Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / General systems theory provides a conceptual framework for the integration of knowledge from a wide variety of specialized fields. Systems theory serves to synthesize, reconcile, and integrate knowledge making it possible to unify analytical data into broader based theories. By examining various systematic relationships, attention can be focused upon the interrelatedness of organization theory and physical planning. The juxtaposition of these two disciplines within a systems context has particular application in the design of urban settlements in developing countries. The lack of organizational capability and the inability to influence the environment contributes to the continuing cycle of poverty of the urban poor. By structuring and integrating their activities, the poor would be better able to participate in the planning and the implementation of projects which affect their lives. The development of organizational systems can increase the capacity of individuals to change their relationship to the environment to one of greater influence and control. Further, the designs of physical layouts have potential for determining social systems which enhance the idea of interrelatedness. / by Joseph V. Morog. / M.Arch.

Female entrepreneurs contribute significantly to the global economy especially through employment creation, contributing to diversity in entrepreneurship and economic growth. Notwithstanding this contribution, their potential remains considerably unexploited in many countries, evidenced by businesses that underperform those owned by men. Significant research gaps on the subject of female entrepreneurship exist in the literature. To illustrate, the number of studies focusing on women-owned businesses remains significantly fewer than that of studies focusing on businesses owned by men, resulting in little being known about the subject. Another important research gap is the absence of a conceptual model of factors affecting performance of women-owned SMEs in the context of Sub-Saharan African countries. Furthermore, the majority of studies on female entrepreneurship have been done in developed countries, giving rise to theories originating from those contexts and relative lack of knowledge and empirical results in the context of developing countries. Zambia represents a specific case of a developing context where little is known about female entrepreneurs. This research develops and tests a conceptual model of individual level and firm level factors affecting performance in women-owned SMEs in Zambia, drawing on the Competency Approach, Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), and Resource Based View of the firm as the main theoretical foundations. It adopts a mixed method approach implemented in two stages: an exploratory qualitative study (carried out as the initial stage of this research) and a main quantitative study. The study uses the findings of the exploratory qualitative study to refine the conceptual model developed and to provide insights into the quantitative findings. The conceptual model is tested empirically using structural equation modelling with SPSS Amos software. The research makes a new contribution by identifying a new set of entrepreneurial competencies relevant to the Zambian context. It also attempts to integrate two literature streams (i.e. competency approach and entrepreneurial orientation) by providing empirical evidence that the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and firm performance is partially mediated by entrepreneurial orientation. The study also extends the boundaries of knowledge by challenging the applicability of established measures and research approaches originating from developed contexts to non-industrially developed contexts. For example, it provides empirical evidence that the relevance of entrepreneurial competencies in a particular context is contingent on the unique aspects of its business environment. The study also challenges widely accepted knowledge that EO enhances firm performance, and provides empirical evidence for the argument that this relationship is context-specific. It further demonstrates that the individual dimensions of EO may have varying effects on firm performance, suggesting that it is better to view the EO construct as a multidimensional rather than unidimensional construct. This research also extends literature on entrepreneurial competencies by showing that they are strong predictors of firm performance in the current research context, and that formal education and previous entrepreneurship experience contribute to their development.

