Approaches to measuring resilience and their applicability to small retail business resilience

Academic resilience and emotional intelligence are considered important personal resources for furthering students’ academic performance. However, many educational organizations seem to trivialize the performance implications of these constructs in teachings and curriculum. Consequently, it can decrease not just their academic performance but also their employability, as they lack the generic competencies to adapt and survive in a stressful context. Even so, empirical evidence on integrating academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance remains unexplored in the Nigerian university context. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the linkages between academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance in Nigeria. The partial least square (PLS) modeling method was utilized for testing the stated hypotheses with data collected from 179 final year undergraduate students in the regular B.Sc. Business Administration and B.Sc. Marketing program at Delta State University, Nigeria. From the PLS results, the study reported that academic resilience was positively related to emotional intelligence (β = 0.125, p = 0.007), academic resilience (β = 0.231, p = 0.000) and emotional intelligence (β = 0.260, p = 0.000) were positively related to academic performance, and emotional resilience mediated the positive relationship between academic resilience and academic performance (β = 0.057, p = 0.005). While academic resilience predicted academic performance, it also predicted emotional intelligence, which affected academic performance significantly and positively.

Small retail businesses are essential for the growth of the South African economy. Though many of these business entities need more assets to seize business opportunities, previous research studies suggest that their overall access to finance through banks and other finance providers seems to be limited. In general, small retail businesses are usually managed by entrepreneurs who lack financial knowledge, but banks, when deciding on credit applications, rely heavily on financial information, which is provided by these entrepreneurs. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, this study aimed to explore barriers that limit access to finance for South African small retailers, from the perspectives of finance providers (banking institutions) and finance seekers (small retailers). Additionally, measures were highlighted to show how those hurdles could be overcome. Qualitative research was conducted, whereby data were collected via semi-structured interviews with management personnel at banks and other financial institutions, as well as independent experts and small retail business owners and managers. The findings show that many financing opportunities are available to small retail businesses, but access to these opportunities is limited mainly owing to, inter alia, strict bank regulations and factors that are inherent to small retail business owners.

This study seeks to explore the possibility of adopting parametric insurance to manage disaster risk in Zimbabwe. The background of the research is caused by recurrent natural disasters and the failure of the government to offer disaster relief after such events. The main objective of the research is to come up with the success factors of adopting parametric insurance to manage disaster risk and its effectiveness in African countries. The study population consists of 32 employees from seven reinsurance companies and 5 from a regulatory body. Self-administered questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data. The study assumes that Zimbabwe does not have sufficient infrastructure to establish parametric insurance, and the lack of financial capacity is another major problem. 61% of respondents confirmed that they were underwriting natural disasters and the remaining 39% were not. The natural disasters that are being covered in insurance market and under which insurance products are used were at 61%. About 39% of the reinsurance companies that are not underwriting natural disasters cited the major reasons why they do not. Most of respondents confirmed that there was no support from the government to underwrite catastrophic risks. 57% of the respondents indicated that it is not possible to adopt parametric insurance, whilst 43% of the respondents agreed that it was practical. Recommendations are made for the government and insurance providers, which include use of catastrophe bonds, government incentives and support, the creation of a clearing house and the involvement of international organizations and developing countries in adopting parametric insurance.