Environmental proactivity,competitive strategy,and market performance: The mediating role of environmental reputation

This article examines the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) proactive environmental strategy on market performance through the mediating mechanism of environmental reputation. In addition, we investigate the potential moderating role of competitive strategies on the environmental reputation-market performance nexus. Data were collected from 223 SMEs. Using the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the results show that a proactive environmental strategy positively enhances environmental reputation. Also, the influence of proactively environmental strategy on market performance is mediated by environmental reputation. In addition, our findings show the relationship between environmental reputation and market performance is greater for firms that adopt the differentiation strategy but not significant for firms adopting the low-cost and integrated strategies. Our study offers several theoretical and practical implications.     

Corporate social responsibility and competitive advantage: A developing country perspective

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted wider research interests over recent decades. While some studies have examined the impact of CSR activities on firm competitive advantage (CA), the findings so far remain contradictory. Moreover, the role of export orientation, firm strategy, and structure on the association between CSR and CA has not been explicitly examined. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of export orientation, firm strategy, structure, and firm size on the association between CSR and CA. Using a sample of 179 responses from management staff in organizations across five sectors in a developing country context of Ghana, the study found positive effects of CSR on CA. The study contributes to the resource‐based view (RBV) scholarship by confirming the important complementary effect of export orientation and organizational structure as important resources and capabilities on the CSR–competitiveness relationship. However, no evidence of a moderating effect of firm strategy, or firm size on the CSR–CA relationship was found. These findings are instructive, impactful, and enrich the existing literature on CSR and strategy. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.     

Sustainability winners and losers in business-biased cocoa sustainability programmes in West Africa

In cocoa farming forestland is a production factor. Cocoa planting is easiest and production costs are lowest in tropical forest. Historically, therefore, once forestland has been exhausted in a given geographical area planters tend to diversify into other production systems to avoid the poverty (induced by increasing factor cost) of post-forest cultivation. In modern times however cocoa planters exist in a value chain and post-forest diversification could threaten multinational companies relying on rural planters for their raw material. In 2014 ten of the world’s largest chocolate multinationals combined, with more than $500 million in funding, to introduce a cocoa sustainability scheme called CocoaAction. In principle, CocoaAction and similar sustainability schemes sponsored by western multinational chocolate companies are interventions to empower cocoa planters and planting communities in West African countries. But in practice, as this article will show, these schemes are a response to diminishing returns in cocoa-producing communities and the prospect of diversification, and the resulting projection of a shortage in raw material. There are signs that diversification away from cocoa will be beneficial to cocoa planters and their communities. Cocoa sustainability schemes are therefore designed for the benefit of multinational chocolate companies and at the expense of diversification in West African countries.     

Accounting for the Gender Technology Gap Amongst Smallholder Rice Farmers in Northern Ghana

Narrowing the gender technology gap in agricultural production has become a critical policy issue in sub‐Saharan Africa. A better understanding of the gender technology gap is essential for policy formulation and programme planning to ensure equity in resource allocation, and household‐level food security in low and middle income countries, such as Ghana. We employ a metafrontier approach to analyse the differences in the efficiency of male and female farmers, recognising the endogeneity of some of the variables in the inefficiency effects model, in particular the credit constraints of the rice farmers under study. Our findings show that while the rice farms themselves are very similar, average yields for male managed farms tend to be significantly higher than female managed farms reflecting higher seeding and fertiliser application rates on male managed farms. However, there is no significant difference between the genders in either land used for rice or total output per farm household. We find some evidence that relative to the metafrontier, male managed farms are less efficient than female managed farms. The results further show gender technology gap amongst the smallholder rice farmers with females’ technology gap ratio being significantly greater than that of males, with females operating on a production frontier closer to the metafrontier. Policies that provide females more access to productive resources and other agricultural services could assist in the generation of relatively higher output.     

Subjective well‐being and political participation: Empirical evidence from Ghana

A large, extant literature examines the effect of political factors on individual subjective well‐being. These studies have treated political factors as a cause and subjective well‐being as an effect. A sparse but growing literature now advances the argument that subjective well‐being is a cause and voting or political participation an effect. In this paper we examine whether subjective well‐being influences voting and political participation in Ghana. Using data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey in Ghana, we find that subjective well‐being influences neither voting nor protest behavior.     

