1,354,628 research outputs found
Oral History Interview with Shaykh Momodou Ceesay on October 24, 2020
No full textOral history interview with Shaykh Momodou Ceesay conducted by Naimah Siddiq on October 24, 2020. Interview written by Dr. Alisa Perkins (Research Director) and Naimah Siddiq. Shaykh Momodou Ceesay was born in Gambia on June 28, 1958. During his childhood, Shaykh Ceesay engaged in intensive Islamic studies under the tutelage of various shaykhs in both Gambia and Senegal. After receiving a scholarship, Shaykh Ceesay continued his education in Tunisia. He then earned a degree in Islamic sciences at Cairo’s renowned Al-Azhar University. Shaykh Ceesay immigrated to the United States in 1989, where he served as a teacher for the West African Muslim community, first in New York and then in Detroit. In addition, he made history by completing the first Mandingo translation of the Qur’an. Shaykh Ceesay ministers to the West African immigrant community through lectures over Kairo Radio, a station devoted to Gambians in America. Around 2000, Imam Ceesay began serving as imam at the Muslim Center Mosque and Community Center and became the mosque’s resident imam in 2014. He advances Islamic education at the Muslim Center by teaching Qur’an and religion classes, and particularly devotes himself to educating young people and seniors. In the interview, Shaykh Ceesay reflects on his vision for the Muslim Center, discussing his priorities of education and building a diverse community. He also discusses the efforts he has made to bring together the African American Muslim and West African Muslim communities.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dream-storytelling-interviews/1014/thumbnail.jp
Is microfinance the answer?: VISACA interventions in The Gambia
No full textThe primary goal of this exploratory study was to investigate how microfinance affects the lives of the rural men and women in The Gambia. Additionally, the study also investigated whether the institutional capacity of the Village Savings and Credit Associations (VISACAs) played any role in enhancing or inhibiting the microfinance intervention scheme. Using a mixed- methods approach, the study was conducted using several data collection tools. Questionnaires were completed by five national experts, and eight microfinance Technical Service Providers (TSPs) in the area of microfinance to gain a broad understanding of microfinance in the Gambia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a random sample of 120 microloan recipients and 50 VISACA employees. The questionnaires and interviews were augmented with existing secondary data, participant observations, and field notes. A combination of descriptive statistics, regression, and chi-square analysis was used to examine the quantitative data. Qualitative data was analyzed by pulling themes and making sense of the themes. The study found that participation in microfinance leads to an increase in individual and household income and savings. The ability to better provide for one’s family also increased. While a number of the recipients accumulated some assets, a considerable number reported that acquiring those assets resulted from their participation in the microfinance program. The results of the regression analysis suggest that there was no significant relationship between changes in income and savings (dependent variables) and the strength of the VISACA. Furthermore, chi-square results indicated no significant relations between women’s empowerment and the strength of the VISACA. The themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis, for the most part complement the statistical findings. The need to strengthen the VISACAs through capacity building emerged as a central issue that needs to be addressed to ensure long-term sustainability.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Atta A. Ceesa
The Contribution of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to Rural Development in the Gambia a Study of Save the Children Federation, U.S.A.
