The ability of firms to innovate has become a cornerstone in the economy of many developed and developing countries. The performance of firms is not exclusively linked to their internal capability. Other external factors, such as technology, globalisation of the market, knowledge, and evolving approaches to value offering, force them to constantly change their approaches to wealth creation. Innovation is vital for firms’ competitive advantage. Hence, a firm with higher innovation prosperity compared to its rivals has a crucial advantage that enables it to compete in local and global markets. However, innovation is a complex phenomenon, and a holistic view is required for a deep understanding of the factors that influence firms’ innovation performance. Day after day, markets are becoming more dynamic, increasing the necessity to understand how such momentum affects innovation performance. With a focus on how they develop strategic routines that enhance their assessment of opportunities and resource-configuration capabilities, firms may better align their products and services with market demands. Using state-of-the-art dynamic-capability theory, this research highlights the routines of firms that influence their abilities to acquire and multiply knowledge and technology consistent with market status, leading to more novel and successful innovative products and processes as well as better economic advantage. This research aims to provide a framework that comprises factors that may influence Saudi firms’ innovation performance. Furthermore, the research aim attempts to understand the impact of information technology on firms’ innovation performance. The research is based on survey data from 203 Saudi firms registered at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The empirical results suggest that firms may enhance their ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit knowledge by increasing their breadth of knowledge sources and by internationalizing their searching activities for knowledge and skills. Moreover, both explorative and exploitative innovation strategies, although paradoxes, are significant to increasing firms’ overall innovative performance. Mutually, information technology (IT) plays a critical role in complementing firms’ dynamic capabilities through better provision of IT infrastructure, while IT effectiveness and IT flexibility are vital to increasing firms’ abilities to maintain both long-term and short-term competitiveness.

The 21st century is the time for network economic with hyper-competition. The well-developed information technology makes information flow smoothly among suppliers, retailers, competitors, and entrants. Thus, that lowers the barrier for entry, imitation, and then increases the difficulty in long-term competitive advantage. Under such circumstances, Teece et al. (1994) published the Dynamic Capabilities Theory, DCT, for the incomplete description of former competitive strategies such as Competitive Forces, Strategic Conflict, and Resource-Based Theory (RBT). DCT is referred to a firm¡¦s capabilities to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments. The purpose of this study is to apply the absorptive capabilities to investigate the affecting factors of organizations¡¦ dynamic capabilities from the knowledge management perspective. In addition, the path-dependence of absorptive capabilities is discussed and verified in this study as well. The empirical results show that absorptive capabilities have strong influence on organizations¡¦ dynamic capabilities and the path-dependence of absorptive capabilities is supported in this study. From the academic application, the results of this study provide the research model of absorptive capabilities and dynamic capabilities to the following researchers who are interested in these topics. And, from the practice implication, firms can adopt this results and suggestion of this study to build dynamic capabilities throuth knowledge absorption.

Black Americans experience poverty at disproportionately high rates that are concerning both because of the perils of poverty as well as the belief that one’s race should not affect one’s opportunities in life. This paper extends the Capability Approach and argues that basic needs play an important economic role in providing people with a minimum level of opportunity that allows them to avoid poverty. Using MSA-level data on basic needs access and poverty rates, this paper finds that increasing rates of homeownership, high school graduation, and car access as well as decreasing rates of disability are all significantly associated with lower poverty rates for Black Americans. However, the empirical results also show that higher rates of high school graduation and car access for White populations are associated with higher rates of Black poverty, likely due to spillover effects in the labor market that crowd out Black workers.

acase@tulane.edu / Abstract This research seeks to further the understanding of female microentrepreneurship as it is conceptualized and applied to initiatives that supporting women’s economic and social empowerment. Social norms, institutional discrimination, and gender constraints define the activities and persons that are entrepreneurial, thereby affecting female microenterprise motivations, characteristics, and success. In addition, contemporary microenterprise initiatives draw on women’s stereotypical caret-taking roles to justify their economic development, while female microenterprises remain distinguishable by their informality, small size, and low returns. The enterprises created through resource allocation programs, such as microcredit, are largely informal and home-based subsistence enterprises that offer a low-quality employment option to women and fail to challenge or expand existing gender constraints. Data from focus group participants and analysis of survey responses from 487 female microentrepreneurs in Kandy, Sri Lanka are used to compare female microentrepreneurial success in terms of both financial and empowerment outcomes. A novel conceptualization of the capabilities approach is presented and utilized to build an original analytical framework that redefines success in terms of women’s capabilities: whether female microentrepreneurship expands what they can be and do. An iterative approach to defining success outcomes establishes that adding empowerment indicators to definitions of success highlight different gender constraints to female microentrepreneurship than purely financial measures. Group differences provide an analysis of the gender constraints that are more prevalent among those meeting compound definitions of success and those who do not. A logistic regression of gender constraints, including personal household, and business characteristics, and women’s capabilities (as a proxy for empowerment), determines the impact of each constraint on the likelihood of being successful. The results suggest that, at the microenterprise level, female entrepreneurs are constrained by social and household norms that reduce their capabilities and enterprise success. Women’s hybrid entrepreneurial motivations, driven by their own economic and household considerations rather than outcomes desired by development initiatives, are established as offering fertile ground for future research, specifically regarding the impact of the household context. It is suggested that the motivations are distinct from those of women operating larger SMEs and require specific attention / 1 / Melissa E Langworthy

