Search results for "VDP::Samfunnsvitenskap: 200::Økonomi: 210"

The contribution of female entrepreneurs to socio-economic development : Study of the role of female Entrepreneurs in social and economic development…

2018

Master's thesis Global development and planning UT505 - University of Agder 2018 Entrepreneurship has a leading role in socio- economic development worldwide. It has usually been considered as a male dominated activity. However, many recent studies emphasize how significant the contribution of women to the entrepreneurship today. The role of women in development is becoming significant in world wide. This research is to examine the contribution of women entrepreneurs to the socio- economic development of Badalkumbura Division. This study recovers the main entrepreneurial activities that female entrepreneurs engage in, the characteristics of female entrepreneurs, the motivating factors for f…

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Energy Consumption by Nigerian Households

2020

Master's thesis in Global Development and Planning (UT505) To actualize the SDGs by 2030, it is imperative to assess the successes of nations (especially developing ones) in achieving the set goals. One of such goals is guaranteeing access to dependable, friendly and inexpensive energy for all. Although energy is an essential need of every household, many households in Nigeria are deprived of contemporary energy access. This study aims at ascertaining the prevalence of energy deprivation, the determinants of energydeprivation, energy choices and intensity of energy consumption in Nigeria.

A phenomenon-driven exploration of regulatory sandboxes in FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystems

2021

Paper I is not published yet. Research on incubation models has indicated that business incubators and accelerators, among others, are crucial catalysts for the development of new ventures in numerous industries. To facilitate testing and validation of new financial technology (FinTech) providers, and protect financial markets against systemic risks, a new incubation model called the ‘regulatory sandbox’ has been established or announced by regulatory authorities in more than 50 countries. Sandboxes are virtual trial-and-error instruments that grant financial market participants temporary licensing relief and thus provide the opportunity to test novel solutions in a controlled, real-world e…

The role of firm-level actors and system-level actors in processes of new regional industrial path development

2020

Paper I, II, and III are not available as a part of the dissertation due to the copyright. This doctoral thesis departs from the understanding that regional industrial restructuring is important for handling challenges, such as globalisation, sustainability and digitalisation. Regional industrial restructuring can include changes in the existing industry as well as the development of completely new industries. The combination of the regional innovation system (RIS) approach and the theory on new path development, emerging from evolutionary economic geography (EEG) literature, leads to an understanding that industrial development happens within (open) regional systems. RISs consist of actors…

Risk Management and Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions

2018

Risk management and efficiency are very crucial for the survival of every organization. “Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking” (Alan Greenspan) and “the obvious rule of efficiency is you don’t want to spend more time organizing than it’s worth” (Daniel Levitin). In microfinance, risk management and efficiency are important for the achievement of both the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions, which aim primarily to provide financial services to the unbanked populations in the world. Giving uncollaterized loans to vulnerable borrowers is risky yet that is what microfinance institutions do. In this dissertation, I …

The Paradox of Skill in Norwegian Mutual Funds

2020

Master's thesis in Business administration (BE501) This thesis examines Norwegian mutual funds’ performance, and specifically whether that performance is due to luck or skill under the null hypothesis of no true performance. We use an extensive dataset of 107 Norwegian mutual funds free of survivorship bias, over the period 1987-2019. We use the Carhart (1997) four-factor model as our performance model, both on the aggregate and individual level. On the aggregate level, we find no significant evidence for abnormal risk-adjusted returns. Looking at the funds on the individual level, we use a bootstrap approach to distinguish luck from skill. The bootstrap is implemented to evaluate our resul…

Essays on Cultural Intelligence

2021

Papers II and III are excluded from the dissertation until they will be published. This dissertation consists of three essays/papers on cultural intelligence. The first essay/paper is a systematic review using bibliometric methods that explored the CQ literature in international business, including the two concepts cross-cultural competencies (CC) and global mindset (GM). The paper complements past reviews by broadening the focus and offers an objective and reproducible approach to assessing the current state of the literature, provides improved understanding of the intellectual structure of research on the three constructs, and their effects on different outcomes through presenting its fin…

Human Resources and Performance in Social Enterprises : Evidence from Microfinance Institutions

2022

The learning way to production performance : An evolutionary perspective on company-specific production systems (XPS)

2021

Manufacturing companies (MCs) implement “best-practice” concepts such as Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS) for enhanced production improvement. However, 30 years of research have shown that very few succeed in this implementation, which is often related to the challenge of copying Lean and TPS in various technological, political, and social contexts. As a reaction to this, MCs have explored new strategies for implementing bestpractice concepts. Instead of copying a concept, the company tailors its own “self-adjusted” concept that is built on one or more standard concepts. This phenomenon goes by the name of “company-specific production systems” (XPS) and seems to be an important t…

Forbedret produksjonsflyt : simulering av hengebanen for Farsund Aluminium Casting AS

2012

Masteroppgave industriell økonomi og teknologiledelse IND590 - Universitetet i Agder, 2012 Konfidensiell til / confidential until 01.07.2017