Entrepreneurial self-efficacy and small business performance in Pakistan

Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy (ESE) has gained immense importance in the past few years in the field of entrepreneurship. The focus of this study is to test the effect of each of the five dimensions of ESE and understand their importance in connection with firms’ performance. This study was carried out among small businesses entrepreneurs in Pakistan and a valid sample of 353 entrepreneurs was selected for this purpose. A survey technique was used for data collection and AMOS was used for data analysis. In line with expectation, the analysis concluded a significant positive relationship between ESE dimensions and performance of small businesses. It was also concluded that the Risk dimension of ESE contributes majorly in the improvement of firms’ performance whereas the financial control dimension of ESE contribution was least. It is also suggested that all five dimensions of ESE are important to achieve desirable performance outcomes.

Assessing Risk and Prioritizing Safety Interventions in Human Settlements Affected by Large Wildfires

The large wildfires of June 2017 disturbed many communities in central Portugal. The civil parish of Alvares was severely affected, with about 60% of its area burnt. Assessing the risk of large wildfires affecting local communities is becoming increasingly important, to reduce potential losses in the future. In this study, we assessed wildfire risk for the 36 villages of Alvares parish, by combining hazard, exposure and vulnerability analysis at the settlement scale. Hazard was obtained from fire spread simulations, which integrated exposure together with population and building density within each village. Vulnerability was based on the sociodemographic characteristics of the population, ranked with a hierarchical cluster analysis. Coping capacity was also integrated, considering the distance of each village to the fire station and the time needed for residents to reach a shelter. We simulated 12 different land management scenarios, regarding the implementation of a fuel-break network and the level of forest management activities. The potential effects of each scenario in the exposure and risk levels of the settlements were evaluated. The results show that, for a business-as-usual scenario, 36% of the villages are at high or very high risk of wildfires. Examining each risk component, 28% of the villages are highly exposed, 44% are highly vulnerable, and 22% do not have a potential shelter on-site, calling for different intervention strategies in each specific risk dimension. All the land management scenarios, even if designed for other purposes than the protection of settlements, could decrease the proportion of highly exposed villages at different levels, up to a maximum of 61%. These findings can contribute to adjust prevention and mitigation strategies to the risk levels and the characteristics of the population and the territory, and to prioritize the protection and emergency actions at the local scale.

A Systematic Approach to Agile Development in Highly Regulated Environments

For established domains within highly regulated environments, a systematic approach is needed to scale agile methods and assure compliance with regulatory requirements. The presented approach works adequately in small agile teams – independently of the underlying method such as Scrum, Kanban, etc. – and is scalable to more and bigger teams or even entire subsidiaries. It is based on a compliance and a quality risk dimension respectively. Both dimensions are needed to fit regulatory requirements in our finance example with more than 100 developers in one subsidiary.

ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI MINAT BELI ONLINE SHOP KONSUMEN (STUDI KASUS PADA MAHASISWA DI UNIVERSITAS ISLAM INDONESIA)

This empirical research is intended to determine the effect of financial risk, product risk, convenience risk, non-delivery risk, infrastructure variables, and return policy on consumer attitudes, to determine the effect of attitudes on consumer online shop buying interest, to determine the effect of financial risk, product risk. , convenience risk, non-delivery risk, infrastructure variables, return policy, and attitudes towards consumers 'online shop buying interest, to determine the influence of consumer behavior factors which are the most dominant in influencing consumers' online shop buying interest. The object of this research is the students of the Islamic University of Indonesia using 96 active student respondents as the research sample. Data analysis used Multiple Regression Analysis using a data processing program, namely SPSS for Windows Release 17.00. Based on the results of the analysis shows that there is a significant influence between financial risk, product risk, convenience risk, non-delivery risk, return policy, and infrastructure on online shopping attitudes, the product risk dimension has a dominant influence on online shopping attitudes, there is a significant influence between online shopping attitudes. With buying interest, there is a significant influence between the risk and attitude of online shopping on consumer buying interest and the dimensions of online shopping attitudes have a dominant influence on consumer buying interest.

Sustainability and bank risk

Banks play a key role in society and are crucial for economic development. The existing literature finds a positive association between bank performance and sustainability, but tends to neglect the risk dimension. As human-driven processes interact with global social-ecological connectivity and exhibit cross-scale relationships, we investigate whether sustainability affects banks’ individual default risk and their systemic risk, that is, their contribution to the risk of the financial system. As banks are financial intermediaries and there is no direct measure of their sustainability, we proxy for sustainability with banks’ performance on environmental, social, and governance attributes, especially their policies and performance. We control for relevant bank, market and country characteristics. It shows that higher sustainability scores of banks significantly associate with lower default risk. We also establish that outperformance on sustainability reduces banks’ contribution to systemic risk. Thus, it appears that banks’ sustainability performance can spill over to the financial system. This implies sustainability is material for banks and their supervisors. Accounting for sustainability can augment bank risk management and prudential policy decision making, and provide guidance as to how to finance a transition towards an economic system that effectively internalizes externalities.

