Factors that drive Female Entrepreneurship in Armenia

Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy. Entrepreneurship includes creativity, innovation, risk taking, planning and management and is described as transferring ideas into action. Female entrepreneurship, in particular, is considered an important tool in enabling female empowerment and emancipation. In the light of recent world events, this has become a crucial area to study and understand, especially with respect to motivations, obstacles, constraints and consequences of female entrepreneurship. Having the previous framework in attention, this thesis focuses on female entrepreneurship in a developing country - Armenia – and proposes a conceptual framework of the phenomenon. A joint cooperation between the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development allowed to conduct an enterprise survey in the country and from that survey a microeconomic dataset was released and applied in this research study. A logistic regression econometric method is applied to the dataset to identify and measure the relationship between female entrepreneurship and several factors such as the location, size, legal status, market and obstacles faced by Armenian firms. The study concludes that women entrepreneurs in Armenia share many common features and obstacles with their male counterparts. Moreover, gender of the top managers, the firm’s location, size, main market type, the number of competitors and full-time employees, the adoption of new marketing methods, the access to land, the tax administration system and an inadequately educated workforce are found to be statistical significant factors in the explanation of female entrepreneurship in Armenia.

Crowdfunding for non-commercial initiatives

Organizations and individuals dealing with non-commercial initiatives are in permanent search for funding. Crowdfunding is an alternative way of collecting funds from general public through Internet-based platforms, which is currently gaining popularity all over the world. There are several research initiatives in that field that show the influence of different factors on the success of campaigns, both with commercial and non-commercial objectives. Non-profit nature of the project is named among key predictors of positive outcome. In this context, the purpose of this work is to check whether the tendencies detected by scholars are valid for non-commercial initiatives, especially those having socially aware objectives, posted on the Belarusian crowdfunding platform Ulej. The method used for validation of the research hypotheses is binary logistic regression and statistical test. The results showed that the dependent variable success is influenced by such independent variables as the funding goal, the sum collected, the number of sponsors and the average pledge. On the other hand, the effect of the duration period is not significant. Inferential analysis shows that there is no difference in the level of success between commercial and non-commercial projects and that social orientation does not increase the likelihood of meeting financial goals. The findings are opposite to those provided in literature. However that could be explained by the short period of functioning of platform and the small number of projects.

Female entrepreneurship in belarus

Nowadays entrepreneurship is one of the main key objects in internal policy of each country. More and more women start doing their own business and thus become integral participants of entrepreneurial activities. However, despite of the abundance of various scientific publications, female entrepreneurship is poorly understood phenomenon, which is needed to be carefully scrutinized. The general purpose of this work is to describe and analyse such phenomenon as female entrepreneurship generally in the world and separately and mainly in Belarus. Indeed, it intends to determine the factors that drive women's entrepreneurship in Belarus. The findings are supported by literature, gathered from different scientific researches and actual statistical data. The data used in the empirical part was collected from World Bank Enterprise Surveys and comprises the responses of representatives of 360 companies selected randomly from the population of the Belarus companies. With the help of descriptive statistics and the application of logistic regression simple models to determine which economic, social, fiscal and legal environmental factors impact on female entrepreneurial activity was possible to understand the female involvement in business activities and society of the country.

O regresso a casa : estudo sobre as vivências, sentimentos e expetativas dos familiares de utentes internados numa unidade de cuidados continuados face á alta

A crescente camada de população idosa que reside em Trás-os-Montes e no Douro e a prevalência de doenças crónicas e incapacitantes, conduz ao aumento do número de pessoas dependentes de cuidados, assim como de uma terceira pessoa que auxilie na satisfação das suas atividades de vida diária. A criação da Rede Nacional de Cuidados Continuados é uma mais-valia constituindo uma resposta adequada a pessoas que se encontram em situação de dependência, assim como aos seus familiares. Face à antevisão de alta da unidade e consequente regresso a casa, o cuidador familiar é, por vezes, assoberbado com múltiplas dúvidas e inseguranças, pelo que, merecem ser compreendidos. Com o objetivo de compreender vivências, sentimentos e expetativas que caraterizam o período que rodeia a alta do familiar da Unidade de Cuidados Continuados onde esteve internado desenvolveu-se o presente estudo que, face ao tipo de problemática a estudar, fez recurso da metodologia qualitativa, enveredando-se pela abordagem fenomenológica. Com base num guião de entrevista, inquiriram-se sete cuidadores informais que tinham, ou tiveram anteriormente, familiares internados numa Unidade de Cuidados Continuados. Perante a eminência da alta os cuidadores informais vivenciam um momento difícil que requer adaptação ao seu novo papel. A prestação de cuidados é uma tarefa exigente, contribuindo para uma ambivalência de sentimentos mencionada pelos participantes do estudo. Os sentimentos positivos traduzem-se em amor e gratificação, enquanto os sentimentos negativos estão relacionados com o medo, ansiedade e insegurança, face ao ato de cuidar. As redes de apoio informal/formal, manifestadas por apoio técnico, psicológico, financeiro e a necessidade de formação são fatores fundamentais, revelados pelos cuidadores informais do estudo. As expetativas referidas pelos participantes do estudo face às Unidades de Cuidados Continuados são: a adequação dos cuidados à situação da pessoa, promoção da autonomia e a humanização dos cuidados em saúde.