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The International Council for Small Business (ICSB) is a non-profit organization devoted to continuing management education for entrepreneurs and small business. Founded in 1955, the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) was the first international membership organization to promote the growth and development of small businesses worldwide. The organization brings together educators, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from around the world to share knowledge and expertise in their respective fields through publications, programs, workshops, training sessions and certifications

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Anuar Shariff is currently working as a Business Growth Consultant/Director at KARL Consult Sdn Bhd. (Read more…)
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The secret letters of history's first-known businesswomen
Around 1870BC, in the city of Assur in northern Iraq, a woman called Ahaha uncovered a case of financial fraud. Ahaha had invested in long-distance trade between Assur and the city of Kanesh in Turkey. She and other investors had pooled silver to finance a donkey caravan delivering tin and textiles to Kanesh, where the goods would be exchanged for more silver, generating a tidy profit. But Ahaha’s share of the profits seemed to have gone missing – possibly embezzled by one of her own brothers, Buzazu. So, she grabbed a reed stylus and clay tablet and scribbled a letter to another brother, Assur-mutappil, pleading for help:
Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity Around the World
Studies of female business leaders and economic performance are rarely conducted with worldwide observational data, and with considerations on the underlying cultural, institutional, and business environment. This paper uses worldwide, firm-level data from more than 100 countries to study how female-headed firms differ from male-headed firms in productivity level and growth, and whether the female leader performance disparity hinges on the underlying environment.