Contenu du sommaire : Diversité des modèles d'affaires en Afrique

“Grin” which can be translated as a place of conversation in the Bambara language is a place in Mali where current affairs, family problems, business between friends and even between service providers and customers are discussed. Different from the home and the workplace, the “grin” has all the characteristics of a third place. However, its role in bringing service providers and customers closer together is ignored or even misunderstood. This work aims to understand the role of the « grin » in the satisfaction of customers of informal car garages in commune 6 of Bamako. Thus, we carried out our interview guide with 5 mechanics, 5 electricians, 5 sheet metal workers, 15 customers from 5 workshops including 3 chosen by workshop as well as 5 different people from these listed categories working in this third place. To do this, these interviews were manually analyzed in accordance with the thematic analysis of Paillé and Muchielli. The results show that the “grin” contributes positively to relational satisfaction. The study notes the importance of “grins” in the process of satisfaction in the automobile garages of Commune 6 of Bamako.

A great deal of research has been devoted to the study of expatriation, but few of these studies have taken into account the influence of the behaviour of the inhabitants of the host country on the adaptation of expatriates. To fill this gap, empirical exploration is needed. The aim of this research is to understand the extent to which the behaviour of the citizens of the host country influences the adaptation of expatriates, and how to meet the challenge of behavioural distance. The research is qualitative, exploratory and falls within the interpretative paradigm. Thirty-six interviews with expatriates in Tunisia allowed us to detect the existence of adaptive behaviours and behavioural barriers specific to the Tunisian context. Moreover, many behavioural differences seem to be a trigger for conflict, which negatively influences the intercultural adaptation of the subjects in question.

The informal sector does not only make a significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many African countries, but a major potential source of entrepreneurship, especially for those who do not have access to markets and productive resources to join the formal sector. The objective of this article is to make reflection on the informal sector as an important factor for economic development in a country like Nigeria. To fill the research gap, we developed a theoretical framework that focuses on a decision matrix regarding the level of informality. This study took samples from the population of entrepreneurs and business owners operating informally in different market areas in Lagos. A random sampling method was used to classify informal entrepreneurs into micro, small and medium enterprises. We collected a total of 120 questionnaires from entrepreneurs who have participated in or have been operating in the informal sector since 2013. The benefits of working in this industry, including the relative freedom it offers entrepreneurs to run their businesses are obvious. In addition, the sector is an essential supplier of goods and services for low-income social groups. The results of this study suggest that the productivity of the informal sector should be improved by proposing supportive policies.

The objective of this study is to measure the technical efficiency of agro-industrial SMEs. The DEA method was used to estimate efficiency scores on a sample of 311 SMEs from the INS database of Cameroon. The efficiency scores obtained using the CRS and VRS technologies for the entire sample were 32.81% and 53.39% on average, respectively. These efficiency scores show that Cameroon's agro-industrial SMEs have a low level of technical efficiency. The results show that under CRS technology, the most efficient branch is forestry and logging, while under VRS technology, the best performance is achieved by the grain and starch powder manufacturing branch. The efficiency gains could have been achieved if all SMEs operated on the production frontier. To remedy this, two complementary solutions exist. One, external, is linked to the structuring of a collaboration with the managers of the non-efficient SMEs for the application of more adequate management methods; inspired by the SME benchmarks or reference groups. The other, internal, is related to the « conformity » of SMEs to the requirements of the socio-cultural environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of hostile environment on SME's sustainability via the Business Model Canvas (the model). In terms of the size and especially their limited resources, it is difficult to sustain their business if they don't use resilient business model to cope with the hostility of business environment. The goal of the paper is to validate the model to highlight the importance of the Business Model as a tool for resilient SME to environmental constraints and to identify some business models that would be suitable for such SMEs operating in hostile environments. We applied this research to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) SME and defined business models to avoid by Congolese SME in hostile environments.

The objective of this article is to highlight the causes and consequences of SME failures emerging from Muslim communities in Senegal. We relied on the work of Smida and Khelil, in particular through their more comprehensive analysis grid of entrepreneurial failure and the influence of the environment, and even on the work about social constructs of Krauss. In this perspective, we carried out semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs from a religious community who have already experienced at least one failure in their entrepreneurial activities and, subsequently, we processed our data with the SPHINX plus2 software (V5). The results show that the main reason for the failures of entrepreneurs is the lack of outlets for the marketing of products; Added to this is an institutional vacuum correlated with a lack of external support. Failure is often considered by the entrepreneur as a sign of destiny and its consequences are a stoppage of activities, a loss of income and time, without omitting self-criticism by the entrepreneur.

This article aims to provide a better understanding of the issues related to the acceptance of e-learning systems by students of private higher education institutions. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model of Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis was used by us to determine the strength of predictors of students' intention to accept and use e-learning systems. Our research has shown that effort expectancy and social influence are two variables whose effect does not significantly influence the behavioral intention of students to use e-learning systems. The results further demonstrate that behavioral intention negatively influences usage behavior.

