An Analysis and Comparison of the Brazilian and Canadian Economies

An Analysis and Comparison of the Brazilian and Canadian Economies

An Analysis and Comparison of the Brazilian and Canadian Economies

Monday, May, 25, 2020

An Analysis and Comparison of the Brazilian and Canadian Economies

Monday, May, 25, 2020

What are the differences between these economic policy roadmaps?

2019 saw both the introduction of new entrepreneurial polices in Brazil as well as the successful continuation of recently enacted reforms. For example, the country’s labour reform bills, effective since November 2017, have brought greater flexibility in employment contracts. Other policies have likewise been passed to make entrepreneurship easier, including approval of the provisional Measure of Economic Freedom, an act that includes policies such as the cessation of business licences for low-risk small business activities, in addition to the simplification of the national digital bookkeeping system for collecting taxes and social security obligations.

In the financial realm, the 2019 Empresa Simples de Crédito (ESC) act aims to increase access to finance for micro and small enterprises, while the Micro Empreendedor Individual (MEI) aims to formalize the microfinance system already adopted by 9.2 million micro entrepreneurs. Complementary to these policies, the Cadastro Positivo, effective July 2019, makes information on individuals’ defaults and payments easier to access for loan-granting organizations. This will improve trust and transparency among business owners (Read more…).

Humane Entrepreneurship in Practice

Humane Entrepreneurship in Practice

Humane Entrepreneurship in Practice

Sunday, May, 24, 2020 by: Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy

As the world retreats inward, both business practices and consumer habits have significantly shifted. Consumers are starting to recognize the value of being able to expend their resources while concurrently awakening to the troubles that small businesses globally face. As for businesses, many have also reflected on their values and practices, deciding where to make cuts and how to demonstrate employee-value at this moment. At large, we have all been influenced by this global reset.

This re-establishment places many in the space of simultaneous suffering and structuring. This is where the principles of humane entrepreneurship can be applied in practice. Detailed in their original publication, humane enterprises share four categorizations for business, those being ideal, moderate, negative, and harmful. Working as types of standards for the business community, these qualify businesses not only in their transition towards just practices but more so in their ability to apply these grades of practice as individuals and through cultural business diffusion.

The Ideal Humane Entrepreneurship can be found in companies where their top management and administration embody the cultural values of empathy, equity, empowerment, and enablement for their employees. As the leadership guides appropriately and humanely, a culture of these values will help generate innovation, appropriate risk-taking, and decisive actions that produce activities creating quality job creation and company wealth, which helps continue the cycle of these qualities. Although these qualifiers need markers to measure these standards, companies, themselves, might begin to create evaluation and assessment phases to calculate their own business’s standard of Humane Entrepreneurship. Additionally, national leaders can use these principles as they reconsider current policies surrounding enterprises, aiding in the need to bring a Culture of Ideal Humane Entrepreneurship to the forefront of both consumers’ and producers’ understanding of their role in entrepreneurship.

Moderate Humane Entrepreneurship can be portrayed in companies where leadership is committed to one aspect of generating a Culture of Humane Entrepreneurship. This will inevitably lead to an imbalance between managing the human and strategy within the organization. Resulting in varied outcomes for wealth and job creation, this cycle will, unfortunately, not continue the cycle of positive performance seen in the Ideal standard.

Negative Humane Entrepreneurship is depicted, regrettably, in many companies worldwide, where the organization’s leadership forgets the importance of the “human” component to entrepreneurial orientation. This will thus create dissatisfaction for employees, which will disempower high-level performance, innovation, and certainly risk-taking. This sterile ecosystem will cause depletion and discontinuation of wealth cycles. There remains the possibility for an organization of this Negative nature to recover the humane element of the business.

Lastly, Harmful Humane Entrepreneurship is seen in leadership who are purposely and directly harming their employees and, thus, the capital. The Culture of Humane Entrepreneurship is not at all visible in this environment, leading to a decline in performance and wealth, which is often impossible to resolve to look forward.

