A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management (ENVC) Johannesburg, 2017 / The ability of immigrants to craft successful livelihoods in the harsh economic climate that seems to overwhelm the local population has led to them being blamed for the unfortunate plight of South Africa’s poor, with the result that there has been targeted violence on immigrants in recent years. Informal sector entrepreneurship is at the heart of this with immigrants said to be outperforming local entrepreneurs, and taking away the last option of earning an income. Entrepreneurship is quoted as the only lasting solution to the poverty and unemployment that plagues developing countries. The ability of immigrants to succeed in a sector that is considered unproductive is worth investigating. In this study, cross sectional data is used to compare the antecedents of Entrepreneurial Performance between foreign Immigrants and South Africans. The findings are that, while both group’s performance is affected by Entrepreneurial Action; South African performance is driven mainly by deprivation, a factor that has no effect on immigrants. This puts the recent explosive response of local entrepreneurs to immigrant competition into perspective, and necessitates interventions that will, not only curb further xenophobic violence, but up-skill local entrepreneurs and enable them to make a living out of informal sector entrepreneurship. Contrary to popular belief, none of the population’s performance was linked to Social Capital. There is no use allowing people into the country only to stifle their ability to sustain themselves. Immigrant Entrepreneurship is a reality that South Africa needs to embrace. / MT2017

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management specialising in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation Johannesburg, 2016 / The establishment and growth of informal traders in South Africa have been attributed with a considerable need and desire for these informal economies to achieve economic growth, create sustainable entrepreneurial opportunities, assist with employment opportunities, etc. A number of factors have an impact on how these informal traders can become competitive and formalised, and one of these enablers is the influence of ICT interventions by informal economies to improve business performance. The purpose of this research was to establish the perceived relationship between the influence of ICT usage by informal traders and the perceived impact on business performance. The intended objective was to assess whether the perception of ICT adoption by informal traders had a positive or negative business performance outcome. The research methodology adopted was a quantitative approach, which was guided by a positivist paradigm. The population targeted were informal traders in the Sandton region of Johannesburg, South Africa. A questionnaire was distributed to gather data. The influence of ICT and the perceived impact within informal traders in the Sandton region revealed some findings consistent with existing literature. It was the overall accepted perception that ICT adoption has a perceived positive impact on business performance, including but not limited to market share, products, and customer service, as measured in the research. A deeper analysis is required to understand why the respondents in the research overwhelmingly state that the influence of ICT adoption has a perceived positive impact on performance, market share, and product and customer service. / MT2016

Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities, at the University of the Witwatersrand, July 2017 / Just over ten years ago on night of the 28th of August 2006, angry mobs took to the streets of Masiphumelele township outside Fish Hoek, near Cape Town, and attacked and looted foreign national spaza shops in the neighbourhood. The attacks shocked the city, and prompted the provincial government to initiate an intervention to address the underlying causes of the violence. The outcome comprised an agreement between foreign national and South African spaza shopkeepers that permitted foreign nationals to return on condition that they did not open any new shops in the township. These mediation efforts comprised the beginning of many governance interventions in Cape Town and across the country that were aimed at curtailing foreign national spaza shops in South Africa. This thesis examines formal and informal attempts to govern foreign national spaza shops in South Africa, and seeks to understand what they reveal about the nature of politics in South Africa, as a postcolonial and developing country. In doing so it locates itself in the theoretical framework of law and society, as it examines legal phenomena from a social science perspective. Its findings are based on case study methodology involving qualitative interviews with key participants and stakeholders, as well as document collection, participant observation, and media reports. The research finds that many governance actors’ anxieties towards foreign national spaza shops relate less to shopkeepers’ particular activities and more to South African traders’ abilities to incite local socio-economic discontent against these shops, and thereby threaten political establishments. However, governance interventions rarely unfolded as intended due to resistance by competing interest groups who sought to advance their private economic concerns rather than public and political rights. This invokes features of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben’s theories of the ‘social’ or ‘biopolitics’, which argue that the entry of economic concerns into the political sphere is characteristic of the modern age. The thesis therefore reflects on Arendt, Foucault and Agamben’s theories in assessing what governance efforts reveal about the nature of South Africa’s political sphere. It finds that the social realm in South Africa differs from their accounts in two significant respects. First, the social sphere is conflicted between various economic goals – with parties seeking to foster basic life and sustenance, as well as to advance the emancipation of citizens from the colonial legacies of apartheid through economic mobility and opportunity. This makes finding a path to advance overall economic advancement in the country more difficult and contentious. / XL2018