The Sara Communication Initiative (SCI), a girls intervention programme, was introduced by the Forum for African Women Educationalists in Malawi (FAWEMA), to address girls low enrolment and high dropout from school. NORAD and UNICEF initially funded the SCI. FAWEMA is currently the custodian of the SCI in Malawi. <p>The purpose of this study was to determine stakeholder perceptions of the extent to which the social capital and capabilities of girls had been enhanced through the Sara Communication Initiative (SCI) in the two selected rural school communities of Chikwawa district. Two theoretical frameworks were utilized, Nussbaum (2001) and Sens (1999) capability development model and the concept of social capital theory based on Putnam (2000) and Coleman (1998). <p>A case study using mixed methods was used to examine the two cases. Data collection consisted of questionnaires, focus groups, structured interviews, document analysis and class observations. The study engaged 59 students, 30 students from Eastern school and 29 students from Southern school. Parents focus groups were attended by a total of 41 parents, 21 at Eastern school and 20 at Southern school. The researcher also interviewed four teachers, two from each school, as well as the National Coordinator for FAWEMA. Class observations took place at both venues and at the junior and senior primary school levels.<p>Descriptive data analysis was conducted using an SPSS package. Data from the focus group discussions were taped, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.<p>From the data it was concluded that comic books were an integral part of the SCI meetings and they highlighted some major challenges that girls experienced. T-shirts were also powerful in conveying SCI messages, apart from providing decent clothing for needy students. The study noted that there were more girls, than boys participating in the SCI.<p>In addition, it was found that basic and internal capabilities were limited for girls. As a result, although many girls enrolled in school, at the beginning of the school year the enrolment of girls dropped off sharply. The reasons for girls dropping out of school included heavy workload, poverty, sexual harassment, early pregnancies, early marriages, lack of motivation, lack of encouragement, and lack of female role models. In regard to external conditions, which comprise the material and institutional environments, the findings of this study were that although the family, the school, and development agencies assisted in providing some resources for the pupils to enable them to stay in school the provisions were not adequate.<p>As well, the study found that some tenets of social capital were evident. Social networks were apparent between parents/guardians and their children/wards, teachers and pupils, teachers and parents, female pupils and the UNICEF mothers groups, and the development committees. Institutional trust appeared to be lacking in some cases. There was a lack of trust of male teachers and older schoolboys by the parents because there were no female role models for the girls at the schools. Organizations in the form of development agencies were also considered an important resource to the two communities. <p>Finally, it was found that the Sen Capabilities Model had some limits to its applicability in a developing country. In addition, it was concluded that while the SCI enhanced the social capital for girls, in all likelihood the community members require attitudinal and cultural change.

