Informal enterprises and their activities dominate the economy of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, despise the increasing volume of eco-innovation research in recent years, the drivers of the eco-innovation of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in the informal sector remain largely unknown. Drawing from a triple theoretical anchoring method (entrepreneurship theory, shareholder theory, and resource theory), this study tests the validity of a set of eco-innovation drivers developed around the concept among firms of the informal sector in Ghana. The conceptual framework was tested using structural equation modeling and the data were obtained using the World Bank’s Ghana Informal Enterprise Survey (GIFS) as an area-based frame to survey 285 local entrepreneurs (n = 285). The results confirmed that informal enterprises do eco-innovate (mainly incremental innovation), and that innovation activities are driven by a government’s incentive regulations, market demand, and local entrepreneurs’ characteristic of hometown identity. This research highlights the contributions of the informal sector to sustainable development and draws the attention of policymakers, non-government agencies, and researchers on the drivers leading eco-innovation activities in the informal sector. The results could be used for future policy formulation.

Researchers and practitioners have spent much time on and given a great deal of attention to the practical characteristics of professional development and its delivery in an attempt to understand the training transfer problem at the workplace. However, when we consider the individual employee as the primary agent of the transfer process, we cannot and should not ignore their perceived self‐rated attributes, motivation and expectations of learning and transfer at the pre‐training stage. In this study, it is hypothesized that, trainees’ answers to the questions ‘can I do this task?’ and ‘do I want to do this task?’ are positively associated with the level of transfer effort performance expectancy. The Learning Transfer System Inventory questionnaire was completed by 213 teachers in high schools and vocational schools in Thailand during their training on cloud computing tools. The findings reveal that a teacher’s personal characteristics (learning readiness, personal transfer efficacy, motivation to transfer, personal capacity and perceived content validity) at the pre‐training stage are significant predictors of transfer effort performance expectancy at the post‐training stage. This study can help training practitioners and managers to enhance learner characteristics prior to training with a view to increasing training transfer.

Waste management has become a pressing environmental, social, and economic issue. In Ghana, the government has decentralized the waste management system to include private sector actors as key players to improve the collection, disposal, and recycling of waste. With this development, a heterogeneous population of entrepreneurs has engaged in waste recycling, achieving mixed results in terms of performance. The aim of this paper is to identify shared personality traits and characteristics of entrepreneurs that make certain firms engage in waste recycling more innovatively than others. An extensive literature review was used to identify these personality traits and characteristics, which were then modeled using upper echelon theory (UET) to investigate their impact on innovation performance. A regression analysis approach was adopted based on the data collected from 157 entrepreneurs’ founders, co-founders, and shareholders among the waste recycling firms in Ghana selected for the annual Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) Award competition. The key contribution of this research is to better understand the relationship between entrepreneur traits and innovation performance. Given the fact that in small start-ups, the founder plays the most important role, this paper serves as a foundation for defining individual-level factors critical in sustaining sustainable innovation performance in the waste recycling sector. The results of this study will help shareholders and policymakers better understand and implement strategies for determining and selecting innovative waste recycling entrepreneurs.

Transfer of training is the ultimate aim of training investment and the key to maintain competitive advantage in today’s rapidly changing operating environment where organizational success often depends on the motivation with which employee can learn and apply new ideas and information. While previous researches have focused on factors at the training stage influencing motivation to transfer training at the post-training stage, this study investigates the influence of pre-training factors. Particularly, pre-training performance self-efficacy, learning readiness, perceived content validity, and organization openness to change. The result should assist managers and trainers to ascertain the trainee state of preparedness before the training program to anticipate successful transfer of learning from the workshop to the workplace. A survey of high and vocational school teachers in Thailand participating in 5 days training on cloud computing integration in teaching was made using the Learning Transfer Inventory System (LTIS). Results show that learning readiness, perceived content validity, and organization openness to change influence the motivation to transfer at the post-training stage. Thus, framing the training program in the way trainees can answer to the questions “can I do this task?”, “do I want to do this task and why?” at the pre-training stage influence motivation to transfer. An implication to managers is that employees’ selection for training should take into consideration trainees’ perceptions in order to anticipate motivation to transfer at the post-training stage.

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