published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Thesis (Master's Degree in Technology: Entrepreneurship), Durban Institute of Technology, 2003. / Over the last decade computer technology has impacted tremendously on the survival and productivity of organisations. In today's technologically advanced business environment, much emphasis is being placed on obtaining a competitive advantage through the use of computers - a commodity that has become available to almost everyone in an organisation. Increasing global competition and pressing social needs have impacted with such vigo~ that even tertiary institutions are now facing major financial constraints, thus forcing them to investigate alternative sources of income to maintain sustainability. Through the use of computer technology - searching, retrieving, sorting, producing and organising data efficiently and accurately - the belief is that many departments at the M L Sultan Campus of the Durban Institute of Technology can be converted into income-generating units that can be self-sustaining. There are many departments at the M L Sultan Campus with the relevant infrastructure and person-power to establish business units. These departments vary in the services that they provide, thus relevant information systems need to be aligned to future business units within these departments. This study focuses on a) investigating the impact of information technology and its systems on businesses; b) ensuring that information technology and its systems is looked at a~ a cost effective resource for maintaining a competitive edge and promoting business value. The interaction of business processes, people and technology will ensure successful planning and implementation of strategies within the potential business units; and c) recommending to selected departments the expected fmdings whereby they could choose to adopt these recommendations to transform themselves into business units in order to maintain a competitive edge for financial sustainability. / M

The purpose of this research was to conduct an exploratory study of the information processing utilized by incubator-housed manufacturers during channel member selection. The study included the evaluation of the decision models used by the manufacturers as well as criteria used in the selection process. The study was specifically designed to achieve the following objectives. First, the research was to identify the evaluation modes used by the manufacturers as either compensatory or noncompensatory. Second, the study was to evaluate the effect of the task on the selection of the evaluation model(s) used during the channel member selection process. Third, the study was to evaluate the effect of the selected decision strategy on the amount of information used during the decision process. Finally, the study was to identify and examine the importance of the criteria used by the manufacturers in the selection process. The methodology in this study consisted of primary research using protocol analysis as the main data gathering technique. A ranking instrument was also mailed to the respondents prior to the protocol session. The population for the study was identified as all manufacturers located in publicly-sponsored business incubators. A total of 235 incubators were in existence with approximately 47 percent of them being publicly-sponsored. Approximately 42 percent of the incubators house at least one manufacturing firm. It was estimated that there were approximately 46 manufacturing firms located in public incubators. A sample of six was used in this study. The statistical analysis included frequencies, cross tabulations, correlations, paired comparisons, and measures of association. The findings of this study suggest that the incubator-housed manufacturers' choice of evaluation models was not affected by the task nor did the selected strategy influence the amount of information used by the manufacturers. The findings indicate a need for further research to evaluate the relationships brought forth in this study. Based on the conclusions and findings of this study, recommendations for further research were given.

The main aim of the study was to analyze the socio-economic variables effecting agritourism business using data from two rural communities of the Limpopo province, Nwa’metwa and Lenyenye. The results showed that there are significant socio-economic differences among agritourism and non-agritourism farmers. The socio-economic variables used are literacy, gender, age, land size and family size. Two multinomial models were used to model agritourism behavior. The two models, namely fully and partially registered agritourism farmers were estimated. Non-registered agritourism farmers were used as the reference group. These models denoted the relative probability of both fully and partially registered agritourism farmers to the probability of the non-registered agritourism farmers. The logarithm results implied that older farmers were less likely to prefer to operate business as a fully or partially registered agritourism farmer compared to the non-registered agritourism group. Farmers’ decisions in business operation were informed by their level of education, experience as well as social networks. / Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology / M. Sc. (Agriculture)