Humane Entrepreneurship necessitates that companies either transition immediately or begin their business plan based on a humane orientation to entrepreneurship, which will allow leadership and staff to understand their value while working as a cohesive team. This company will demonstrate their belief that “respect for human dignity demands respect for human freedom,” thus leveraging their company to further the ideals of empathy and equity beyond the walls of their business to broadcast this Cultural value to and for the greater world.

 
 
 
 
JICSB Special Issue: Sustainable Entrepreneurship

JICSB Special Issue: Sustainable Entrepreneurship

JICSB Special Issue: Sustainable Entrepreneurship

Thursday, May, 21, 2020 Edited by Analia Pastran, Chantal Line Carpentier, Adnane Maalaoui

General Overview

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, addresses the most pressing challenges of our time, such as climate change and COVID-19, social injustice, human rights, and economic growth. Incorporating the sustainable development goals (SDGs) into society’s fabric is essential for just and equitable sustainable development for all. The SDGs purpose is to stimulate everyone, from governments, businesses, NGOs, citizens, and other stakeholders, to accelerate actions that benefit the people and the planet, by fostering actions and partnerships at all levels, so no one is left behind. And since MSMEs are the foundation of our economies and society, they are at the critical leading edge of the UN’s sustainable development initiative.

Sustainable entrepreneurs are our best hope to achieve the SDGs, working within a network of like-minded visionaries, innovators, and troubleshooters. This Special Issue of the Journal of the International Council for Small Business (JICSB) aims to document cases of sustainable entrepreneurship across the world and to accelerate knowledge about what works and could be amplified.

Guest Editors

Prof. Analia Pastran
Exec Director of Smartly, Social Entrepreneurship on SDGs
Ph. D. Chantal Line Carpentier
Chief of UNCTAD New York
Ph. D. Adnane Maalaoui
Managing Director IPAG Entrepreneurship Center

Deadline

Call Opens                                  May 2020
Call Ends                                    October 2020 
Publication date                         January 2021 

More Info:

Prof. Analia Pastran:  apastran@insmartly.com
Ph. D. Adnane Maalaoui: a.maalaoui@ipag.fr 

Paper Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at JICSB Sustainable Entrepreneurship, click here to go to the submission form. Papers can be submitted until the deadline, 1 October 2020 by midnight. They should be limited to 10 pages per article, answer the so-what question, indicate how it ties to the SDGs, and how we can leverage more research.

All papers will be approved by the Special Editors, Prof. Analia Pastran, Dr. Chantal Line Carpentier, and Dr. Adnane Maalaoui. Accepted papers will be published in the JICSB’s special issue (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except as conference proceedings papers).

Please have in mind the following steps to submit your paper:

  1. JICSB Guidelines for authors can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=ucsb20.
  2. Submit a Paper Proposal to JICSB Sustainable Entrepreneurship (click here).
  3. There is a dedicated track titled “Sustainable Entrepreneurship” in which you can associate your paper.
  4. We will review the paper and we will recognize some articles in the ICSB World Congress 2021.
  5. All the Editors of the Special Issue (Prof. Analia Pastran,  Dr. Chantal Line Carpentier, Dr. Adnane Malaui) will be at the ICSB 2021 Congress to give the recognition awards to the authors. 

Keyword and topics:

  • MSME policy supporting the UN SDGs
  • Sustainable Entrepreneurship
  • Sustainability
  • Sustainable Development Goals
  • Contributions from the private sector to achieve the Sustainable Development
  • Humane entrepreneurship and SDGs
  • Social Entrepreneurship and SDGs
  • MSMEs and SDGs
  • Economic development initiatives supporting SDGs
  • NGO or government policy supporting SDGs
  • Inclusive entrepreneurship
  • Disadvantage entrepreneurship
Small matters: Who is providing jobs in sectors at risk from COVID-19?

Small matters: Who is providing jobs in sectors at risk from COVID-19?

Small matters: Who is providing jobs in sectors at risk from COVID-19?

Thursday, May, 21, 2020 Written by The International Labour Organization

Small enterprises are incredibly important. ILO’s 2019 Small Matters  report showed that own-account workers and micro-enterprises alone (the smallest economic units) provide more than half of global employment.