This dissertation contains three essays in Development Economics. The first two chapters relate to the provision of credit for agricultural production in a developing country. The third chapter explores methodological issues in the measurement of risk aversion using laboratory experiments. Risk aversion has been suggested as a theoretical explanation for credit constraints in agricultural settings in developing countries. Better measures of risk aversion can be used to empirically validate these theories. In Chapter 1 of this dissertation, I study the consequences of the use of credit scoring systems for agricultural lending in developing countries. Credit scoring has become a widespread tool to assess the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers, and has been found to increase efficiency and welfare in many settings. This chapter identifies a shortcoming in existing credit scoring systems that may lead to a market failure in agricultural lending in developing countries: Farmers' scores -- and their access to credit -- decline because of exogenous short-term weather shocks that do not reduce their likelihood of future repayment. I use data on the near universe of formal agricultural loans for coffee production in Colombia to show that excess rainfall shocks cause lower concurrent loan repayment, lower credit scores, and more frequent denial of subsequent loan applications. Then, I draw on the agronomic literature on coffee production and use survey data to show that productivity, income and repayment behavior recover faster from these shocks than farmers' credit histories. In the chapter I argue that these additional loan denials create costs for both farmers and the lender that could be avoided. The results presented in this chapter suggest that incorporating verifiable information on individual level shocks into credit scores would increase the efficiency of credit markets. In Chapter 2, together with Jairo Esquivel, Margarita Gáfaro, Guillermo Otero and Moisés Mahecha, I study the determinants of repayment of loans to a public development bank. In particular, we investigate whether the public nature of a lender affects the repayment behavior of its borrowers. We conducted a field experiment where customers who receive reminder phone calls before a payment installment of loans were randomly assigned to different phone call scripts. The loans are from a public agricultural bank in Colombia. In our main treatment, we include a sentence to remind the customer of the public nature of the lender. We find strong and positive effects on repayment performance: farmers in this treatment have probabilities of ever being overdue and of entering into a period of 30 days past due that are respectively 10\% and 22\% lower than those of farmers treated with the traditional script. We interpret this finding as evidence that farmers are more like to repay their loans because of the public nature of the bank. Results from heterogeneity exercises show that some measures of state presence increase the magnitude of the effect of the public treatment, which suggests that state deterrence is a potential mechanism behind our findings. Furthermore, results from treatments where sentiments of altruism and peer pressure are induced by the script suggest that these motives explain part of the effect that the public nature of the lender has on repayment. In Chapter 3, together with Juan Camilo Cárdenas, Christian Jaramillo and Luis Roberto Martínez, I address a methodological concern common in laboratory experiments. The house-money effect, understood as a person's tendency to be more daring with easily-gotten money, is a behavioral pattern that poses questions about the external validity of experiments in economics. We ran an economic experiment with 122 students, who received an amount of money with which they made risky decisions involving losses and gains; a randomly selected treatment group received the money 21 days in advance and a control group got it the day of the experiment. With our preferred specification, we find a mean CRRA risk aversion coefficient of 0.34, with a standard deviation of 0.09. Furthermore, if subjects in the treatment group spent 35\% of the endowment (as they did, on average) their CRRA risk aversion coefficient is higher than that of the control group by approximately 0.3 standard deviations. We interpret this result as evidence of a small and indirect house money effect operating though the amount of the cash in advance that was actually spent. We conclude in this chapter that the house money effect may play a small role in decisions under uncertainty, especially when involving losses.

The dissertation focuses on the Vietnamese economy and its development during the time period from the end of the World War II until present. Its objective is to map and analyze the process of integration of Vietnam into the regional and global economic structures in the aforementioned time period and identify the main challenges of current Vietnamese economic development. The issues of deficient infrastructure, energy shortage and environmental pollution can all hinder further economic development in terms of trade and investment absorption capacity. Although many other developing countries face similar problems, in Vietnam the conditions had been aggravated by more than 30 years of war, socialist planned economy, division of the territory and long lasting economic isolation all resulting in inefficiencies in use of resources, division of labor and environmental devastation. Nevertheless, Vietnam skillfully uses the newly acquired regional network within the Association of South East Asian Nations as well as the advantages of deepening relationships with the economic centers in Europe and North America to further enhance trade, attract investment and raise development aid. With its outstanding record of high economic growth and dynamic development, Vietnam has proved the ability to employ its resources and comparative advantages to the full.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse in depth the EU position in the international effort to increase the Official Development Assistance with respect to the situation of poverty in developing world and current initiatives on searching for potential solutions of this crucial issue. In connection with poverty traps in developing countries the EU came up with many important initiatives in the field of international development policy, which indicates a strong commitment of Member states towards the poverty eradication. Based on predictions analysed in the 3rd Chapter of this thesis, it is possible to deduce that the EU as a whole will be able to reach its targets in the area of ODA increases. However, there will be a different situation in case of individual Member states - not all of them report about appropriate ODA increases needed for reaching the individual declared targets. There are many more or less suitable solutions: new allocations of additional financial resources from donors` public budgets to the ODA purposes, debt relief, innovative financial resources or methodological changes in the ODA statistical reporting. In any case, it is always needed to pay attention to the principles of effectiveness and raising the ODA quality and impact. The potential for reaching the official targets was, is and will be affected by plenty of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats on the side of the EU, developing countries and the whole international community.