Local impacts of a global crisis: Food price transmission,consumer welfare and poverty in Ghana

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the 2007–2008 global food crisis as an example, we show that prices for domestic grain products are highly correlated with world market prices. This is true both for products for which Ghana is highly import-dependent (e.g., rice) and the products for which Ghana is self-sufficient (e.g., maize). The econometric results also show that price transmission is high between regional producer markets and markets located in the country’s largest cities, and the distance between producer and consumer markets and the size of consumer markets matter in explaining the price transmission. The welfare analysis for households as consumers shows that the effect of world food prices appears relatively modest for the country as a whole due to relatively diverse consumption patterns within country. However, the national average hides important regional differences, both between regions and within different income groups. We find that the poorest of the poor—particularly those living in the urban areas—are hardest hit by high food prices. The negative effect of the food crisis is particularly strong in northern Ghana. The main explanations for this regional variation in the price effect is the different consumption patterns and much lower per capita income levels in the North of Ghana compared to other regions in the country.     

Financial inclusion and food insecurity: Examining linkages and potential pathways

Considering the worsening levels of food insecurity globally, studies exploring the link between financial inclusion and food insecurity have become imperative. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the effect of financial inclusion on food insecurity using a multidimensional index of financial inclusion and a food insecurity construct obtained from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Based on data extracted from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, our preferred endogeneity-corrected results indicate that improvements in financial inclusion is associated with a reduction in food insecurity. This finding is consistent across different conceptualisations of food insecurity, alternative weighting schemes and cut-offs for the financial inclusion index and different quasi-experimental methods. Financial inclusion is mainly effective in reducing food insecurity in male-headed and rural-located households. Our findings reveal that entrepreneurship is an important pathway through which financial inclusion influences food insecurity.     

Exploring the presence of accounting amongst petty traders in Ghana

This paper seeks to investigate the presence of accounting among petty traders in Ghana. The methodology applied was the mixed method under the multiple methods choices. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used. The findings were that formal education is not a pre-requisite requirement to the operations of a petty trading business. However, the study revealed the presence of accounting in petty trading; thus confirming the assumption that accounting is a universal good and is present in the petty trading business. Findings on the three major factors that influenced the present or absent of accounting among petty traders revealed that： there were no state institutions or pressure groups in Ghana to influence or oblige private entrepreneurs （petty traders） to prepare financial statements; the literacy of the petty trader though was found to be a necessary factor, it was not sufficient to explain the accountancy presence or absence in the traders＇ businesses. The usefulness of the accounting information to the petty trader influenced the presence of accounting in the traders＇ business. Finally, the level of trust - social capital in the community, and its influence on the presence of accounting, was relatively insignificant in the context of urban Ghana. No study of this kind has been conducted in the field of accounting presence or absence in Ghana.     

Positioning strategies and congruence in the positioning of high‐end indigenous and foreign retailers in sub‐Saharan Africa: An illustration from Ghana

This article examines the employment of positioning strategies through the lens of international retailing for assessing congruence in the positioning of both indigenous and foreign retailers in Ghana. Six retailers—three indigenous and three foreign—are examined in a triangulated method, each through an in‐depth case study. The results show that the dominant positioning strategies consistently pursued by both indigenous and foreign retailers in Ghana are “service,” “reliability,” and “attractiveness.” Although indigenous retailers (relative to their foreign counterparts) employ more strategies, the majority of foreign retailers exhibit close‐to‐ideal congruence among managers' intentions, actual practice, and customers' perceptions. The findings show that foreign and indigenous retailers pursue varying positioning strategies in the marketplace, further complementing the utility of Western‐developed typologies of positioning strategies in a sub‐Saharan African marketplace. Moreover, the results reveal how indigenous retailers have embraced branding, further attesting to the changing and competitive nature of the Ghanaian marketplace.     

Effect of Energy Prices on Economic Growth in the ECOWAS Sub-Region: Investigating the Channels Using Panel Data

The article empirically examines the effect of energy prices on economic growth within the Economic Community of West African States sub-region by acknowledging that the effect of energy prices on growth is quintessentially indirect and hence can be tracked through some channels. Exploiting the System Generalized Methods of Moments estimation technique for the period spanning 2002–2015, the results indicate that the overall effect of energy prices on economic growth is significantly negative. This effect propagates mainly through government consumption expenditure and investment, albeit its effect through real interest rate is positive. However, its negative effects on government consumption, investment, and exchange rate significantly overwhelm the positive effect from real interest rate.