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SMEs especially those in developing countries face a number of challenges that affect their performance and survival in the long run. One of the challenges that has not been widely explored is that of SME supply chain performance. This study attempts to examine the relationship between collaborative relationships and SME supply chain performance in Uganda. SME supply chain performance is an important area because SMEs account for a large percentage of the private sector. Our study established that collaborative relationships explained 29.5 per cent of the variation in SME supply chain performance. Information sharing and incentive alignment were found to be significant predictors of SME supply chain performance while decision synchronization was not a signification predictor. These findings are important and raise implications for theory and managers of SMEs in Uganda.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the provision of formal land and building rights provides incentives to poor households to invest in their property in urban Ethiopia.

To test the hypothesis a natural quasi-experimental design was employed. Data were collected from a random sample of 210 households in a land formalization project and 190 households in a control group in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To control for selection bias propensity score matching was used to estimate group differences.

The beneficiary group reported a higher investment level than did the control group. Households in the beneficiary group are statistically more likely to invest in new structures and housing maintenance, yet these effects are modest.

Governments, donors, and land administration officials may use these findings to address contextual issues that need deliberate interventions to make formalization projects achieve its goals.

Property rights research is preoccupied with changes in land rights and its response to investment in agricultural sector. The paper contributes to the limited literature dealing with property rights literature on urban setting. Moreover, empirical research has been hampered by the problem of causality and endogeneity while the study is designed in such a way to respond to the selection problem utilizing a natural experiment.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the cognitive and motivational consequences of a business failure, and their relation with subsequent start up success. The paper hypothesizes that if previous business failure was attributed to an internal and stable cause, subsequent business would be less successful compared to where an entrepreneur attributed business failure to an internal and unstable cause.

The authors reviewed the literature on attribution theory in an achievement context and derived a hypothesis about the relation between causal thinking and subsequent business success. A survey amongst entrepreneurs in Uganda was carried out to yield insights on how attributions to past performance influence subsequent business performance.

Entrepreneurs who attributed previous business failure to an internal, stable cause were found to be less successful in subsequent business start up. When repeat entrepreneurs attribute previous shut down to a lack of ability, they are less successful in a subsequent business start up. However, attributing the failure to a lack of effort, does not affect subsequent business success.

The study reaffirms the importance of attributional thinking in entrepreneurship and provides empirical evidence on the relationship between the way entrepreneurs think about their previous performance and subsequent performance. Attributional thinking influences subsequent business actions and outcomes, which offers important practical applications. For instance training to change attributions of entrepreneurs may be used to influence their eventual performance.

Whereas social cohesion has been widely studied and researched by sociologist and psychologists, its application to public procurement is sparse. This study explores the connection between social cohesion, groupthink, ethical attitudes and ethical behavior of procurement officers. The study is based on a survey of 405 public procurement officers in central government. A cross-sectional survey design was used and a response rate of 58.5% attained. Self report items were used to study all the constructs. All the hypothesized relationships were found to be significant. Social cohesion, groupthink, and ethical attitudes were all significant predictors of ethical behavior, accounting for 56% of the variance. The strength of this prediction suggests the need for concerted policy intervention for dealing with unethical conduct and behavior of the procurement professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework of achieving supplier delivery performance based on contract governance mechanisms, justice perceptions and ethical behavior using cross sectional survey data from public procuring and disposing entities (PDEs) in Uganda. Public procurement contract governance covers the design, development, implementation and enforcement of contracts. It serves to align interests of the contracting parties, reduce opportunistic behavior, lower transaction costs, promote justice perceptions, improve ethical behavior and achieve value for money procurement. Poorly managed procurement contracts result in conflicts, yet in many developing countries only rich suppliers can afford to resolve disputes through courts. For other suppliers, justice is out of reach. While it has been assumed that contracts result in good performance, little research has been carried out to corroborate this assumption. In this paper we provide theoretical, empirical and policy implications of supplier delivery performance.