Abstract International brands are experiencing a shift of power in which the communication of a brand is in the hands of everyone in the era of social media. Word-of-mouth travels fast, and in order to reach audiences in a more genuine, authentic manner influencers are used as intermediaries to communicate brand messages, an action which could be described as authentic branded communication. This research focuses on paid influencers, i.e. those chosen by the brand and often paid in monetary terms, focusing on the direct communication of influencers via Instagram. The research questions revolve around how influencers can be used to communicate international brands, and how do they communicate a more authentic and personal international brand. International brands have the possibility to reach international audiences via international influencers, i.e. having a variety of influencers from a variety of countries or influencers that have international presence. I argue that ultimately, influencers are selling their already existing audience and themselves to brands, an action that has been practiced throughout time: selling attention gained to third parties. International brands control the content to a degree, i.e. by controlling the hashtags influencers use, but the more genuine aspect is visible in the language used and stories told by an influencer in their posts, for example posting in their native tongue and telling about their persona. The concept of personal brand is connected with influencer communication, as being an influencer is being oneself and knowing how to communicate oneself to the audiences, many influencers thus create a person brand of their own. International brands are thus utilising influencers as intermediaries and borrowing their persona, account and audiences. Glocalisation is achieved by using international, universal hashtags (global) together with native language of influencers (local).

Poverty has long been a developmental challenge in the Global South in general and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Consequently, over recent decades different strategies and programmes such as the Millennium Development Goals have been employed to reduce poverty and to improve the quality of people’s lives. This is very much the case in Ghana, where major strides have towards reducing poverty. Nevertheless, the three northern regions (Northern, Upper East and Upper West) of the country have actually experienced a deteriorating situation with the proportion of people living in poverty increasing. In short, poverty remains an obstacle to development in rural northern Ghana. Significantly, entrepreneurship has been proposed by some as an alternative route to rural poverty alleviation. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to examine critically the extent to which communities in rural northern Ghana can become entrepreneurial as a basis for facilitating poverty reduction in the regions. Having contextualised the study within a review of development, poverty and, in particular, entrepreneurship, the thesis explores the entrepreneurial ‘environment’ of rural northern Ghana and the entrepreneurial potential of rural communities in the regions as well as assessing the entrepreneurial human and social capitals possessed by those communities. Overall, this provides a holistic and critical assessment of the opportunities for and barriers to rural entrepreneurship in rural northern Ghana. The study adopts a process of qualitative enquiry, using a multiple-case approach to investigate the problem within broader and distinctive rural locations. Within each case, data were gathered at both district and community levels, employing both focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews. The data collection involved translations and a Translation moderation and mediation process – termed the TMM model – was developed to ensure the quality and rigour of the interview transcripts. The findings from the research conclude that poverty is endemic within the study communities. Nevertheless, it was identified that these communities possess potential human, social, cultural and natural capitals that provide a basis for developing entrepreneurship, as well as opportunities for specific entrepreneurial activities which may contribute to reducing poverty in the communities. However, the research found that limited infrastructure may hinder the entrepreneurial process and, as such, rural entrepreneurship in the communities will be a challenging task. Therefore, for successful rural entrepreneurship in rural northern, infrastructure is a critical issue.