The Sara Communication Initiative (SCI), a girls intervention programme, was introduced by the Forum for African Women Educationalists in Malawi (FAWEMA), to address girls low enrolment and high dropout from school. NORAD and UNICEF initially funded the SCI. FAWEMA is currently the custodian of the SCI in Malawi. <p>The purpose of this study was to determine stakeholder perceptions of the extent to which the social capital and capabilities of girls had been enhanced through the Sara Communication Initiative (SCI) in the two selected rural school communities of Chikwawa district. Two theoretical frameworks were utilized, Nussbaum (2001) and Sens (1999) capability development model and the concept of social capital theory based on Putnam (2000) and Coleman (1998). <p>A case study using mixed methods was used to examine the two cases. Data collection consisted of questionnaires, focus groups, structured interviews, document analysis and class observations. The study engaged 59 students, 30 students from Eastern school and 29 students from Southern school. Parents focus groups were attended by a total of 41 parents, 21 at Eastern school and 20 at Southern school. The researcher also interviewed four teachers, two from each school, as well as the National Coordinator for FAWEMA. Class observations took place at both venues and at the junior and senior primary school levels.<p>Descriptive data analysis was conducted using an SPSS package. Data from the focus group discussions were taped, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.<p>From the data it was concluded that comic books were an integral part of the SCI meetings and they highlighted some major challenges that girls experienced. T-shirts were also powerful in conveying SCI messages, apart from providing decent clothing for needy students. The study noted that there were more girls, than boys participating in the SCI.<p>In addition, it was found that basic and internal capabilities were limited for girls. As a result, although many girls enrolled in school, at the beginning of the school year the enrolment of girls dropped off sharply. The reasons for girls dropping out of school included heavy workload, poverty, sexual harassment, early pregnancies, early marriages, lack of motivation, lack of encouragement, and lack of female role models. In regard to external conditions, which comprise the material and institutional environments, the findings of this study were that although the family, the school, and development agencies assisted in providing some resources for the pupils to enable them to stay in school the provisions were not adequate.<p>As well, the study found that some tenets of social capital were evident. Social networks were apparent between parents/guardians and their children/wards, teachers and pupils, teachers and parents, female pupils and the UNICEF mothers groups, and the development committees. Institutional trust appeared to be lacking in some cases. There was a lack of trust of male teachers and older schoolboys by the parents because there were no female role models for the girls at the schools. Organizations in the form of development agencies were also considered an important resource to the two communities. <p>Finally, it was found that the Sen Capabilities Model had some limits to its applicability in a developing country. In addition, it was concluded that while the SCI enhanced the social capital for girls, in all likelihood the community members require attitudinal and cultural change.

This essay is an ideographic study over the capacity of high school students to use the Internet with source criticism, and their attitudes towards this media. It’s a qualitative study whose main purpose is to seek out how the students reflect upon the problems facing them when searching facts and information over the internet.The focus group is six 18 year old high school students, who are studying in a normal sized town in the middle of Sweden, and are about to finish their studies in the program for social sciences. The study was made through interviews, one on one with the students,The results of the analysis have shown that even if students not necessarily use a pre meditated method when searching for information over the internet, they do have a basic understanding of the matter, especially concerning the nature of the source, who published it and why. Not all students made any thorough comparison with other, already established media, such as TV or books, but the analysis made it clear that they more or less deliberately saw the established media as more trustworthy in general. Individuals publishing on the internet, such as bloggers and Wikipedia, are seen with the utmost skepticism while public institutions such as universities and public service TV, are generally trusted as being honest and objective, also when publishing on the internet.

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) innovations: Internet-enabled commerce (I-commerce), mobile commerce (M-commerce) and ubiquitous commerce (U-commerce) have posed technological and organizational changes. This study develops an E-commerce innovation hypercube model to investigate these innovations and the impact of the innovations on the E-commerce stakeholders¡Ð E-businesses, providers, customers, and complementors. The results indicate that the innovation from I-commerce to M-commerce is architectural for customers and E-businesses, incremental for providers, but disruptive for complementors. The innovation from M-commerce to U-commerce is modular to customers, architectural to complementors, and disruptive to E-businesses and providers. Thereafter, several core dynamic capabilities that necessary for E-business transformation from I-commerce to M-commerce and from M-commerce to U-commerce and the practical indicators in developing these dynamic capabilities are suggested, respectively.

In what follows, I engage in a wide-ranging discussion that captures the components of a metric of egalitarian justice (that is, the nature of the principles that specify what we aim to distribute equally) best designed to promote a minimally just state of affairs for not only, but principally, people with disabilities. First, I examine precisely what it is we mean when we refer to “disability”. I do this to ensure we have adequately deliberated over, and subsequently identified, the particular group of individuals for whom we aim to promote justice. I conclude this section by endorsing the so-called ‘interactional model’ of disability, and denying the accuracy of the ‘social model’. Second, I argue that while a focus on the capabilities approach can help provide us with an answer to the currency question that most closely approximates justice for the disabled, a minimally just state of affairs would nevertheless, fail to materialize should we opt to endorse such a conception of egalitarian justice. I point to the inability of the capabilities approach to: i) accurately identify and calculate degrees of need or injustice; ii) be adequately sensitive to the diverse natural endowments when assessing need; iii) acknowledge the special moral importance of health as well as various other functionings. Finally, I conclude that a focus on first and foremost, condition, rather than opportunity, can better weather the challenges I present against a capabilities framework. More specifically, I suspect that a focus on both material conditions, and substantive freedoms or opportunities, is necessary to provide an adequate minimal conception of justice. I will argue that there are a set of material conditions that are lexically prior to a group of opportunities that must also be afforded within a conception of justice, and that merely providing the opportunities for these conditions is inadequate. In other words, I suggest that there are indeed, some functionings that must be assured within a minimal conception of justice, regardless of the choices exercised surrounding the securing of those functionings. / Thesis (Ph.D, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2012-03-14 12:43:02.176

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