No full textA Project Report by Ceesay Foma A.M.M., Submitted to the School of Business, USIU-A in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in Management and Organization Developmen
Managing Relational Capabilities of Inter-Organizational Innovation Ecosystems: Empirical Investigations
No full textProblem statement: The inter-organizational relationship has become an increasingly emerging configuration in the domains of an innovation ecosystem. The synergy of firms, with diverse institutional logics, motives and resources position has the potential to generate common good, that lie beyond the reach and capability of a single firm. However, managing the idiosyncrasies of firms in such alliances remain highly problematic in practice and largely limited in the extant literature, and thus often results in firms’ unwillingness to engage in a collaborative innovation ecosystem. To address this, first, we conduct a review of the literature to elucidate the research gap, highly influential authors, and countries, the classification of the body of literature according to the network antecedents, management, and performance issues that are fundamental to innovation network projects. These results, however, advance our understanding of the critical issues affecting the practices of co-creation of value and the ecosystem innovation performance. Furthermore, while knowledge on inter-organizational relationship has been dominated in the context of large corporations, a comprehensive understanding of how relational capabilities of a network is linked to the co-value creation of local SMEs network is missing. Second, we try to address this by performing an empirical study of local SMEs business networks, in practical terms, to understand how the network develops and leverages the distinct capabilities and resources of partners while advancing the ecosystem innovation performance. Since the diverse idiosyncrasies associated with firms continue to limit the proliferation of the inter-firm innovation ecosystem, our third chapter tries to examine how institution-based trust-building programs enable the development of actors’ innovation performance in the ecosystem. Finally, despite the presence of prior studies on the inter-firm alliance for commercial purposes, studies on a cause-related alliance of firms in a period of global uncertainty are largely underdeveloped. We addressed this problem in the fourth chapter, by examining the first empirical context of collaborative value practices of a cause-based inter-firm alliance. Research design: To address the gaps, we first reviewed the state-of-the-earth on inter-organizational relationships and integrate the innovation ecosystem literature, to understand the current body of literature and explore the avenue for future research. Based on the result of this study, we conducted two series of qualitative case studies and one quantitative study, analyzing (1) the relational capabilities enabling value co-creation of an inter-firm innovation network, (2) the inter-firm innovation network characterizing the social cause rather than commercial purpose interests, and (3) the development of trust in inter-firm innovation projects. We mainly relied on the explorative, grounded theory methodology to select and analyze our cases. For both case studies, a series of in-depth personal interviews were conducted across two business networks involving the network companies allying. In addition to this, a comprehensive list of secondary data was generated to augment the research process and increase the robustness of the findings. Results: The results of this thesis first map out the state of the earth, describing the emerging themes and direction for future agenda. Based on our review of extant literature, we found that research in inter-organizational innovation is emerging fast. This is due to the plethora of economic and commercial advantages firms derived in their relationship- thus creating an opportunity for more research in the field. Despite the growing attention of researchers in the field, the literature on inter-organizational relationships suffers from many weaknesses - making it problematic to achieve common alliance success. Generally, we discovered that research in the field is highly fragmented. First, research in an inter-organizational business network is, however, still struggling to gain a solid identity in practice because of the nuance of factors and their effects on inter-firm relationships. Our findings showed that several factors caught researchers’ attractions while others remain largely limited. Th results showed that these factors have parsimonious effects on innovation ecosystems– failing many inter-organizational projects across many industries and sectors. These results were further clustered according to three categories of network management: network antecedents, network management, and network performance. The extant literature, however, provides no integrated framework to entangle such challenges in inter-organizational relationships. Second, we empirically examined the development of relational capabilities of local SMEs inter-firm network contracts. The study identifies key antecedents for successful organizing of inter-firm engagement, and the consequent development of network relational dynamic capabilities in a business network environment: friendship, institutional arrangements, participatory culture, homophily, flexibility, coordination and control, communication/information flows, trust-building, transparency and managing change/adaptability. Our findings also suggest that organizing for inter-firm engagement in a business network context, positively influenced network relational performance over time. Third, we empirically explored institution-based trust-building in the context of an inter-firm innovation ecosystem. The findings show that relational risk mediates the effects of trust in institutional openness and honesty, similarity/identification trust, and institutional reliability on the innovation performance of SMEs. In addition to these findings, our study also established that institutional trust-building practices differ greatly by the size of the enterprise (small vs medium). While small firms are found to be more vulnerable to relational risks of inter-firm similarity (over-familiarity) than medium-sized firms, Medium-sized firms, on the other hand, are vulnerable to high relational risks caused by low institutional openness and low competence on innovation performance. Finally, in the last chapter of this thesis, we empirically explored the value-creating activities of a cause-based social alliance project in Northern Italy, seeking to address the social challenges of society in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. The finding of this study provides evidence that despite the different organizations, motives, and even diverse institutional logics, the collaborative value creation framework is a suitable theoretical lens to understand value generation in cause-based social entrepreneurship (SE) alliance. The study found four critical aspects of collaborative value processes, that enable the alliance actors to leverage the cause-based SE alliance capabilities: value definition, co-value creation, value balance, and value renewal. Due to the idiosyncrasies associated with the alliance firms, our