Sustainable Buying and Buyer Performance: Evidence from a Ghanaian Perspective (Published)
The purpose of this paper is to examine sustainable buying and its impact on buyer performance using Colleges of Education. This paper is a quantitative analysis based on seven Colleges of Education. Non-probability sampling techniques are used for choosing the unit of analysis. Also, data was collected through a well-structured questionnaire. The study found that the aspects of sustainable buying (Env, Soc, Eco) lead to improved buying performance. The study identified that buying performance is affected by e-buying systems, communication, organizational culture, business strategy, and size of organization, information available and monitoring. The study further discovered that the benefits of sustainable buying are improved quality of products, market expansion, increased intangible savings, reduced harmful emission of gas, value for money and increased efficiency in energy consumption. The study established the challenges of sustainable buying to be ineffective leadership, inadequate buying policies, budgetary constraint, inadequate compliance inspectors, lack of supplier collaboration and lack of capacity. Research limitations- the sample size is still limited and in future a quantitative analysis should be used. The study is limited in terms of the geographical area. The findings of the study are more likely to be held for other schools in all emerging market contexts. However, the applicability of these findings to other contexts needs further investigations. While interest on sustainable buying is increasing in emerging markets, there is little written on sustainable buying and its impact from the perspective of researchers from such market. Therefore, the impact of sustainable buying on buying performance has not been investigated so far.
Keywords: Benefits, Buyer Performance, Constraints, Emerging Markets, Ghana, schools, sustainable buying
SMES’ INTERNATIONALISATION PATTERNS AND SOME ASPECTS OF THEIR INTERNATIONAL MARKET BEHAVIOUR: A REVIEW OF SELECTED PAPERS (Published)
This paper reviews selected studies on SMEs’ internationalisation patterns and other aspects of their international market behaviour. The objective of the review is to critique the contribution of these studies to academic debate and knowledge. The review is based on 5 studies which have the common subject matter of SME international market behaviour. Articles reviewed are sourced from the published papers index of “Emerald Insight”. Each article is thoroughly read, with special attention given to the harmony among its literature, methodology and findings. All studies could fairly contribute to academic debate on the various aspects of SMEs’ international market behaviour by providing a strong link between related literature, chosen methodology and results. The logical flow of thoughts and augments, and their linking to previous theoretical and empirical evidence is praiseworthy. Results in the papers support reviewed literature, chosen methodology and conc
Keywords: Emerging Markets, Resource-Based View, SMEs, international market segmentation, internationalisation patterns, supplier-buyer relationships