International Journal of Business and Economic Development

Business organisations can be seen as social systems encompassing multiple scales. The more functionally differentiated a system landscape becomes the higher the need to coordinate different processes between these systems is. This helps to develop sound business strategies supporting the identification of synergy potentials. Induced by turbulent markets, especially multinational enterprises have to continuously adapt their strategies and introduce new junctures between parts of their organisations. The current article contributes to the effective management of those junctures whilst adopting a systems theory perspective. Novel insights on the coordination of strategic change processeAs, which are most relevant to businesses in order to implement new strategies, are derived from a system dynamics model. They are subsequently applied to a single case study in the medical device industry for the purpose of discussing implications for international enterprises. It is shown how the concepts of operational closure and reflection impact on the junctures between complex social systems. Therefore, it is argued that the analysis of the systemic communication patterns should be considered an integral part of any strategic change process within multinational enterprises. Moreover, the findings are generic enough to be transferred to the regional level as well. The presented approach on the coordination of complex social systems provides valuable impulses, even if the involved systems come from the political or scientific sector. Hence, the investigation of mixed systems coordination is suggested to be part of a future research agenda.

Contrary to the conventional belief of diminishing presence of informal entities in a more globalized world, there has been an upsurge in the size of the informal economy in the recent decades. The article summarizes the factors behind the existence and persistence of such economy and explains the advantages of the informal economy in reducing transaction costs, in sidestepping the bureaucratic obligations, and in complementing the formal economy. The paper refutes the idea that the informal firms act as a weak substitute for the formal firms. The paper uses anecdotal evidence and highlights the linkages between the two sectors.

Predicting stock price of a particular stock is a difficult non-linear problem. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a tool to solve this kind of problem and has received much attentions in the field of financial modeling in recent years. This paper proposes an enhanced ANN for predicting stock prices with a novel Max-Min normalization method as well as an iterative approach. Our experimental results confirm that the predication accuracy outperforms other existing ANN predication mechanisms.

Access to loans is one of the most important areas of focus by many development practitioners for reducing the existing gender gap in access to productive resources. Microfinance Institutions which target females as key clients were promoted for their lending approaches which avoid previous discriminatory practices that excluded women in the financial system. The current study examines the role of Duterimbere MFI of Rwanda in promoting equality in access to microcredit between female and male borrowers. The results of the study are generated by analyzing quantitative data collected from 244 females and 94 males using the questionnaire and qualitative data collected from focus group discussions and interviews with key informants. The study findings revealed that Duterimbere has been able to adapt its requirements to the specific needs of poor women. A significant number of poor women have been able to join the MFI through group solidarity, a method that has upgraded their borrowing capacity to the level of getting individual loans on equal basis as male peers. This study recommends further research that should go beyond access to loan and consider the dynamics of power relations about utilization of the loan received by female and male borrowers.

This study refers to the research model of Batenburg (2008) which defined procurement functions to six maturity dimensions; strategy, processes, control, organization, information, e-Technology as the starting point and indicates twenty-two items to support capability maturity measurement which is called Procurement Competitive Capability Maturity (PCCM). This model is used for a company to assess current practices of procurement function and perceives the level of its capabilities. The data collection is from a survey of fifty-two selected procurement organizations in Southeast Asia (SEA) countries; from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the significant value of industry type, size of spending and centralized/decentralized procurement that affect procurement capability maturity. The results show that the industry has no relation to the capability maturity; the size of procurement spend has a positive relation to the capability maturity, and the centralized procurement has higher capability maturity than the decentralized. Moreover, this study extends the knowledge of e-Procurement and digital context to leverage procurement processes and visible procurement integration in an organization and across the supply chain.

Currently is the main factor driving the world economy is the creation of new values through the products and services innovations in the area of technology. Yet the modern market poses a new challenge. This new challenge is Creativity which is the cornerstone of economic strategy based on products and process innovation which are so desired in the modern economy. Creative Subjects with their creativity are capable of finding all new solutions in order to improve the services offered in the particular sector in the scope of design, products traceability, reference of identity and special values, individual fulfilment etc. In this way, creativity is helping to increase the versatility of products and companies competitiveness in turn stimulating economic growth. Taking into account the above statements one needs to notice that technological development on its own is not enough to create original concepts of economic growth that would meet the demands of individuals regarding the material and non-material needs. Therefore, it is important to conduct an analysis of the role of the cultural sector and creative industries for the future development of the national economies. For this analysis to be useful one needs to reflect upon the reaction of the creative sector and the creative industries to the economic crisis in the years 2008-2012. Research methods used are scientific analysis of the literature, comparative analysis, synthesis and generalization, graphical visualization.

Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest nations per capita in the world, as well as an economic power through the possession of a large share of global oil resources. This study has been carried out to identify the benefits, which are likely to be enjoyed by Saudi Arabia after its accession into World Trade Organization. A total of 15 entrepreneurs filled out the questionnaires, which were designed on the basis of the Likert scale. In order to analyze the outcomes, descriptive statistics technique has been applied after data collection from the respondents. Most of the participants consider the joining of Saudi Arabia into World Trade Organization as a beneficial decision for the Saudi market. This accession is advantageous as it helps to enhance the marketing and investment opportunities, as a consequence of which the economy of Saudi Arabia flourishes and the population rises. The marketing techniques are required to be established and adopted to manufacture high-quality products. The study outcomes are helpful for the policymakers and Saudi companies to emphasize on the production of high-quality products, as well as to implement the strategies for better marketing of their products in the local market.

This paper emphasizes that for a nation to revitalize in terms of development, not only does it need to evaluate in terms of GDP growth rate, but also has to consider the Quality of Life of its citizen and their human happiness. There is a strong correlation between macro-economic development parameters like health, education, GDP growth rate and Quality of Life Index, expressed through HDI. It also has a correlation with subjective quality of life-based on the perception of urban socio-economic classes, as measured in this study. The subjective quality of life is studied through five parameters like Quality of house, education, health care, transportation and recreation facilities. Human happiness is evaluated through the perception of respondents towards change in their financial conditions and consumption expenditure influencing their quality of life. This empirical research through spearmans rank correlation tried to establish the relationship between macro-economic indicators with the quality of life parameters as perceived by people. The study was conducted in Mumbai, and its suburban areas .with a sample of 850 respondents taken through structured questionnaire, during 2012-13. It was observed from A. T. Kearneys GRDI report that India was ranking between first five positions, consistently in terms of Modern Trade Retail Business since 2000. The managerial implication of the study highlights the association of quantitative economic development with larger aspect of human development, for the policy makers to understand the various areas which needs to be taken care to cater towards revitalizing the development of the nation