The preoperational stage of a new venture is characterized by concept definition, idea enhancement, and strategy formulation. Entrepreneurs consult advisors in knowledge sharing activities. Trust is dominant in these entrepreneur-advisor relationships as entrepreneurs rely on an advisor's judgment to keep venture ideas away from competitors. However, the relationships between trust, knowledge sharing, and knowledge security during the preoperational stage of a new high-tech venture are not directly examined in many research studies. Concerning types of trust, McAllister (1995) defines two types of interpersonal trust: affective trust, which develops from emotional bonds between individuals, and calculative trust, which is based on an individual's level of competence and reliability. The present study applies McAllister's (1995) theory of types of trust to Kale, Singh, and Perlmutter (2000) findings to examine how trust relationships between entrepreneurs and advisors affect knowledge sharing and an entrepreneur's use of NDAs. This dissertation's research primary question is, "How does trust between an entrepreneur and advisors affect knowledge sharing and choices of knowledge security mechanisms during the preoperational stage of a new high-tech venture?" I used de Koning and Muzyka's (1999) classification of the entrepreneur's social context to define three advisor types: Close Friends, Business Associates, and Licensed Professionals. Linking these types with literature on trust and knowledge, I hypothesize seven relationships dealing with trust, knowledge sharing, and knowledge security. I used structured and non-structured interview formats to collect data on 143 entrepreneur/advisor relationships in South Florida. / The results confirmed that relationship length significantly contributed to affective trust and entrepreneurs were more likely to share knowledge with Business Associates than with Close Friends or Licen found t o be the dominant form of trust driving knowledge sharing but affective trust was not significantly found to impact the use of NDAs. Entrepreneurs expected all advisor types to be competent, experienced, and skilled, reporting nonsignificant differences in calculative trust across advisor types. I did not find the use of NDAs to be associated with any particular advisor type. Rather, NDAs were seldom used during the preoperational stage for reasons such as the entrepreneurs' desires to maintain positive relationships with advisors, along with their reliance on a strong institutional background. / by Abiola Omoyeni Fanimokun. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This study investigates the impacts of regional characteristics on the early-stage performance of New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) in catch-up regions where a mature industrial cluster has yet to be formed. It hypothesized that the average NTBF performance in a region is a function of its scientist job market conditions, cultural diversity, venture capital, academic research, industrial structure, and local entrepreneurial climate. Using the events of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) and Merger & Acquisitions (M&A) as an indicator of early-stage success of NTBFs, this study constructs a set of Zero-Inflated-Negative-Binomial (ZINB) models to predict the spatial distribution of such events in the U.S. biopharmaceutical and Information Technology (IT) service industries during the period from 1996 to 2005. Several empirical findings emerge from this study. First, the local entrepreneurial climate plays a significant and positive role on NTBF performance in both industries. Second, the positive impact of cultural diversity is more significant in the IT service industry than in the biopharmaceutical industry. Third, the scientist job market size and absolute salary level have positive impacts on NTBF performance, but the effect of relative salary level is negative. Fourth, proximity to venture capital firms has positive but non-linear effects, but the adverse effect of excess venture capital is stronger in the IT service industry. Fifth, there is little evidence of the direct effects of academic research in determining the NTBF performance in both industries. Finally, industrial specialization is significant and positive only in the IT service industry. The results suggest that promoting local entrepreneurial climate and cultural diversity are two effective policy instruments for catch-up regions to foster their NTBF growth.

We consider a risk averse entrepreneur who approaches a diversified venture capitalist (VC) for financing of a project with positive potential return. We develop several models that capture key features of the venture financing, including staged investment, VC oversight costs and agency conflicts. The contract between the VC and the EN includes risk-free and pay-performance sensitive compensation. Moral hazard arises because the EN must exert effort for the project to succeed. Our model is novel in that it also allows for asymmetric beliefs about project quality due to the EN's optimism even when the VC and EN face symmetric information. We first analyze the VC-EN relationship when the VC has bargaining power. We characterize the equilibrium levels for the pay-performance sensitivities, investment and effort over time and show they can be either increasing or decreasing or initially increasing and then decreasing. We find that asymmetric beliefs and risk aversion have opposite effects on the VC-EN relationship. When the EN is moderately more optimistic than the VC, he accepts more risk and exerts more effort and the VC responds with more investment. In contrast, risk aversion reduces effort and investment. Our model predicts a performance-sensitive investment policy where critical milestones must be achieved for investment to continue. These milestones increase with the risk aversion and decrease with the asymmetry in beliefs. Consequently, project duration increases with asymmetric beliefs and decreases with risk aversion. We calibrate this core model to empirical data and use numerical analysis to demonstrate that the technical and systematic risks have opposite effects. The VC's payoff and the project's value and duration increase with technical risk and decrease with systematic risk. We analyze the relationship when the EN has bargaining power, and find that the equilibrium and the corresponding implications for venture financing do change. In this setting, the negative effects due to risk aversion are more pronounced. We also find that if the EN's effort cannot be observed by the VC, then the pay-performance sensitivities, investment and effort all increase.

This thesis proposes and estimates a model of university scientists interactions with the private sector; in this model students are conceptualized as an important enabler of such interactions. The results of the study show that university scientists student-related behaviors such as grant support of students and research collaboration with students, and student-related attitudes such as mentoring orientation positively affect the probability that scientists will enter interactions with industry as well as the intensity of such interactions. Behaviors such as teaching and advising of students are not related to interactions with industry. This study is motivated by the increased emphasis on closer relationships between universities and industry as a means to facilitate the commercial application of university research. Today, numerous policies and programs attempt to achieve such goals. As a result, university scientists are called on to perform many tasks which on the surface seem misaligned. There is substantial study of conflict between the teaching and research missions of universities, and a growing body of study on conflict related to university based commercial and technology transfer related activities. Fewer, there are studies suggesting that these activities are not so misaligned after all. This study falls into the latter category as it posits a complementary relationship between university scientists student related activities and their work related interactions with industry, research and otherwise. Speculations regarding the importance of students in university industry relations and indirect evidence are scattered through the relevant literature, but little or no systematic empirical tests of their importance exist. This study uses data from a national survey of university researchers to discern the centrality of students to university-industry interactions. Theoretically, students are conceptualized as a dimension of university scientists respective research capacities that enable cross-sectoral processes of accumulative advantage and thereby help to enable their interactions with industry. As a component of scientists scientific and technical human capital, students help university scientists to identify and act upon on research opportunities originating in the private sector. Moreover, students increase the appeal of university scientists to industry agents seeking research partners in academe. Implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Thesis (M.Tech.: Entrepreneurship)-Dept. of Entrepreneurial Studies, Durban Institute of Technology, 2003 ix, 90 leaves / The South African economy is unable to support the employment needs of the growing number of graduates. In an attempt to address these needs, the proposed study focuses on the development of an incubator system to nurture young entrepreneurs (graduates), until they are able to survive independently – usually in two to three years.

Poverty is caused by inadequate income. Effective assistance to small-scale enterprises may benefit the urban and rural poor. Small enterprises have the potential to create employment, reduce poverty and support sustainable livelihoods, as small enterprises satisfy local needs, provide employment opportunities in local areas, increase income, ensure food security and improve health. The Department of Land Affairs has recently introduced policies such the Land Reform Policy to correct the injustices of South Africa’s past. During 2005, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs introduced the Agrarian Revolution Programme, in an effort to close the gap between the first and second economy. The Agrarian Revolution and the LRAD programmes encourage agribusinesses through the formation of co-operatives or trusts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential of an envisaged processing enterprise with a group of women from an LRAD project, within the Engadini Community Trust. An action research methodology was followed. A training manual was developed and training conducted with the Engadini women’s group through which they prepared a business plan, developed prototype products; conducted market research; estimated prices for the products and developed a marketing plan. The study results indicate that the group would have the technical skills to make a good quality product. The group is likely to face problems ensuring a sustainable supply of raw materials as the current supply of milk would hardly be sufficient to supply the target market sampled during the consumer survey. The success of the dairy processing enterprises depends heavily on the ability of the Engadini Trust to overcome internal social problems. Conflict between the Engadini dairy processing enterprise members and conflict within the larger Engadini Community Trust had a crippling effect on the dairy processing enterprise. The main recommendations for the group are that the group needs to secure a sustainable supply or fresh milk. A dairy processing facility that will meet food safety standards needs to be erected for the enterprise. The location of the dairy processing enterprise needs to be re-considered. To overcome internal conflict within the group, the women’s group needs to gain representation on the Engadini Community Trust’s Executive Committee, to ensure that the dairy processing enterprise interests are considered by the Trust. The main recommendations for small-scale enterprises are that they should ensure to have sustainable supply of good-quality raw materials and a reliable, sustainable market, even if the market is relatively small. Policy recommendations are that Government Departments such as the KwaZulu-Natal Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs and Economic Development should consider adapting policies that will focus on funding individual enterprises, rather than group enterprises. A directorate or sub-directorate dedicated to the development of small and medium sized food processing enterprises should be created. The marketing section of the KwaZulu- Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs should provide marketing information for small-scale food processing enterprises available to extension officers and small-scale enterprises.