Family in business and innovation are considered vital for firm performance and economic growth. Scholars claim that studying this relationship is important, as there are ‘strong theoretical reasons’ to believe that a firm’s innovation, hence firm performance, is positively and/or negatively influenced by the family. Research on the interception of the two fields is growing in developed countries, but is still nascent in developing country contexts. Hence, this study seeks to explore and further existing knowledge on this relationship in such a context. This investigation’ explores how family influences the firm’s innovation activities. It explores particularly the concept of ‘familiness’, which depicts those resources unique to a firm due to the involvement of the family members. Two approaches to ‘familiness’ are adopted, dimensions and resources. Concerning dimensions, three characteristics: components of involvement, essence and organisational identity were explored. The resources approach in this study includes four elements: financial, physical, human and social. In addition to this, the positive or negative nature of the family influence on each resource is considered. These two approaches of ‘familiness’ serves as the theoretical lens for understanding innovation comprehensively by taking into account the types, magnitudes, strategies and sources. This study adopted a qualitative approach to explore this phenomenon. Data were collected from six Colombian family firms through a self-administered questionnaire, followed by in-depth semi-structured interviews with family and nonfamily members in the form of a multi-case study design within purposefully selected firms. Triangulation was achieved by using different sources of information, such as documents, catalogues, newspapers, websites, and academic case studies. Due to the deductive and inductive nature of this study, data were explored and thematically analysed by coding into pre-existing categories suggested by the initial conceptual framework, while new themes emerged from the data. Results showed that when all three ‘familiness’ dimensions are present, there is an impact on the innovation activities within family firms. With respect to resources, the study highlighted the importance of the family influence on the firm’s human resource, and its impact on organisational innovation. This is particular the case when non-family members are more involved in top management teams. An intriguing finding is the relationship between the family’s foreign background and its influence of the firm’s overall innovation activities. In addition to this, by viewing the findings in this study as a whole, it is demonstrated that family firms in developing countries are innovative, which is contrary to existing studies on this subject area. Furthermore, it is advocated that this phenomenon would be better understood and further captured through the entrepreneurship lens. Hence, this is in line with recent views calling for a closer interception of family business and entrepreneurship. This study addresses these issues by weaving in Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ and Kirzner’s ‘entrepreneurial discovery’ approaches to innovation to reconciliate inconsistent findings in the field of ‘innovation and family firms’. This is due to all firm’s engaging in innovative activities in an incremental (Kirznerian) nature, as opposed to a ‘radical’ (Schumpeterian) one, whereby the latter has been the main focus of previous studies. This thesis advocates the need for public and private institutions to implement family business and innovation courses at various levels throughout the country, in order to enable young generations to be expose to the challenges and opportunities that globalisation brings to developing economies. The study highlights the importance of exploring this phenomenon using the family itself as the unit of analysis, as opposed to the firm, in order to move the field forwards. Future research should test the conceptual framework that emerged from this study, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in family firms from other industries, and context within Latin America or beyond.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Statistics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / Refer to docutment

Although Third World states lack military and economic strength, they still are able to exert considerable influence on certain international issues. The proliferation of small states following World War II, coupled with the twentieth century acceptance of the norm of sovereign equality, has enabled the weak states of the international system to challenge the order established by the strong. While Third World nations are weak according to traditional measures of power, sovereign equality and bloc voting by the small states, have accorded a type of "conditional" power to the South. This conditional power is augmented by the advent of a new international issue, the environment. Because of their large populations and natural resource bases, developing countries significantly influence environmental problems and therefore have greater leverage in environmental negotiations. This thesis seeks to demonstrate that because of the military and economic weakness of the South, it has sought to develop alternative sources of international strength. These new sources take advantage of norms and issues particular to twentieth century world politics. While these other sources thus far lack the potency of military or economic power, they do provide the South with a limited, but nonetheless important amount of influence in international politics. This thesis analyzes the nature and scope of the South's power arising out of the acceptance of the norm of sovereign equality. The paper also studies a second source of strength for developing nations, negative power; this power is based on the South's ability to frustrate Northern efforts to deal with serious environmental problems. By examining two major international environmental conferences, the thesis demonstrates both the character and limitations of this negative power. The foregoing study concludes that the new power of the South, though still quite limited today, may be an indication of growing strength as global environmental problems become increasingly central to international relations.

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