1,720,957 research outputs found
“Entrepreneurs are superheroes of societies”: Insights on how launching and operating a preschool during the Covid-19 pandemic snatched all my superpowers
No full textThe founding father of entrepreneurship, Schumpeter, described entrepreneurs as true heroes of society, primarily due to their contribution to value creation and their ability to create something new, thereby driving economic evolution. Perhaps as a new business owner, I resonated with the definition prior to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. I ventured into my business full of vigour and ready to become a superhero of my community. Almost a year after the outbreak of the coronavirus, my superhero wings have withered. In this article I share my experience in launching a new business in 2020 – the year of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. My micro-level business start-up is a preschool located in Soshanguve, one of South Africa’s townships in the City of Tshwane
The role of entrepreneurial policies in developing rural tourism entrepreneurship in South Africa
Full text linkAbstract: Since 1994, the South African Government has introduced numerous entrepreneurial policies and support institutions aimed at developing entrepreneurship, which is viewed as a solution for the country’s socio-economic problems of poverty, unemployment and inequality. However, because of a limited understanding of the dynamics of rural entrepreneurship, Government efforts to uplift rural entrepreneurs have not been effective. Challenges relating to lack of appropriate business infrastructure, barriers to enter new markets, lack of industry mentors and networking opportunities, stiff competition, high cost of regulatory compliance and barriers in accessing bank loans continue to undermine business viability in rural areas. The problem that the research addresses is to understand the factors that explain the low profitability, competitiveness and survival rates of rural micro-lodging enterprises, as a specific category of entrepreneurial enterprise, despite the context of increasing tourism generally in South Africa and a consequent hypothesised positive impact on business prospects. Using a qualitative case study design; in-depth interviews with 15 lodging business owners and officials from four government support institutions were conducted. Atlas.ti was used to analyse data. The study found that the main users and beneficiaries of these policies and the support institutions are urban, literate and well-established entrepreneurs, while the rural entrepreneurs most in need, and in many cases, the actual object of policies, do not access the support due to lack of knowledge or information, or cannot due to distance and cost. Because of policy-makers’ lack of knowledge and information, rural entrepreneurs are subjected to a one-size-fits-all policy implementation approach which is counter-effective. The study recommends adapting policy implementation to suit the unique local conditions of rural communities. The paper conclude by proposing policy interventions imperative in developing entrepreneurship in the rural areas
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Entrepreneurship development framework for smallscale rural tourism establishments in South Africa
Full text linkAbstract:This paper reports the findings of a study whose purpose sought to identify strategies to addressing the discord and disharmony between entrepreneurial policy and practice in developing countries such as South Africa. Beginning in the early days of its democracy in 1994, the South African government identified entrepreneurship as an all-encompassing strategy to address a plethora of socioeconomic challenges including unemployment and economic growth. In line with this agenda, the government has developed various policies aimed at both developing and growing small enterprises. Despite this, the small to medium enterprise sector has not developed as intended. Characteristically, small businesses are battling to survive amid intensifying competition from large scale enterprises (LSEs). Ironically, the latter is one example where practice does not necessarily follow the dictates of policy. To fully develop an in-depth understanding of this phenomenon, a qualitative case study involving 15 tourism small-scale businesses as well as five government departments in Mpumalanga Province was designed. Data were collected by means of in-depth interviews. ATLAS.ti was used to analyse data. Results revealed a gap between policy and practice. Interestingly, political rhetoric was observed as exacerbating an already dire situation by injecting confusion in the entrepreneurship discourse. Furthermore, the study proposes a conceptual framework, the POEE, which attempts to harmonise policy and entrepreneurial actions. Recommendations are made within the context of the POEE framework
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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