significant positive relationship between brand preference and customer loyalty. Finally, brand preference positive mediates the relationships between advertising and customer loyalty.

The study provides a useful guide to strategy and policy formulation in marketing communication by establishing the potential viability of advertising strategy in bank marketing and its potential to generate brand preference and customer loyalty.

The study has practical implication for, and relevance not only to the banking industry communication strategy but also the entire financial services industry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internet on the e-lifestyle of the youth of emerging markets (EMs) in contemporary digital world using Ghanaian youth as a case study.

Survey data were obtained from students of five leading universities in Accra, the nation’s capital, between February and June 2017. Of the 300 questionnaires administered, 276 were usable representing 92 per cent collection rate. Respondents were randomly approached and oriented on the object of the study and asked to complete the instrument voluntarily using the face-to-face approach at student events. Both the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the structural equation modelling procedure of partial least square (PLS-SEM) were used to analyse the data.

From the study, drivers of the e-lifestyle of youth in EMs were listed in order of importance: socio-importance, interest, entertainment, necessity, novelty, academic, transaction and concern needs. Surprisingly, the quest for academic information does not motivate the youth to surf the internet compared to aspiration to satisfy social, interest and entertainment-driven needs.

E-lifestyle addiction compels the youth to surf the internet via mobile phones, computers and other devices for e-lifestyle satisfaction, requiring internet service providers, marketers and academics to develop innovative e-lifestyle products to stimulate continuous internet usage of internet by the youth.

This study provides practical insight for internet service providers, web and application developers and members of the academic community to consciously develop internet-based products that direct the youth towards fulfilling e-lifestyle motivation.

The convergence of the youth on the internet will in no doubt impact social behaviour, thereby influencing lifestyles.

As very little work has been done on youth e-lifestyle in EMs, this study serves as a pioneering work in EMs using Ghanaian youth as a case study. Ironically, students of EMs spend less time on the internet doing academic concerns compared to social activities. Additionally, the importance of transaction (payments) needs as a driver of internet use among the youth has been emphasised in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that cause government construction projects failure in a developing economy.

The study used the sequential data collection approach through an in-depth semi-structured interview (16 participants) and questionnaire survey (230 participants) to solicit their perceptions from project management practitioners (PMP), contractors and client (government officials) about the factors that lead to Ghanaian Government construction projects. The relative importance index was used to determine the relative importance of the factors identified. This was followed by Spearman rank correlation coefficient and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance to measure the degree of agreement among the participants on their perceptions.

In total, 34 factors were identified as the main factors that lead into Ghanaian Government construction projects failure. The top ten most important factors that cause Ghanaian Government construction projects failure are: political interferences, delays in payment, partisan politics, bureaucracy, corruption, poor supervision, lack of commitment by project leaders, poor planning, starting more projects than the government can fund and change in government. The failure factors were grouped into four main themes and found that the most important failure factors are leadership. This is followed by management and administrative practices, resources and external forces, respectively.

This study is limited to only the public sector, and therefore the findings may not be applicable in the private sector.

Policy makers and construction PMP would be able to use the findings as a guide during the implementation of government projects in order to reduce and/or avoid government construction projects failure.

Construction projects failure in developing countries is high. Accordingly, the extant literature has been devoted to identifying the factors that lead to failure; however, they have mainly been discussed from a generic point of view or individual case studies. Researches that focus exclusively on government construction projects in developing countries are rare despite the dynamics in which these projects are implemented. This research extends the construction project management literature by focussing on government construction projects in a developing economy, where there are weak public institutional systems coupled with partisanship politics and bad cultural orientation towards government sector work inherited from a colonial rule.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Ghana’s SMEs are integral to its economic success, and they are now starting to utilize the growing internet connectivity of the country to boost economic performance and gain competitive advantage.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.