Narrow Results

Entrepreneurial and business skills are generally considered key to microbusiness success, hence to Microfinance Institution (MFI) clients’ loan repayment as well. However, empirical evidence is largely lacking, and where present, it is inconclusive on the importance of these skills for microfinance success. The present paper uses objective MFI loan repayment data to empirically test whether loan repayment rates positively correlate with self-evaluations on entrepreneurial and business skills of loan clients. A survey was conducted among 235 loan clients of uniCredit — an MFI in Ghana. We establish that MFI clients’ self-evaluation of their entrepreneurial and business skills are not related to their loan repayment rates. However, we observe that women repay their loans better than do male microbusiness entrepreneurs, and loan repayment was also better for those entrepreneurs with more than 15 years of business experience.

This paper discusses a design error case in a building project in Nepal, where the designer made the wrong assumptions in roof treatment work for waterproofing as well as for heat insulation purposes. Due to the design error, the project had faced profound roof leakage problems over 6000 sq. meters building area. The worst case was that the instructors and the students had to conduct training programs under the leaking roofs. Water proofing polymer not applied directly over concrete slab top and use of heavy concrete block as a heat insulation material were found to be the technical causes of roof leakage. However, carelessness from designer and supervisors also was profound for the leakage. The paper concludes with the lessons to be learned from the problem.

Successful global sourcing requires a thorough understanding of the myriad of issues and challenges that both client and vendor companies have to navigate through. For a parsimonious comprehension of these issues, dividing hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of tasks that have to be executed from the conception of global sourcing as a corporate strategy to sustaining a successful ongoing relationship into few stages goes a long way. Towards this goal, both researchers and practitioners have divided global sourcing into 5–10 stages depending on the level of detail desired. This chapter breaks down global sourcing into seven stages: (i) decision to source; (ii) identifications of functions and prospective vendors; (iii) analysis of vendor proposals and vendor selection; (iv) contract negotiation and finalization; (v) implementation (vi) ongoing management; and (vii) completion and review for future.