KIMEP University

About: KIMEP University is a education organization based out in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Corporate governance & Government. The organization has 185 authors who have published 426 publications receiving 5098 citations.

The global training deficit: the scarcity of formal and informal professional development opportunities for women entrepreneurs

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the global dearth of training options to support women entrepreneurs and to forward a set of recommendations to better meet the learning needs of women who own their businesses.Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a thorough literature review on the topic, which examines the learning and training experiences of female entrepreneurs in a wide range of disparate societies.Findings – The absence of leaning, training and professional development opportunities for women entrepreneurs is found to be an almost universal phenomenon. In the few examples where training has been planned and provided, the results have been very significant. Further, women and their businesses are disadvantaged by the lack of training available and that this comes at a high cost to their businesses.Research limitations/implications – The implications are that countries are hindering economic activity, growth and prosperity by ignoring the professional development needs of...

Testing Forecast Accuracy of Foreign Exchange Rates: Predictions from Feed Forward and Various Recurrent Neural Network Architectures

Abstract: In this research, we work with data of futures contracts on foreign exchange rates for British pound (BP), Canadian dollar (CD), and Japanese yen (JY) that are traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) against US dollars. We model relationships between exchange rates in these currencies using linear models, feed forward artificial neural networks (ANN), and three versions of recurrent neural networks (RNN1, RNN2 and RNN3) for predicting exchange rates in these currencies against the US dollar. Our results on forecast evaluations based on AGS test the tests of forecast equivalence between any two competing models among the entire models employed for each of the series show that ANN and the three versions of RNN models offer superior forecasts for predicting BP, CD and JY exchange rates although the forecast evaluations based on MGN test are in sharp contrast. On the other hand forecast based on SIGN test shows that ANN and all the versions of RNN models offer superior forecasts for BP and CD in exception of JY exchange rates. The results for forecast evaluation for all the models for each of the series based on summary measures of forecast evaluations show that RNN3 model appears to offer the most accurate predictions of BP and RNN1 for JP exchange rates. However, none of the RNN models appear to be statistically superior to the benchmark (i.e., linear model) for predicting CD exchange rates.

The Impact of Top Management Commitment on Total Quality Management Practice: An Exploratory Study in the Thai Garment Industry

Abstract: Over the last three decades quality management has been increasingly viewed as a critical competitive weapon by firms around the world. Commitment of top management has been cited as one of the most important factors impacting the success for implementation of total quality management practice in a firm. This has been claimed by practicing quality gurus such as Deming, Juran and Crosby. In this research study, an extensive literature review in the field of total quality management assists to identify a list of critical factors (top management commitment, supplier quality management, continuous improvement, product innovation, benchmarking, employee involvement, reward and recognition, education and training, customer focus and product quality). To measure each factor a number of indicators are also identified. The reliability and validity of all the factors were tested and validated using data from 45 Thai garment manufacturing companies. Various statistical methods were employed for this test and validation. To identify the impact of top management commitment on the nine TQM factors a paired sample test between high-top and low-top management firms were conducted. Besides that step wise regression analysis was done to find the significant predictors of product quality construct for high-top and low-top management firms. From the analysis the findings emerges firstly, firms with high top management commitment implement the other nine TQM factors more rigorously than those with low top management commitment firms. Secondly, in high-top management firm two TQM factors namely employee involvement and product innovation are the primary predictors of the product quality. Finally, in firms with low-top management firm two of the eight TQM factors namely customer focus, and employee involvement are the primary predictors of the product quality.

Trade-off between financial sustainability and outreach of microfinance institutions

Abstract: Microfinance institutions (MFIs) offer banking services to poor customers who have no access to the traditional financial sector. However, recent developments in the microfinance industry have increased focus on financial sustainability of MFIs therefore shifting focus from their social mission (outreach). Previous studies examine the factors affecting both financial sustainability and outreach of MFIs in separate models without taking into account the possible link between them. On this basis we propose a comprehensive model which includes both ‘outreach’ and ‘financial sustainability’ as endogenous variables and allows for possible link between them. Our results show that focusing on financial sustainability does not necessarily hurt the depth and breadth of outreach.