Emerging markets are contributing more to the global economy’s growth. This has attracted multinational manufacturing and service firms to these markets. This research investigated whether the subsidiaries of service multinationals outperform those of manufacturing service multinationals in emerging markets. The research identified 430 listed service multinational subsidiaries and 359 listed manufacturing subsidiaries currently operating in 27 emerging markets. The subsidiaries performance was analysed using the Shapiro Wilk’s test for normality and the Mann-Whitney test. In addition to this, the research ran 10 multiple regression models to test the impact of country competitiveness factors on subsidiary performance. The findings show that service multinationals’ subsidiaries outperform manufacturing multinationals subsidiaries. Additionally the findings show that manufacturing multinationals subsidiaries have developed capabilities better suited to minimising the impact of the emerging market environment on their performance. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / mngibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Motivation for this research was driven by the fact that even though telecommunications is regarded as the primary sector driving overall infrastructure development in emerging economies, it is acknowledged that the area of telecommunications internationalisation is relatively new. The MTN Group’s internationalisation strategy on the African continent was used as the object of study. Drawbacks to traditional theories were explored in terms of fast-paced internationalisation. A conceptual framework (figure 2.1) was created from loosely-held concepts extracted from the literature review. Qualitative data analysis of the in-depth interviews conducted with 15 respondents in executive and senior roles, revealed a validation of the constructs in the conceptual framework as factors influencing MTN’s internationalisation strategy. The conceptual framework that emerged from the findings was found to represent an integrated view of the dynamism in which micro (entry mode, entry timing, firm size, and entrepreneurial proclivity) and macro (institutional development, culture, and country of origin effects) level constructs simultaneously influenced MTN’s rapid internationalisation on the African continent. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This research identifies modes of market entry and strategies adopted by South African companies doing business in Tanzania. Data was collected through one-onone semi-structured interviews with South African company executives in banking, retail, manufacturing, financial services, and hospitality and engineering construction sectors. The study found that the mode of market entry was related to the degree of commitment of resources irrespective of the industry sector. The mode of market entry for the banking sector was influenced by the degree of politicisation as this is highly regulated. Acquiring state owned firms in privatisation partnership with government had the obvious advantage of being close to the pulse of policy thinking. Business in Tanzania thrived on relationships, partnering with locals using joint ventures or acquisition as modes of market entry mitigated risk. Greenfield investments in the retail sector were largely unsuccessful due to a lack of knowledge about retail supermarkets by locals, a fragmented sector and fierce informal market competition. Tanzania is as an entry point into the wider EAC that includes Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Malawi and Sudan. Regionalism has resulted in significant gains for SA companies in Tanzania. Operational challenges in Tanzania were similar with what the literature proposes on emerging market economies: lack of skills, exchange rate volatility, corruption, regulatory burdens, poor infrastructure, thriving informal markets, and lack of law enforcement, thefts and anti-SA sentiments all adding to the cost of doing business. This study further proposes a model that SA companies can consider as part of their strategic planning process for internationalisation of business in the East African Community. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The main purpose of this research was to establish the critical success factors that impact project success for major projects in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. The motivation was that South African companies were geographically well positioned to expand into this region which holds some of the world’s untapped natural resources with potential for high returns. However the business environment presented unique challenges due to lack of institutional capacity, infrastructure and a weak private sector. This resulted in a dominant role of government as well as community concerns in project execution. Sasol’s project, commissioned in 2004, to bring natural gas from Mozambique to South Africa was selected as a case study. The project team, business clients, contractors and independent consultants were interviewed on what were the critical project success factors. The results indicated that the leadership role of the sponsor and an experienced and committed team were critical to project success. The roles of the country manager and the performance of contractors were also highlighted. External to the business organisation were the role of government and the involvement of the community. Government’s role on institutional and physical infrastructure development was highlighted. The importance of alignment of all project stakeholders was emphasised as critical. Further, additional time and resources spent on alignment and the initial planning phase were critical to an efficient implementation phase. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The Namibian community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme has been hailed as the leading wildlife conservation initiative on the African continent. Based on the dual objective of achieving both rural development and nature conservation on communal land, CBNRM has become the principal model for large-scale Western donor-funding for biodiversity conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. Forming local community-based organisations (CBOs) is the essential precondition for rural residents to receive rights over their natural resources. Since the late 1990s, an extensive network of international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has successfully secured substantial funding to support local CBOs in the endeavour to protect and benefit from wildlife. Namibia’s national CBNRM policy explicitly recognises NGOs as key support organisations tasked to help create and strengthen CBOs, build their management capacity and link them to funding sources. Furthermore, they are the principal facilitators of joint-venture tourism partnerships between CBOs and private investors. Tourism, the Holy Grail of Namibian CBNRM, generates approximately 70% of CBO income and as such constitutes a principal livelihood strategy for communal area residents. This thesis explores the implications of substantial, ongoing NGO support to CBO development. Grounded in a critical realist research paradigm, empirical data collection has been driven by the quest to uncover and explain the underlying mechanisms that enable and/or constrain the establishment of independent CBOs. This research was motivated by the desire to unpack the Namibian CBNRM success story. It is argued that the often prescribed dichotomy of powerful outsider vs. compliant development receiver, fails to recognise that at local level development intervention more closely resembles ongoing development interaction. A more refined understanding of how NGO support is consumed and negotiated by CBOs is important to further scrutinise the effectiveness of exogenous development. Adopting an overall inductive approach, a case study methodology was chosen to investigate the CBO-NGO exchange relationship. Located in regional tourism hotspots in Kunene and Zambezi Region, two CBOs that have received massive—yet differently structured—NGO support since their inception were purposefully chosen. During two three-month fieldwork periods in 2013 and 2014, multiple sources of qualitative data were collected. The findings indicate that NGO support is highly unequal; systematic inclusion and exclusion of CBOs is mostly determined by their economic potential originating from the occurrence of wildlife. The key exchange modality between CBOs and NGOs is the continuous provision of training, where the latter impart essential knowledge on the former. While NGOs have effectively monopolised the CBNRM service provision, CBOs have simultaneously II devised individual strategies to secure maximum future support. By conceptualising their on-going interaction as a client-provider relationship, the reciprocity of CBO-NGO dependency becomes evident. The heavy promotion of joint-venture tourism partnerships in particular, shows that NGOs rely on success stories to promote the Namibian CBNRM programme, and thus continue to shield “their” CBOs from the associated risks. A key implication of the research findings is that, paradoxically, continued service provision has enabled the development of financially self-sufficient CBOs, while at the same time it has likely encouraged prolonged self-insufficiency by CBOs which have matured into demanding, experienced consumers of rural development projects.

