Impact of emotional intelligence on SME employees’ performance: Mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior

Informal Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in their respective economies over the world particularly in the African continent. This paper reviews various theories on SMEs towards understanding the potential of the informal sector in the context of African countries. The paper uses a theoretical approach for the purpose of assessing the challenges that have affected the development of the informal SMEs sector over the years in both the developing and developed world. Economically developing countries in Africa pose unique challenges to informal SMEs development compared to the developed countries. The paper reviews the theories that define the rise to informality in Africa by identifying the key determinants for the emergence of informal SMEs. A conceptual framework for assessing informal SME’s potential for Africa is developed. The conceptual framework is based on the Fishbone diagram developed by Kaoru Ishikawa (1986). This paper discusses the intricacies of the applicability of the proposed conceptual framework to assess the potential of the informal SMEs in Africa and the way forward for the formalization debate.

Financial performance is the fundamental aspect to test the performance of the companies. The performance of insurance sector, like any other service industry, is supposed to depend significantly on customers. When it comes to customers, it is an established fact that customer satisfaction would be an important element. Customer satisfaction primarily depends on the quality of service it gets. It can be safely hypothesized that better service quality would lead to higher satisfaction, which would ultimately lead to higher profits for the company. Studies on this relationship in the insurance sector for Saudi Arabia are missing. Hence, this study aims at studying both the profitability of companies and quality of service and tries to relate it to customer satisfaction. The results are quite surprising, as the study establishes that although the qualities of services are found wanting in many areas, companies are earning good profits. A probable reason could be the statutory nature of the services. Nevertheless, this study recommends improving the quality of services and differentiating services between age groups for further improvement.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMEs in Georgia, identify the challenges of SMEs in pandemic conditions, and analyze government economic policy measures. For this purpose, 102 small and medium entrepreneurs from different regions of Georgia were interviewed. The survey was conducted by sending a questionnaire through digital channels. The results were processed using data analysis, quantitative and qualitative research methods, and presented graphically. As a result, key challenges and development directions that are typical for SMEs operations in Georgia during the pandemic were identified. For 60.8% of surveyed SME owners, lockdown is the main challenge. Sales volume of 45.1% of SMEs decreased. In addition, 39.3% of the surveyed SME owners increased the innovative capabilities of a company and 37.2% increased the sales volume of a company through digital channels. The main challenge of the pandemic, lockdown, gave impetus to a change in entrepreneurial behavior. In a pandemic, entrepreneurial activity has become more favorable through digital channels. During the pandemic, there is a need to continue the government’s program of tax incentives and subsidies for SMEs. In addition, the government should promote education in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology.