Loise Wanjiru Kanotha Oburu, Joseph Odhiambo Onyango, Anne Ndirangu
The sustainable growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing in developing economies depends significantly on how firms harness institutional social networks as strategic resources. Despite growing scholarship on social capital and firm performance, the mechanisms by which institutionally based social network resources — comprising regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive networks — translate into business growth remain insufficiently theorised. Specifically, the moderating role of social resource orchestration competence (SROC) in converting institutional network resources into firm growth value has not been empirically examined among Kenyan manufacturing SMEs. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among 393 purposively selected respondents — comprising business owners, heads of operations, and heads of finance — drawn from Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM)-registered manufacturing SMEs across 14 sub-sectors in Nairobi County, Kenya. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was conducted in SmartPLS 4.0, preceded by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to establish reliability and validity. Convergent and discriminant validity, as well as collinearity, were assessed using established thresholds before path analysis was conducted. Direct path analysis confirmed significant positive associations of regulatory (β = 0.332, p < 0.05), normative (β = 0.285, p < 0.05), and cultural-cognitive resource networks (β = 0.162, p < 0.05) with SME growth. When SROC was introduced as a moderator, it emerged as the dominant growth factor (β = 0.543, p < 0.05). SROC significantly amplified the association of regulatory resource networks with SME growth (β = 0.162, p < 0.05) and attenuated the contribution of cultural-cognitive networks (β = −0.429, p < 0.05), while having no significant moderating effect on normative resource networks. These findings advance Social Exchange Theory by offering preliminary evidence that the economic value of institutional network exchanges varies with the firm's SROC. The study introduces the Social Exchange Orchestration Grid (SEOG) — a novel theoretical framework that maps the differential economic value of institutional network archetypes against SROC — providing manufacturing SME managers with a strategic tool for prioritising institutional network investments. Implications for SME policy in sub-Saharan Africa are discussed, with an emphasis on building orchestration capabilities as a potentially more critical investment than network acquisition per se.
This study explores how Digital Management Control Systems (MCS) affect employee performance in Saudi service organizations by focusing on the role of Total Quality Management (TQM 4.0) that aims to address the growing need for digital integration in the Kingdom's evolving economy. Data was collected from 108 employees across different service organizations. Using statistical methods like linear regression and mediation analysis to test the relationships. Additionally, quality tools such as Pareto charts and fishbone diagrams were used to identify implementation barriers. The results show a full mediation effect. This means that digital systems do not improve performance directly instead, they improve quality practices first, which then strongly boosts employee performance. This suggests that quality management serves as the essential mechanism through which digital tools generate value. The study also found that employees’ resistance to change is the biggest challenge to digital transformation. This highlights the importance of addressing human factors alongside technical upgrades to achieve successful organizational change. Finally, the research proposes a digital dashboard mockup to help managers easily monitor performance and solve these issues. Also, a study proves that investing in technology is most effective when combined with strong quality management practices.
Yulduz Dushanova, Ergash Ibadullaev, Bokhodir Isroilov, Dilfuza Khamzaeva, Jasur Kushmanov
When a state digitalises the gateway to its territory faster than its population and its visitors acquire the competence to pass through it, digital inequality becomes a cross-border condition. Tourism is where that encounter happens at scale, yet research on tourists' acceptance of smart tourism technologies carries three assumptions that hold only under mature and shared digital infrastructure: digital capability is a facilitating condition rather than a stratified resource governing whether an unassisted evaluation can occur; trust is one belief aimed at one object, although a visitor abroad must judge a platform, a payment rail, a provider, and a state at once; and experience quality is a terminal outcome, which conceals its role as a source of revision for later judgements inside the same trip. This conceptual analysis develops an alternative account grounded in digital inequality research, trust transfer theory, expectation disconfirmation, and negativity asymmetry. It reconstructs digital inclusion as two pre-use gating tiers (functional access, enacted competence) and one post-use outcome tier (realised conversion); separates trust into four referents joined by association-conditioned transfer and by calibration; and models experience quality as recursive and asymmetrically sensitive to breakdown. The elements are combined in the Digital Inclusion, Trust, Acceptance and Experience (DITAE) framework, stated as eight propositions and three bridging mechanisms with theoretical anchors, an illustrative measurement specification, and a four-stage research agenda organised by estimand. The counter-case for existing models is examined rather than assumed away. Uzbekistan, where high aggregate connectivity coexists with uneven competence and where entry and registration run through state platforms, illustrates the configuration; the illustration is contextual and does not test the framework. The central implication is that identical pre-encounter intentions can conceal sharply unequal realised outcomes, so intention alone is an unsafe indicator of inclusive digital transformation. No new empirical data are reported.
This paper studies how alternative measures of ambient temperature change the estimated short-run relationship between heat and fertility. I combine monthly vital statistics for all 47 Japanese prefectures from 2012 through 2019 with daily weather reconstructed from raw station records. The outcome is the monthly general fertility rate, defined as live births per 1,000 women ages 15–49. Models include complete temperature-bin vectors, lagged precipitation and missing-weather controls, year-month fixed effects, prefecture-by-calendar-month fixed effects, and prefecture-by-year fixed effects. A day with a minimum temperature of at least 25 ∘ C is associated with 0.39 and 0.25 percent lower fertility nine and ten months later. A day with a mean temperature of at least 30 ∘ C is associated with 0.50 percent lower fertility at lag ten. In contrast, the maximum-temperature result is borderline at lag nine, insignificant at lag ten, and disappears when complete mean-temperature bins enter jointly. The evidence therefore points more consistently to sustained heat and limited nighttime cooling than to a brief daytime peak. Dynamic analysis and the recorded-fetal-death check do not identify whether the fertility estimates reflect conception timing, early pregnancy loss, gestational length, or another mechanism. The birth-rate estimates capture short-run reductions or displacement around the gestational horizon, not changes in completed fertility.