This infographic highlights the own-account workers, micro-enterprises and larger enterprises that operate formally and informally, in the seven sectors considered at risk. The smallest economic units are particularly important because they provide a livelihood for over 800 million workers in the highlighted sectors. Approximately 8 out of 10 of these workers are in the informal economy.

How to read the figures

Figures are in millions and are rounded to 2 decimal points to represent the data in the sectors where the numbers are lower than 100,000. For example, 59.09m represents 59,090,000 jobs; and 0.08 is the same as 80,000 jobs

VIEW FULL FIGURE HERE

Small matters more now than ever before

Small matters more now than ever before

Small Matters More Now Than Ever Before

Thursday, May, 21, 2020  Written By Dragan Radic, Head, ILO Small and Medium Enterprises Unit

I have many friends who run their own small businesses, in Europe, Australia, and Asia. They include dental clinics, restaurants, small travel agencies, and manufacturing businesses. All have been forced to close.

Their workers are struggling on reduced salaries, paid or unpaid leave. Some, sadly, have already been let go, because although most governments did respond quickly with measures to keep businesses afloat and workers on the payroll, for many the help was too little or came too late. Worldwide, millions of small business jobs have been lost because of the COVID-19 crisis.

Small businesses are incredibly important, both socially and economically. In 2019 the ILO published a report, Small Matters which showed that small economic units with up to 49 employees account for approximately 70 per cent of global employment. Their contribution to GDP is significant. So small really does matter.

We know that even in normal times a lot of small businesses barely survive from month to month. Many also face particular challenges in creating and maintaining decent working conditions; in other words, major obstacles to fulfilling the Decent Work agenda and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Small-business-Covid-767x431

But what about those even smaller economic units, that can be almost invisible, physically and statistically? I’m talking about micro-enterprises and own account workers. How many have already been affected or are in danger if this crisis continues? Will COVID-19 turn the ‘poverty clock’ backwards, and jump from being a health and economic crisis into humanitarian disaster?

To understand this challenge we delved into the database behind the Small Matters report. We picked the seven sectors most prone to COVID-19 closure, including manufacturing, accommodation and food and the retail trade. We then created infographics to illustrate this global challenge by sector, by region, by the size of the economic unit, and by whether they were formal or informal entities.

We found that in these seven most ‘at risk’ sectors alone, there are more than 800 million people who either work in micro-enterprise or are own account workers. Most of them, almost 640 million, work in the informal sector (in Asia and the Pacific alone these seven sectors include more than 300 million own account workers, of whom nine out of 10 are in the informal sector). We also found that women are overrepresented in high-risk sectors and are more vulnerable.

So what needs to be done?

In addition to support for small businesses as key providers of jobs and livelihoods, government policies must also target own account workers and micro firms. Particular attention must be given to the informal sector.

We know that, for many governments, identifying informal business owners is a challenge and reaching those in need can be difficult. Almost one billion people globally lack formal ID and many are without bank accounts. Establishing a digital identity by correlating information from various sources (e.g. Facebook, email accounts and SIM cards), might be a way forward. ‘Self-presentation’ and identification through municipalities, local community centres and associations could be another option. Governments should also develop appropriate and sustainable policy measures to meet immediate income needs (for example, temporary cash transfers, rent subsidies and family income assistance), as well as support to keep the businesses going.

In addition, small economic units should receive timely, simple, health and safety advice and personal protective equipment to prevent the spread of the virus and ensure business continuity.

Expanding social protection coverage to include vulnerable groups, including those in the informal sector would be a big step forward, and, in the current climate, a particularly important one. It would be a significant cost, but if done well and combined with adequate support and incentives, it could also be an important motivation towards formalization.

The opportunity is now.

One size will not fit all. To be effective, measures to support these vulnerable business owners must be developed through social dialogue, be gender-sensitive, and be tailored to individual country needs.

These are difficult times. We know that small economic units ‒ especially those in the informal sector ‒ are particularly vulnerable. If we are to avoid converting a health and economic crisis into an extended humanitarian catastrophe we must recognise that small matters more now than ever before!