study showed several challenges confronting the alliance, such as finding the right cause-driven social alliance partner, different institutional logics, systems, and operational guidelines, stakeholder commitment to the cause, resource-cause alliance fit, and trust. Contribution: Our results contribute, first, to the literature on managing the inter-organizational innovation network. By considering the context of local SMEs business networks, we provide empirical insights into the relational dynamics of actors in the innovation ecosystem. By the network context, we examined collaborative value processes that are critical to open innovation performance. Second, we bridge social entrepreneurship by better linking inter-firm cause-based alliance literature, a subject that is highly fragmented in the literature. Third, our empirical study of network relational capabilities contributes to the relational dynamic capabilities’ literature – discussing the processes enabling the development of the network’s relational capabilities while organizing inter-firm engagement projects. Lastly, we also contribute to research by empirically exploring the institution-based trust-building in the context of SMEs innovation ecosystem literature. The findings also contribute to the existing empirical studies on how institutional trust factors affect inter-firm innovation performance and the mediating role of relational risk involved in inter-firm business relationships. Finally, we contribute to practice, by arguing that the development of institution-based trust is a critical antecedent of setting up a successful cause-based inter-firm alliance. Limitations: This thesis underlies amongst others three main limitations: First, qualitative studies are prone to researchers’ bias as data is subjectively interpreted by researchers. This, however, makes it impossible to eliminate the influence of researchers’ personal views and perceptions. To minimize this bias, we adopt various triangulations methods thus, addressing the limitation of the case study approach. Second, the generalization of findings is limited by the case studies approach, giving the unique context of each case. Third, the quantitative study adopted is not without limitations. For instance, the small sample size, and use of limited scales, are likely to influence the results of the study. We recognized these limitations and proposed that future research should try to address more context-sensitive theorizing and by discussing findings limited to just specific case contexts. Future Research: This thesis proposed some agenda that future research should address: First, the research on network relational dynamic capabilities across various business networks, could offer more robust generalizable findings. Second, the case study approaches adopted in this thesis, however, has limitations. This limited context inherent in a case study design provides a narrow empirical context for the applicability of the results. Third, the quantitative studies adopted also posed some limitations, and thus, future research could explore other multi-dimensional scales of institutional trust-building practices for bigger firms, and even in different sectors/industries, or even across different geographic locations. Finally, future studies may also try to replicate the collaborative value practices of a cause-based SE network, addressing a particular industry or market, or even comparing across different network levels with a diverse membership, and market/industry structure. Thus, the samples from bigger firms and corporations and their attitude to a social cause may be highly influenced by the size, capability, and motives, since our current case is largely by SMEs. Further, a quantitative study on how collaborative value practices influence actors’ social performance, could yield interesting findings to the cause-based social entrepreneurship alliance literature
Managing The Relational Capabilities of Inter-Organizational Innovation Ecosystems: Empirical Investigations
No full textThe thesis tries to evaluate the relational dynamics of an inter-organizational business network relationship. To do this, first, a review of extant literature was employed, and results showed that the field is however emerging slowly and its widespread is largely dominated by scholars from the UK, US, and Italy amongst other countries, respectively. The result of the study also indicated there is a large concentration on the management of the innovation ecosystem was carried out than on other aspects (i.e., the network antecedents, and performance research) informing the agenda for future agenda. In the second paper, we conduct an empirical study case study design to investigate the development of the relational capabilities of local Italian SMEs business networks. The results of the study demonstrate critical determinants enabling the development of network relational capabilities. The findings also suggest that organizing for inter-firm engagement in a business network context, positively influenced network performance over time. For the third paper, an empirical study of institution-based trust-building in an inter-firm innovation ecosystem was investigated. Using a sample from SMEs relationships from KM region of The Gambia, results show that institutional trust-building practices (i.e., openness, reliability, similarity) significantly have a positive effect on innovation performance. Furthermore, the relational risk was found to significantly mediate the effects of trust in institutional openness, similarity, and reliability on the innovation performance of SMEs alliance. In addition to these findings, the study also established that institutional trust-building practices differ greatly by the size of the enterprise (small vs medium). Finally, the last chapter tries to examine the collaborative value practices of cause-based social entrepreneurship alliance. We investigate key drivers of value creation in such an alliance using a longitudinal case study design involving Italian businesses that make up this alliance. The study findings suggest that cause-based alliances differ from other business relationships due to the social mission of the alliance and the orientation of partners to a specific social cause. However, over time involved firm may pursue commercial interests. Our results provide one of the first studies on the emerging phenomenon of a cause-based social alliance. It contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship and its intersection with inter-organizational business relationship literature. These findings inform and guide practitioners about the motivations and drivers of such alliances
Ceesay, Yandeh
No full textInterviewee: Yandeh Ceesay
Interviewer: Dr. Jane K. Edward
Date of Interview: February 10, 2009
Summarized by Sheina Ledesma
Yandeh Ceesay is an undergraduate student at Fordham University. She was born in 1989 in the West African nation of Gambia. When she was a year old her father left the family and moved to the Bronx. A year later, in 1991, her father was able to send for Yandeh and her mother, and they both moved from Gambia to the Bronx as well. When Yandeh first arrived she lived with her parents in an eight-floor apartment building on Fordham Road. She attended a pre-school located on the Grand Concourse named St. Francis Day School.