Since the work of Moore in the nineties, generating public value from the initiatives of government institutions (specifically those based on digital technology) has become an academic and practical concern. This article addresses this question by specifically exploring the impact of citizen e-participation initiatives on public value in Tunisian municipalities. First and starting from an examination of the debates, ambiguities, and controversies around the theme under study, we develop a theoretical framework allowing us to approach the field for identifying the types of public value created in governmental institutions and the mechanisms of their generation. Then, we justify the choice of a qualitative exploratory approach of multiple case study in the context of Tunisian municipalities (government institutions subject to strong political and social authorities). Finally, the triangulation of data sources (responsible for citizen e-participation in municipalities and representatives of associations working on local governance) allows us to validate the following results: (1) citizen e-participation amplifies and creates four public value generating mechanisms (effectiveness, efficiency, intrinsic improvement and interactivity/reactivity); (2) with the digital technology currently exploited in the context of Tunisian governmental institutions (operating at the dawn of a participatory democracy), citizen e-participation essentially generates public value of an economic type and (3) in order to be able to generate other types of public value (political, social, etc.), it is necessary to have a rigorous conception of citizen e-participation initiatives, on the one hand, and to have the predisposition and commitment of the first line personnel, on the other hand.

This article is a report of an interview conducted in 2014 with Jean-Louis Le Moigne, to whom we pay tribute here. We will therefore take a thematic look at the key ideas from this interview. Jean-Louis Le Moigne presented us the constructivist thinking and in particular the predominant place of models in any thought. When a researcher is modelling a phenomenon or a dynamic system, he has to study its purposes, transformations, functions and also the environment with which it is permanently linked: in other words, he has to consider the complexity of what he is studying and modelling. Therefore, the researcher's stance is not neutral and requires to make conscious choices – in particular by being aware that a data is by definition constructed; he has to be responsible and dignified. The researcher's ethical duty can also be seen in the teaching he provides, a duty exemplified by Jean-Louis Le Moigne.

Our research aims to identify, using an inductive classification, different profiles of motivations among students with entrepreneurial aspirations. The analysis of eleven factors of entrepreneurial motivations within a sample of 256 respondents first allowed us to identify a specific taxonomy composed of six distinct profiles. Several analyses of covariance then demonstrated that the degree of entrepreneurial intention varies significantly according to the profile, but only when the results are controlled for certain individual variables (gender, age, level of study, entrepreneurial training, and personal entrepreneurial experience).

Sustainable finance integrates, to one degree or another, environmental, social and governance considerations into investment decisions. It works for the common good but faces a theoretical gap: the foundational concept of common utility makes no economic sense. By default, common good relates to extra-financial reporting, not-sophisticated investors and outside banking channels trading (such as crowdfunding). The intent of the paper is, from a behavioral economics perspective, to model the reasoning and decision behaviors of both sophisticated and not-sophisticated investors, while common utility measures the satisfaction (vs dissatisfaction) or welfare (vs discomfort) that the greatest number finds in the consumption or the obtaining of the common good by a small number. Common utility can therefore be understood relatively, as an original utility at stake at a time when it ensured the survival of mankind and when property had not yet begun to threaten the common good and cause its downfall (Tragedy of the commons). Its coupling with Markowitz's modern portfolio theory gives a postmodern version of it, at the service of sustainable finance and with experiments in sustainable entrepreneurship.

The objective of this research work is to study the e-reputation of a commercial site from the point of view of the customer since Youness and Valette-Florence (2015) observe the virtual absence of work from this angle. Our work starts from the use of the site to explain the reputation that will follow and which is built on the actual use of the site. The administration of the questionnaire was carried out with 231 people. Theoretically, the methodology adopted, namely from the actual use of the site by Internet users to determine the online reputation, has proved to be relevant. Our research has made it possible to highlight the central role of the product offer in the materialization of the e-reputation both in terms of the variety of the offer, the choice of products offered and the quality of these. Three other variables emerged in a major way: the match between supply and consumer needs; consumer opinions and the role of after-sales service.

Stemming from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) this article tends to explore the role of both anxiety and psychological pressure to get fresh dollars (External pressure) in times of multiple crises as moderating factors of SME entrepreneurs' intention to adopt international digital selling. International digital selling within SMEs in Lebanon, in times of multiple crises, has received little attention in the Lebanese context. A quantitative study was completed with three case studies involving semi-structured interviews. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 343 entrepreneurs. Results show that attitude (ATT) positively mediates the relationship between effort expectancy (EE) and intention to adopt international digital selling. However, attitude (ATT) negatively mediates the relationship between performance expectancy (PE) and facilitating conditions (FC) to adopt international digital selling. On the contrary, the results obtained did not confirm the significance of anxiety (ANX) to adopt international digital selling in moderation analyses. However, they confirmed the significance of the psychological pressure to get fresh dollars (external or environmental pressure) in times of multiple crises.