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2016 / Financial Inclusion seeks to overcome the friction that hinders markets from expanding access and use of formal financial products and services to a broad number of people. Despite the significant policy efforts and increased presence of formal financial service providers, the Ugandan economy still bears low levels of financial inclusion, especially in the rural areas. The finance growth and decision-behaviour theories substantiate the importance of understanding the psychological processes underlying observed individual judgments or choices regarding the use of formal financial services. Using Sen’s capability approach, this study examined the personal and societal capabilities that influence financial inclusion of individual financial consumers. Specifically, this study assessed whether the capabilities an individual possessed actually contributed towards their likelihood of financial inclusion. The hypothesized study relationships with financial inclusion were realized, following a positivist and quantitative approach using a cross sectional research design. The sample of 400 individuals to whom the survey questionnaire was delivered were drawn from two distinct regions of Central and Northern Uganda. The two regions represented varying levels of financial inclusion - high inclusion (urban Central) and low inclusion (rural Northern). In this study, besides the traditional regression models, structural equation modelling using Analysis of Moments (AMOS), were used to establish the causal relationships between the hypothesized study variables. The study results revealed that financial self-efficacy, financial literacy, social networks and the interaction of the personal and societal capabilities significantly contributed to an individual’s financial inclusion across the two regions. The results further revealed that the personal and societal capabilities independently, and when combined, contribute towards an individual’s financial self-efficacy. Through an assessment of the mediation effect, this study demonstrated how financial self-efficacy can boost individuals to confidently undertake financial tasks and decisions and consequently, financial inclusion in relation to their capabilities, respectively. The results provide support to Sen’s capability theory as a tool for explaining financial inclusion from a demand side perspective within the Ugandan context. / GR2018

This research project focused on understanding the narratives of women informal street traders in Warwick Junction, Durban. This is a diverse and vibrant trading community and the five women interviewed have been working in the area for many years. This means that these research participants offer a unique window in on the intersections between individual (psychological) realities and historical, sociopolitical and economic life. The project adopted a narrative approach, analyzing the ways in which 1) particular incident narratives (PINs) within each life narrative reflect key aspects of the life story and draw on narrative principles to convey this; 2) the ways in which narratives are interactively constructed between the researcher and participants in the interview situation; and 3) the relational construction of individual lives in networks of communities. The results highlighted the inherently interwoven nature of identity construction between individuals and the communities with which they associate. The overarching factors of poverty, gender and trauma were shown, in all three levels of analysis, as key elements that tied the women together through relationships of shared experiences. The stories that the women chose to share were strongly influenced by the presence and responses of the interviewer and the researcher and thus, the ways in which power, entrenched in history and culture, influenced the narratives became most evident. The ways in which the women connect and disconnect with relational others was shown to influence their sense of belonging within various communities, both real and imagined. This contributed to the women’s development of resilience and salient identities as cohesive communities were shown to be buffers against adversity and influencers in the construction of identity.

The private sector in developing countries plays a key role in job-creation and is central to economic development and poverty alleviation. Governments around the world use various policies and regulations targeting firms in an attempt to foster growth. This dissertation focuses on the interplay between government policies, firm behavior, and labor markets in India. In Chapter 1, I study the impact of a location-based tax incentive scheme in India. Location-based policies that target particular geographic regions are widely used by governments, but there have been few rigorous evaluations of their causal impacts especially in the context of developing countries. Using aggregated and firm-level panel data, I find large increases in employment, total output, fixed capital, and the number of firms as a result of the program. These increases are due to both the growth of existing firms as well as the entry of new firms. There is supporting evidence that the new firms entering the treated regions are larger and more productive. I find no evidence for relocation of firms or spillovers in industrial activity between treatment and control areas. Finally, using data from household surveys, I show that wages of workers rise but find no changes in housing rents or migration across the treated and control regions. My results therefore suggest that the policy increased welfare, and I also conclude that the policy was cost-effective. This provides support for place-based policies to correct for regional economic disparities, especially in settings with low labor mobility. In the next chapter, I focus on the effects of a place-based policy on informal firms. The informal sector in India is a major component of economic activity covering more than 80% of the workforce. More often than not, the informal sector is beyond the ambit of tax authorities, hurting public finances in India. In Chapter 2, I study the impact of the federally financed location-based tax incentive scheme (studied in Chapter 1) on informal firms in India. Using a difference-in-differences approach with bordering districts, neighboring states, and major states as control groups, I find no evidence for increases in employment, total output, gross value added, and registration status for informal firms on average. However, separating informal firms into those that do not hire regular workers (Own Account Manufacturing Enterprises) and those that hire workers (Non-directory manufacturing enterprises/Directory Manufacturing Enterprises) reveals heterogeneous effects. I find that the policy change led to a higher likelihood of registration by NDME/DMEs but no effect on OAMEs. The policy change did not impact the size of these different kinds of firms. This chapter provides suggestive evidence that tax-exemption schemes can be a useful policy tool to incentivize informal firms to register. In Chapter 3, I revisit the contentious labor laws in India and their effects on hiring decisions of firms faced with demand shocks. Labor regulations in India differ by states and apply differently across types of laborers. The most restrictive laws make it harder to fire permanent workers for firms. However, these laws do not apply to workers hired through contractors (contract workers). Using firm-level data from India, I find that compared to firms in flexible labor regulations, those in more restrictive labor regimes hire more contract workers as a response to transitory local demand shocks. I find no differential response in hiring of permanent workers by firms faced with these shocks. This suggests that firms circumvent labor laws by hiring workers indirectly through contractors in the face of economic fluctuations.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-118). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 244-255).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-118). Also available on the Internet.