During the early years of her childhood, Yandeh’s neighbors routinely babysat her while her father and mother worked. Most of these neighbors who were also of Gambian descent, proved to be a great support system for her and her family. At the time, her father was a nurse at Union Hospital in the Bronx. Her mother initially began working as a jewelry vendor on East Fordham Road however, after a few months she enrolled in an accounting program.
While still in elementary school, Yandeh and her family moved to a Northeastern section of the Bronx called Allerton. Once in high school, Yandeh’s parents decided to send her to a private all-girls high school in Throg’s Neck. It was there that Yandeh began to associate with girls who were of Caribbean and Hispanic descent. Prior to that she had socialized with predominantly Gambian children. She enjoyed her time at the school and noted that it was especially close-knit because of its small size.
As a child, Yandeh was aware of the cultural differences between her and the other girls in her school. Her mother was strict and expected her to stick to their cultural traditions rather than the American trends that Yandeh observed her classmates followed. Yandeh and her family always remained connected with their Gambian roots. They often attended some activities organized by the Gambian Society in their neighborhood where they enjoyed holiday parties and other social gatherings. Growing up Muslim also had an influence on Yandeh as a child. Her father regularly brought her and her siblings to a mosque in Mt. Vernon for Friday prayers. This mosque was comprised of mostly Middle Eastern Muslims however, and so her father eventually brought the children to a Gambian Islamic Sunday school where the children could feel more comfortable. Yandeh expressed that the greatest difference between Gambian Muslims and other Muslims, is the language and the influence African culture has on their worship. She explained that the Islam Gambians follow is much more relaxed than that of Middle Easterns. For example, women wearing head coverings is not compulsory.
Once finished with high school, Yandeh decided that she wanted to attend a University that was close to her family. For this reason she chose to attend Fordham University. At first, it was difficult for Yandeh to adjust to college life, especially since she had decided to live on campus and had to adjust to living separate from her family. However, Yandeh quickly readjusted to her new schedule and began to make friends through school clubs like the African Diaspora Group and the black student union, ASILI, on campus.
Yandeh has three younger siblings, ages fourteen, eight, and four. Her mother recently finished the construction of a new home in Gambia and is planning on moving there permanently with her two youngest children. Yandeh mentioned that saving up to build a new home in Gambia is a goal many Gambian Americans share however, her father does not plan on returning with her mother. Yandeh visits her Gambian relatives every other year but is also not relocating with her mother
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
The effect of prepubertal calcium carbonate supplementation on skeletal development in Gambian boys-a 12-year follow-up study
No full textCONTEXT: Calcium intake during growth is essential for future bone health but varies widely between individuals and populations. The impact on bone of increasing calcium intake is unknown in a population where low calcium intake, stunting, and delayed puberty are common.OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of prepubertal calcium supplementation on mean age at peak velocity for bone growth and mineral accrual.DESIGN AND SETTING: Prospective follow-up of boys in rural Gambia, West Africa, who had participated in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of calcium supplementation.PARTICIPANTS: Eighty boys, initially aged 8.0-11.9 years, were followed up for 12 years.INTERVENTIONS: Subjects received 1 year of calcium carbonate supplementation (1000 mg daily, 5 d/wk).MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry measurements were carried out for whole body (WB), lumbar spine, and total hip bone mineral content, bone area (BA), and WB lean mass. Super imposition by translation and rotation models was made to assess bone growth.RESULTS: Age at peak velocity was consistently earlier in the calcium group compared to the placebo group, for WB bone mineral content (mean, -6.2 [SE, 3.1]; P = .05), WB BA (mean, -7.0 [SE, 3.2] mo; P = .03), lumbar spine and total hip BA. By young adulthood, supplementation did not change the amount of bone accrued (mineral or size) or the rate of bone growth.CONCLUSIONS: Twelve months of prepubertal calcium carbonate supplementation in boys with a low calcium diet advanced the adolescent growth spurt but had no lasting effect on bone mineral or bone size. There is a need for caution when applying international recommendations to different populations<br/
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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