Livingstone Divine Caesar

The maritime industry is regarded as the fulcrum of the global economy. It contributes significantly in diverse ways to the movement of goods. To effectively deliver on its mandate, maritime transportation needs to be sustainable. In the absence of a resilient and highly adaptive workforce; however, it is impossible to address the tangible set of economic, environmental and social expectations for the sector. From a human capital perspective, this paper explores the emerging dynamics of producing a sustainable workforce for global maritime transportation. Results from a recent study involving 305 ship officers (web-based survey) are compared with new changes (from academic sources and industry reports) in the maritime transportation sector. The comparison (findings) highlights emerging changes within the global maritime workforce and the implications for skill development. It also emerged that the shortage of highly skilled talent (on both the landside and seaside) is a critical challenge and is being exacerbated by growing industry changes. Ultimately, these developments endanger sustainable maritime transportation. Consequently, the paper proposes a skill resilience framework with which industry stakeholders could identify skill gaps among the workforce and improve training content to produce an adaptive workforce capable of handling emerging challenges.

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This paper principally explores the determinants of successful information technology entrepreneurship in Nigeria’s IT sector. It further examines the moderating effect of mentorship (either by an IT practitioner or a non-IT practitioner) in the correlation between the independent variables of interest and dependent variable. Literature from the developed markets underscores a positive relationship between training and successful entrepreneurship. However, such relationship is seldom explored within the context of developing markets such as Nigeria. Thus, this paper explores the impact of specific factors such as IT-focused entrepreneurial training, being born by entrepreneur parents, business school training, faith in a supernatural and mentorship on IT entrepreneurial success A quantitative research design involving a web-based survey was used to collect data among 297 participants. All collected data were screened and analyzed using binary logistic regression and Exploratory Factor Analysis. The results showed that IT entrepreneurs who are born by entrepreneur parents are more likely to succeed than those without such family backgrounds. Also, the attendance of a business school is a significant predictive factor for IT entrepreneurial success in Nigeria. Surprisingly, no significant correlation exists between formal education in the IT field and IT entrepreneurial success. Further, no significant moderating effect of mentorship was present. This implies that IT entrepreneurs in Nigeria need to harness the benefits of entrepreneurial family background and business school education to sustainably grow their businesses and become successful. Also, committed federal government backing is needed to introduce innovative entrepreneurial initiatives to improve competence among IT entrepreneurs in Nigeria. General business/management training is needed besides conventional IT training as the former is a better predictor of success among IT entrepreneurs. Finally, trainings need to focus on building competencies for relationship management to aid access to resources for innovation and growth. Future studies should consider a qualitative approach to investigating the mediating impact of mentorship on IT entrepreneurship success in Nigeria.

This article investigates the complexity of factors that influence the location choice for agro-processing firms from a developing country and SME perspective. It further examines the underpinning role of government policies regarding the siting, operation and effectiveness of agro-processing firms. Using a quantitative methods research design, 124 randomly sampled agro-processing firms were surveyed. The collected data was analysed using exploratory factor analysis and logistic regression analysis. It emerged that business support, economic and socio-cultural factors had a direct impact on decisions regarding the siting of agro-processing firms. Also, the availability of raw materials and cheap labour equally contributes to such decisions. Government policies turned out to be ineffective in influencing decisions on the siting of agro-processing firms. In terms of policy, there is a need to refocus efforts to incentivise agro-entrepreneurs, open up access to sustainable funding options and build the innovative capacity of agro-processing firms. This is critical to attracting agro-processing investments to remote areas such as Northern Ghana to revamp the local economy. This article highlights the impact of policy on the location of agro businesses in developing countries and also demonstrates the nexus between the location of a business and its performance.