Strategies for increasing tsunami shelter accessibility to enhance hazard risk adaptive capacity in coastal port cities: a study of Nagoya city, Japan

Coastal areas face a significant risk of tsunami after a nearby heavy earthquake. Comprehensive coastal port cities often complicate and intensify this risk due to the high vulnerability of their communities and liabilities associated with secondary damage. Accessibility to tsunami shelters is a key measure of adaptive capacity in response to tsunami risks and should therefore be enhanced. This study integrates the hazards that create risk into two dimensions: hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk. Specifically, the hazard-product risk measures the hazard occurrence probability, intensity, duration, and extension in a system. The hazard-affected risk measures the extent to which the system is affected by the hazard occurrence. This enables the study of specific strategies for responding to each kind of risk to enhance accessibility to tsunami shelters. Nagoya city in Japan served as the case study: the city is one of the most advanced tsunami-resilient port cities in the world. The spatial distribution of the hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk was first visualized in 165 school district samples, covering 213 km2 using a hot spot analysis. The results suggest that the rules governing the distribution of these two-dimensional (2-D) risks are significantly different. By refining the tsunami evacuation time–space routes, traffic-location-related indicators, referring to three-scale traffic patterns with three-hierarchy traffic roads, are used as accessibility variables. Two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyse the differences in these accessibility variables to compare the 2-D risk. MANOVA was also used to assess the difference of accessibility between high-level risk and low-level risk in each risk dimension. The results show that tsunami shelter accessibility strategies, targeting hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk, are significantly different in Nagoya. These different strategies are needed to adapt to the risk.

Strategies to increase the accessibility of tsunami shelters enhances their adaptive capacity to risks in coastal port cities: The case of Nagoya City, Japan

Coastal areas face a significant risk of tsunami after a nearby heavy earthquake. Comprehensive coastal port cities often complicate and intensify this risk, due to the high vulnerability of their communities and liabilities associated with secondary damage. Accessibility to tsunami shelters is a key measure of adaptive capacity in response to tsunami risks and should therefore be enhanced. This study integrates the hazards that create risk into two dimensions: hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk. Specifically, the hazard-product risk measures the hazard occurrence's probability, intensity, duration, and extension in a system. The hazard-affected risk measures the extent to which the system is affected by the hazard occurrence. This enables the study of specific strategies for responding to each kind of risk, to enhance accessibility to tsunami shelters. Nagoya City in Japan served as the case study; the city is one of the most advanced tsunami-resilient port cities in the world. The spatial distribution of the hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk was first visualized in 165 School District samples, covering 213 km2 using a Hot Spot Analysis. The results suggest that the rules governing the distribution of these two-dimensional (2D) risks are significantly different. By refining the tsunami evacuation time-space routes, traffic location related indicators, referring to three-scale traffic patterns with three-hierarchy traffic roads, are used as accessibility variables. Two-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to analyse the differences in these accessibility variables to compare the 2D risk. MANOVA was also used to assess the difference of accessibility between high-level risk and low-level risk in each risk dimension. The results show that tsunami shelter accessibility strategies, targeting hazard-product risk and hazard-affected risk, are significantly different in Nagoya. These different strategies are needed to adapt to the risk.

IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION ON STRATEGIC ALLIANCES AND THE ROLE OF TOP MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT The management literature draws attention to the gap of strategic alliances (SA) in the paradigm of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). The aim of this paper is to propose a model where EO is associated with SA, this relationship being influenced by its predecessor (top management), and EO working as a multidimensional construct. Data collected from 101 Brazilian firms were analyzed using structural equation modeling and supported those hypotheses. Improving firms' EO, particularly risk taking (RT), is important in order to promote SA. Obviously, top management can influence SA, but firms with an RT competence are more likely to promote SAs and conduct their implementation. Therefore, the present study offers the following contributions: (1) consolidating the EO construct by using it in a multidimensional way in a reflexive model, particularly the risk dimension; (2) advancing studies relating EO and SA by showing that top management has a significant influence on the EO-SA relationship; (3) the model used is robust and representative of the field of strategy and entrepreneurship as it explained 25.5% of the EO-SA relationship; (4) we suggest that EO should be used to increase SA and firm performance, which can reduce entrance barriers and business risks, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).