In search for innovation in the global economy, large corporations are striving to become more intrapreneurial. Organizational culture is widely recognized as a source of influence either enabling or impeding intrapreneurship and innovation in organizations, and corporations commonly engage in culture management and transformation programs targeting at developing more intrapreneurship-supportive organizational cultures. However, these programs have demonstrated high failure rates, indicating a lack of understanding of what organizational culture is and how culture creation occurs. The objective of this study was to discover how large corporations can foster intrapreneurship and innovation through cultural transformation, and how organizational culture influences intrapreneurship and innovation. The research was conducted in form of literary review and analysis, combining the literature branches of organizational culture and cultural transformation with those of intrapreneurship and innovation. As a result, integrated models of intrapreneurship within a cultural framework and of transforming organizational culture towards more intrapreneurial were suggested. The model suggests that organizations should aim at developing a culture for change, firstly through providing a sociostructural framework supporting intrapreneurship, and secondly through encouraging certain cultural behaviors with management practices or organizational members acting as change agents. Through mechanisms of producing culture — attributing and renegotiating meaning — the underlying, deepest assumptions are being altered, which is then manifested at the more superficial levels of values and products of behavior. This study integrates two literature branches and proposes integrated models of intrapreneurship in the cultural framework. Further, it provides managerial implications on both strategic and operational level, introducing concepts and a framework for fostering intrapreneurship in organizations. This research calls for empirical data to validate the findings in future research.

This research revolves around two major theoretical topics: international network and international sales. The study aims to combine both distinct research areas in order to understand how changes in the sales network influence the sales strategy of the firm. The focus is hereby on born global companies respectively international new ventures. For this reason a framework is introduced that explains the inherent dynamics between sales network and sales strategy with a cycle model. Hereby it is argued that sales network characteristics have influence on specific dimensions of the sales strategy. The sales strategy itself apparently affects the firm’s performance which in turn is argued to influence the sales network. This framework is further on tested with the help of propositions. The empirical basis is provided by a qualitative single case study that is conducted with observations and interviews. The empirical data shows the influence between sales network characteristics and sales strategy components. Whereas no significant empirical proof can be granted to the introduced framework there is evidence that it should be tested with a bigger sample of firms in order to check its validity. Therefore this study contributes to theory in providing a framework for researching dynamics in sales network and sales strategy context. As is this research combines international network and sales literature it is adding to a more holistic understanding of international business. It is also contributing to managerial knowledge in a way that it adds to an understanding of how the sales environment of a firm influences the sales strategy and what impact is expected on the performance of the company.

Many scholars agree that networks play an important role for company’s internationalization and its speed. International New Ventures (INVs) are among those companies which utilize networks for successful market entry as soon as they are often lacking certain resources and knowledge themselves to which networks can grant access. The goal of the current Master’s Thesis was to analyze the influence of networks on small company’s internationalization in a market specific context — market of industrial auctioneers. The context of the study chosen is not given enough attention by internationalization scholars and, thus, this work deals with a novel topic. Research method chosen for conducting this research was qualitative which allowed using semi-structured interviews as mean of data gathering. At the same time research was structured in a way that primary data was collected through interviewing the case company and it was supported by four interviews with managers of companies operating in auctioning sector. It provided certain reliability of data and lessened the subjectivity of results. Topic of interviews were designed according to the theories covered in the first chapters, however, due to different means of conducting them (face-to-face, phone and email) questions as it is allowed by semi-structured interviews had certain differences, but kept the same pattern. The data received through semi-structured interviews has been analyzed according to separate topics designed in theoretical and methodological parts. The outcomes of the study have proved the high importance of networks within the industrial auctioneers’ market, where reputation and previous recommendations can secure a competitive position in the market. However, even though interviewees claimed that networks play one of the highest roles in the market, they underlined the importance of other factors like advanced technology and new knowledge for success in link building with auctioneers. At the end of the study there were provided managerial implications based on the results of empirical analysis. The main result of the study and its theoretical contribution was a connection of network approach and internationalization of INVs into the context market of industrial auctions which has not been given attention before.