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Article
Publication date: 13 November 2018

Nnamdi O. Madichie, Nosiphiwe Mpiti and Patient Rambe

This study aims to examine the influence of funding on the technology acquisition by small businesses in a metropolitan municipality, Mangaung, which governs Bloemfontein and…

804

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the influence of funding on the technology acquisition by small businesses in a metropolitan municipality, Mangaung, which governs Bloemfontein and surrounding towns in the Free State province of South Africa.

Methodology/design/approach

A case study using survey research strategy of 110 small businesses in a South African municipality informed the research design for this study. The structured questionnaires were quantitatively analysed yielding both descriptive and regression results to address the research objectives.

Findings

The findings suggest that the prime sources of public funding for hair salon businesses are the National Youth Development Agency and the Small Enterprise Development Agency. The results also demonstrate that public funding has a negative and significant impact on technology acquisition, perhaps suggesting the complexity of debt financing and the exorbitant interest rates charged on principals borrowed by foreign nationals.

Originality/value

The study recommends the judicious acquisition of inexpensive technologies (e.g. social media platforms) and cautionary utilisation of complex technologies and personal savings before resorting to external borrowing.

Details

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, vol. 13 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6204

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Article
Publication date: 23 February 2021

Patient Rambe and Peter Khaola

The pre-eminence of innovation and technological transfer in promoting agricultural productivity and competitiveness in developing countries is widely acknowledged. However, the…

1693

Abstract

Purpose

The pre-eminence of innovation and technological transfer in promoting agricultural productivity and competitiveness in developing countries is widely acknowledged. However, the disparate streams of literature on productivity and competitiveness have explored innovation and technology transfer as independent predictors. Consequently, the mechanisms through which innovation and technology transfers jointly affect productivity and competitiveness of small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in emerging economies remain under-explored in literature. The present study sought to examine the relationships among innovation, technology transfer, productivity and competitiveness of small-scale agricultural businesses (SSABs) in selected regions in South Africa and Zimbabwe, neighbouring countries which have been plagued by food insecurity in recent years.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to SSABs owners based in Free State and Mashonaland provinces of South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively. In total, 268 usable questionnaires (67%) were returned for analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and Process macro (based on SPSS) techniques were used to analyse data.

Findings

The results supported direct significant paths between innovation and technology transfer; technology transfer and productivity; and productivity and competitiveness. Furthermore, the results suggested that technology transfer and productivity consecutively fully mediate the relationship between innovation and competitiveness.

Research limitations/implications

The use of a survey could not provide sufficient explanations as to why the variable examined related the way they did.

Practical implications

The study provides useful insights into the significance of considering the dimensions and methods of innovation and technology transfer in agricultural business activities and processes to improve productivity and competitiveness of SSABs.

Social implications

The study provides some insights into how innovation and technology transfer could be employed by small scale agricultural businesses as critical mechanisms for heightening productivity and competitiveness of these firms to guarantee food security and employment creation for emerging economies.

Originality/value

To the researchers' knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies to examine the impact of both innovation and technology transfer on productivity and competitiveness of SSABs in two countries in Southern Africa. The study also constitutes a significant contribution to examining serial mediation of technology transfer and productivity of innovation and competitiveness.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 25 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

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Article
Publication date: 8 January 2025

Amon Simba, Mahdi Tajeddin, Paul Jones and Patient Rambe

This study analyzes technostress in African entrepreneurship. It advances contextualized theoretical explanations of technostress depicting its impact on entrepreneurs who…

58

Abstract

Purpose

This study analyzes technostress in African entrepreneurship. It advances contextualized theoretical explanations of technostress depicting its impact on entrepreneurs who excessively consume digital technology in Africa. The study also describes how research linking transactional benefits to digital technology has created an imbalanced literature that ignores technostress and well-being in African entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach

Considering the study’s theoretical explanations derived at the technostress–entrepreneurship–well-being nexus, structural equation modeling (SEM) was deemed appropriate. Unlike qualitative–based methods, SEM experiments on 643 observations of early–stage African entrepreneurs in South Africa enabled robust statistical interpretations of their social settings. Thus, strengthening our analysis and focus on the interplay between the variables of technostress, including overload, invasion, complexity and uncertainty, and their impact on entrepreneurship intentions defined through perceived behavior control, entrepreneurship passion and digital self-efficacy.

Findings

SEM experiments on these African entrepreneurs revealed technostress dimensions of overload, invasion, complexity and uncertainty as moderators of their entrepreneurial actions encompassing perceived behaviour control and entrepreneurship passion in connection with their entrepreneurial intentions. The results also suggested that perceived behaviour control, entrepreneurship passion, and the digital self-efficacy of these entrepreneurs influenced their entrepreneurial intentions.

Research limitations/implications

Besides inspiring more studies on technostress and well-being in varied entrepreneurial contexts, this research also initiates debate on policy and social reforms geared toward entrepreneurs considered vulnerable to excessive digital technology consumption.

