High rates of accidents and deaths among construction workers have marred our excitement about elegant new buildings gracing the skylines of cities in many emerging markets – but is this now a thing of the past? Will economic recovery and growth provide a new opportunity to rid the world of a...

This case study found out how a public-private partnership in Burkina Faso helped female shea nut producers to link up with the cosmetic industry. Empirical data collected from October-December 2011 revealed that the shea value chain partnership between a international shea processing company, a...

Recent years witnessed a gradual change on how to evaluate successful procurement, in both the private ad the public sector. Indeed from a price-only criterion for measuring success, decisions shifted to a multi-criteria approach where various dimensions of quality, as well as price, are...

Ever since Porter’s book Competitive Strategy (1980), developing a generic strategy and then executing this strategy well has been seen as the main source of competitive advantage for organizations. However, since the publication of Porter’s book the business environment has changed...

The temporary staffing industry functions as an economic thermometer: when the industry is suffering decreasing turnover this is a clear sign the economy is cooling down and vice versa. As a consequence the industry experiences erratic financial results and has traditionally suffered from a huge...

The internal resource barriers that firms experience influence their capability to export. This in turn influences the export performance of the country and the extent to which exports contribute to economic growth. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of resource barriers, more...

Industrial policy (IP) can make an important contribution to both environmental and social sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to explore the new rationale for IP due to climate change and to determine its implications for the how of industrial policy. Five implications are discussed,...

We know that entrepreneurs – at least those driven by opportunities – can contribute to economic growth, productivity improvements and competitiveness in national economies.. But do they contribute to happiness on the country level? In other words, does the happiness of nations depend on its...

The outsourcing of the R&D function is an emerging practice of corporate firms. In their attempt to reduce the increasing cost of research and technology development, firms are strategically outsourcing the R&D function or repositioning their internal R&D organisation. By doing so, they are able...