A business transformation model to enhance the sustainability of small-sized family businesses

Technological changes that come with industrial revolution have largely affected businesses, as well as society. With the current technological shift and Fourth Industrial Revolution, many questions arise regarding the impacts and effects on current ways businesses operate. This study presents a retrospective analysis and overview of previous industrial revolutions. The aim of the retrospective analysis is to identify common characteristics that may lead to lessons learned for the forthcoming Fourth Industrial Revolution and thus complement the current debate on technological change. All previous industrial revolutions have led to change in business environments and new challenges for managers and owners. The findings show that all previous revolutions have led to increase in the number of service jobs created. The key approach of successful countries during the times of industrial revolution has included education as the source of new skills and knowledge necessary for adaption. Countries that were able to produce high skilled people could not only invent, but also adapt to new technologies sooner than others. Similarly, these approaches included introduction of new managerial practices in order to be able to utilize new technologies and new skilled workers effectively. The research article processes secondary data together with literature review on this topic.

In the modern world, developing countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and several others in the African continent have been encouraged to reform their public expenditure management systems through computerization of the entire public sectors in response to the increasing volume of data or information that need to be processed. There are, however, various factors to be considered prior to the implementation of the public expenditure management information systems. This paper undertakes a theoretical review of the critical success factors that impact on the implementation of an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) with a view to identify factors applicable to the Migori County of Kenya. The paper, then, identifies the key factors to be incorporated in the proposed IFMS framework. The proposed framework draws from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) and the Work Around Theory (WAT). The paper fuses these theories towards a successful adoption of use of modern technology within the public sector IFMS. The key factors include technical, organizational, environmental, cultural and ethical behavior. These factors could improve efficiency and transparency through direct payments to suppliers and contractors, reduced prices due to gains based on the time value of money, as well as the comparative analysis of market rates and advanced relations across the numerous organizational units within government on execution, reporting, and thoroughness of budget transactions.

With the development of the information society, there has been rapidly growing number of international research on the role of various (information, innovation, intelligent) technologies as a catalyst to fight corruption. As you know, the problems posed by corruption are economic, social and political consequences. In recent years economists and various researchers have shown increasing interest in studying the phenomenon of corruption. Many researchers in the field of studying corruption phenomenon are of theoretical nature, which studied different behaviors without having developed effective methods and technologies to identify and prevent corruption in the various spheres of government. In this regard, there is a need to study the world experience of application of technologies in the prevention of corruption and anti-corruption platform in Ukraine. This will allow to adapt them to positive experience in the implementation of mechanisms to identify and prevent corruption in Ukraine. The authors believe that to obtain a more accurate picture of the corruption situations that provide characteristics and its quantitative description is possible only by means of modelling the corruption phenomenon. In this regard, the analysis of theoretical models of corruption was made: the modelling made by the mathematical notation of the models and conclusions on the effectiveness of their application in management. Using simulation, the authors came to the conclusion that the detection and prevention of corruption should be carried out with the use of technologies and the system approach: from the study of statistics and use of anti-corruption platforms, public registers and databases to logical and probabilistic (LP) risk models of corruption.