Originality/value

The novelty of this study lies in its theoretical explanations derived at the technostress–entrepreneurship–well-being nexus. This conceptual overlay elevates the interpretations of the findings of this study beyond the averages in entrepreneurship and information technology (IT) research. Specifically, it increases their inferential value by revealing subtle and hard to dictate social interactions inherent in how African entrepreneurs consume and are impacted by technology as they pursue their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

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Article
Publication date: 31 August 2020

Peter Khaola and Patient Rambe

Even though the influence of transformational leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has been extensively studied in human resource management, evidence on the…

3345

Abstract

Purpose

Even though the influence of transformational leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has been extensively studied in human resource management, evidence on the mechanisms through which transformational leadership affects OCB is only beginning to emerge. In view of the ambivalence about strategies of advancing OCB, this paper aims to establish whether and the extent to which the relationship between transformational leadership and OCB was mediated by organisational justice and affective commitment.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was based on a random survey of 300 employees from a medium-sized public university, and 122 employees from public and private sector organisations in Lesotho. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and process macro techniques were used to analyse data.

Findings

The results confirmed significant paths between transformational leadership and organisational justice; organisational justice and affective commitment; and affective commitment and OCB. The results further suggested that perceived justice and affective commitment were significant serial mediators between transformational leadership and OCB.

Practical implications

Elucidation of the nature of mediating factors between leadership and OCB would leverage organisations’ level of understanding of why transformational leadership is critical to promoting OCB, and hence encourage them to design programmes that would equip supervisors with skills necessary to enhance it.

Originality/value

This is one of the few theory-driven primary studies that examine the serial mediating roles of organisational justice and affective commitment in the transformational leadership – OCB relationship.

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Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Patient Rambe

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since…

Abstract

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since the founding of new ventures is largely a resourceful founder-driven enterprise, entrepreneurship education has largely centred on galvanising and shifting the mindsets and cognition of the entrepreneur. Yet, despite over 60 years of delivering entrepreneurship education programmes, hard evidence of the generation of high-growth-oriented and sustainable ventures has been scarce as student entrepreneurship intentions do not always translate into successful venture creation. This is largely because of the complexities of the practicality of entrepreneurial education particularly, the dissonance between acquired education in business schools and the knowledge and competencies needed in the entrepreneurial field. Such dissonance can be attributed to the lack of clarity on the pedagogical approach that most resonates with entrepreneurial action, the diversity in assessment methods and the scholarly illusion pertaining to how pedagogical approaches can be channelled to the generation of growth-oriented ventures. Drawing on Girox's concepts of transformative critical pedagogy (including pedagogy of repression), Socratic dialogue, Hegelian dialectic and Yrjö Engeström's transformative expansive agency, I demonstrate how a flipped transformative critical pedagogy can be harnessed in digitally enhanced learning environments to create new entrepreneurial possibilities for facilitating critical inquiry, complex problem-solving, innovation for the market and fostering tolerance for failure in ambiguous entrepreneurial contexts.

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Book part
Publication date: 9 January 2014

This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will…

Abstract

This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will be inundated with invitations to attend events hosted by publishers, groups within MLA, universities, and alumni organizations. The way we now include apps as an inherent part of our socialization, however, is changing and evolving as a result of some of the tools that are to be associated with the digital humanities, albeit not necessarily as apparently so as some others. This chapter explores the familiar players like Facebook™, Google+™, Twitter™, and others and discusses how they are being used by those in the field, contextualizing them within a variety of disciplines in the humanities through case studies while situating the category alongside theories that make sense of their use. Not as commonly used in academic social networks are vlogging applications along with student blog sites, which are also examined in this chapter. It is in this and subsequent chapters where augmented reality enhancements will be used. Please follow the directions at the beginning of Chapter 2 to access these additions.

Details

Digital Humanities: Current Perspective, Practices, and Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-689-7

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Book part
Publication date: 28 February 2025

Patient Rambe

Following Joseph Schumpeter's conception of innovation as ‘new innovations’, this chapter contends that innovations that transform lives in developing countries of Southern Africa…

Abstract

Following Joseph Schumpeter's conception of innovation as ‘new innovations’, this chapter contends that innovations that transform lives in developing countries of Southern Africa are not radically new and different novelties but rather ‘new combinations’ at the interface of new materialisations (creative expression) and exploitations of new opportunities (entrepreneurship). We argue that this posture is not a contestation of the reality that novelty enter the system through the development of new technologies, processes and new ways of organising, but rather such novelty is a process of recombining existing elements in new ways. I build on this argument to demonstrate that in resource-poor contexts where institutional voids frustrate entrepreneurs' potential to deploy innovation capabilities for generating groundbreaking innovation, innovations and entrepreneurship are outcomes of ‘tinkering’, improvision and refinement of unsophisticated creative ideas. Drawing on exemplars from health, education, finance and poverty alleviation interventions that support sustainable human development, I also demonstrate that high knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE) and low knowledge-intensive frugal innovations are mutually constitutive and recursive outputs of the interaction of knowledge application and innovation conversion rather than serial processes of cause and effect. Using combinative innovation, internal coupling and combinative capabilities as heuristics for understanding the entrepreneurship–innovation nexus, I provide empirical support to the view that entrepreneurial effectuation, new combinations, bricolage and improvision constitute useful cognitive arena for the conversion of entrepreneurial and innovation behaviours, practices and processes into KIE and frugal innovation outputs.

Details

Disruptive Frugal Digital Innovation in Africa
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83549-568-1

Keywords

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Free Access. Free Access

Abstract

Details

Delivering Entrepreneurship Education in Africa
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-326-8

Available. Content available
Article
Publication date: 18 June 2019

Vanessa Ratten

317

Abstract

Details

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, vol. 13 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6204

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 28 February 2025

Free Access. Free Access

Abstract

Details

Disruptive Frugal Digital Innovation in Africa
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83549-568-1

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