Entrepreneurship & Organization Management

Knowledge management is recently emerged field concerned with creating, sharing and applying intellectual asset reside in human mind “knowledge”. Literature on knowledge management processes is more focused on organizational context rather than individual. As individual human being is central source for holding, sharing and applying knowledge so it is important to understand knowledge processes at individual level in social context along with organizational. This paper aims to define the role of individual as knowledge holder identity at three levels: personal identity, role identity and social identity in social context and to examine the important elements associated with knowledge creation and his behavior toward knowledge sharing and applying. This paper evaluates the factors influencing the behavior of an individual while he is involved in knowledge processes (creation, sharing and application of knowledge) and categorized these factors into three main categories: personal factors, social factors and economic factors. Author developed a framework to present the knowledge processes of individual knowledge holder identity and showed the effect of above factors on different processes of knowledge and also evaluated the impact of different identities on knowledge holder individual.

Publicly traded companies finance their business activities through a combination of debt and equity with each requiring a different rate of return. While the providers of debt receive their return in form of interest payments, providers of equity capital receive a return based on the company’s risk in excess of the market rate of return in form of dividend payments or increases in stock price. No matter the source of the company’s capital, whether stemming from leverage, equity or retained earnings from operations, it is commonly used for funding current operations or growth opportunities to expand existing business or tap into new markets.

Purpose: The purpose of article is explore the findings of a research on management of professional and pedagogical competency development for lecturers at the faculty of teaching and educational sciences at three private universities in the Eastern region of West Java, Indonesia.
Findings and discussion: A total of three deans, three heads of study program and nine lecturers of three private universities described the policies regarding the management of competency development for lecturers at their institutions. This paper discusses how policy, implementation and results are obtained within the framework of the management of pedagogical and professional competency development. Findings show that in general three faculties have had such a program in the forms of seminars on methods and techniques of teaching and learning, coaching activities and enabling lecturers in various scientific activities like symposium, workshops, and scientific publications in national and international journals. However, the program is characterized very temporary, unsustainable and incidental. In addition, the three institutions haven’t defined with the standardized measurement to measure the development of lecturer’s competence. Despite some weaknesses in general the three institutions have shown the results of the program i.e., the increasing number of lecturers who have been certified, the rising of students’ GPA and the number of graduates employed by educational institutions both private and public.
Research implications: In-depth interviews, observation and documentation studies have clearly revealed the typical problems faced by private universities in Indonesia in general and factors that need to be considered in terms of the efforts to develop lecturers’ competency in the faculty of teaching and educational sciences in the future.
Practical implications: The weakness of the development program of lecturer’s competency found this research can be a guidance to develop the competency development program in the future. This research topic becomes a wider area when more researches are conducted. The management of lecturer’s competency development who has not been implemented optimally needs to be improved towards a wider direction. To achieve this requires the involvement and commitment of various parties including researchers in finding the next steps. Thus, there are many other components that can be and need to be investigated.

This research aimed to investigate the prospects and challenges faced by cocoa producers on their supply chain activities in Cameroon, specifically in the Mbam division in the centre region of Cameroon. More particularly the study intended to identify the supply chain activities effectively practiced by cocoa farmers in the Mbam, to examine the challenges they face in their supply activities and to propose some opportunities to reverse these supply chain challenges. A sample of 167 Cameroonian cocoa farmers from the Mbam was randomly selected to take part to this research. The resultant data were subsequently analysed using descriptive statistics, as well as the Likert scale analysis. The results of this research found out that, the few supply chain management activities practiced by cocoa producers of the Mbam were warehousing, transportation, packaging, and inventory which again were found to be poorly practiced and managed. The results also indicated that, the challenges faced by cocoa producers in their supply chain activities were real and were challenging to the producers and their production. Some of the main findings of this research concerning these challenges included; lack of a bridge to connect certain communities, inadequate warehousing, poor infrastructures like the absence of roads, poor storage, lack of knowledge on inventory management and others. The research ended investigating some opportunities that could have been adopted to minimise these supply chain activities challenges and thus improve the working conditions and logistics of the cocoa producers of the Mbam. Thus the research made some recommendations to the government, to the Mbam cocoa producers as well as to the other stakeholders intervening in that field.

The respect of employment contracts had always been a measure concern in both public and private organizations. That’s why, this research sought to find out the level of employees’ awareness of labour regulations, to investigate its level of implementation and respect and to examine the challenges hindering its effective implementation. A descriptive survey design was adopted, with the use of a multi-stage sampling techniques (purposive, stratified and convenient) to select participants. Structured questionnaire, interviews and documentary review were employed to obtain primary and secondary data. A sample size of 320 respondents was used. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics with simple percentages and frequencies. The findings showed that, employees are aware of Labour laws and regulations, while the level of effectiveness of employment contracts is low, and lastly, there are some challenge hindering the effective implementing of Labour regulations, amongst which the most prominent was the absence of labour control. The study concluded that, labour laws are a roadmap for employees and employers within a work place, and its understanding to both players is a necessary priority. The study recommended that, the policy makers should monitor the effective implementation of Labour regulations and that more trade unions should get involved in creating employees’ awareness.

This study had as objectives:

• To examine the training practices of the selected enterprises as concerns its technicians

• To assess the impact of training on the performance of technicians within these enterprises

• To investigate the factors hindering training and development of technicians within the same enterprises

The study used a multi-stage sampling techniques involving purposive, stratified and simple random sampling to identify participants from whom information had to be collected through the use of questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions. The study limited respondents to include only technicians who handled heavy equipment repairs and out of a total of 245 technicians in the mechanic section of these enterprises, 120 of them were the target for this study. However, due to unavailability of some staff for reasons of other duties, the sample size dropped to 92 technicians which were still found significant enough to represent the study population. This work adopted a case study design in the sense that, it narrowed its focus to a particular sector within selected companies and tried to describe it deeply. Findings from the study showed that, training practices at these enterprises for its technicians is not very inclusive of most technicians with low level of education. However, further findings still revealed that, training provided to a few staff that had undergone the activity was very effective as it resulted to improved work performance for the trainees. Additional findings also divulged that, there are a lot of hindrances to the training and development of technicians within the selected enterprises because many of them had been trained throughout their period of work so far. Some of these hindrances include; inadequate budget, lack of management support for training, lack of equipment, fear of career development and favouritism. It was therefore recommended for management to fully support training and address the identified constraints to training so as to ensure many more technicians are involved in training and therefore make technicians very effective and more confident in work performance.