Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate how bridging and bonding social capital relate to career success among career women in a patriarchal African society. Further, the intervening role of self-esteem in the association between social capital and career success was examined.Design/methodology/approach Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 488 Nigerian career women in management cadres in both private and public sectors. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied in testing the proposed hypotheses.Findings The outcomes show that bridging social capital has a significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Conversely, bonding social capital has no significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Further analyses show that self-esteem only partially mediates the association between bridging social capital and career success while an insignificant intervening effect of self-esteem on the association between bonding social capital and career success was found.Practical implications The findings suggest the need for organisations to stimulate a friendly work environment that has a zero-tolerance culture for workplace discrimination against women. This will enable the women to relate with people in the workplace irrespective of gender or cadre to generate more bridging social capital to achieve greater career success.Originality/value The study extends social capital and career success research to career women in a patriarchal African context as a response to the call for context-specific career research in non-western countries particularly Africa. Second, the study provides empirical evidence that African career woman with bridging social capital can achieve career success irrespective of their self-esteem level amid patriarchal discrimination.

In developing African countries, a considerable body of knowledge exists about the evolving stages of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices from mere philanthropic actions to damage control strategy, especially in the mining sector. However, little is known about the emerging strategic CSR as a competitive strategy particularly its dimensional outcomes among diverse sectors in the region. Applying a multidimensional perspective of corporate social responsibility activities, we explored how customers’ perception of a firm’s economic, legal, ethical, and social responsibility actions influence the firm’s product rating, consumer loyalty, and firms’ strategic legitimacy among telecoms subscribers in Nigeria. A probability sampling technique was used to select 126 subscribers with a proportionate representation of the five mobile phone service providers in Nigeria. From the collected data, descriptive statistics were applied to analyze the demographic profile of the participants while the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. Contrary to expectations, the outcomes suggest that consumer perception of telecoms firms’ economic responsibilities has no significant positive influence on the firms’ product rating, consumer loyalty, and the firms’ strategic legitimacy. Conversely, the outcomes support our propositions that the consumer perception of telecoms firms’ social, legal, and ethical responsibility actions has a significant positive influence on the firms’ product rating, consumer loyalty, and firms’ strategic legitimacy. The findings suggest the need for telecoms firms to focus on social, legal, and ethical responsibility dimensions as competitive strategies.

The current financial environment is characterized by frequent innovations and complex financial products and services and this poses particular challenges for agribusiness entrepreneurs in rural areas. This study examined the sources of financial information available to agribusiness entrepreneurs in rural areas and how financial information literacy impacts performance sustainability and strategic decision-making effectiveness among agribusiness entrepreneurs amid complex and frequent innovations in financial environments in Nigeria. Utilizing a probability sampling approach, 397 respondents were drawn from the pool of agribusiness entrepreneurs registered with the Edo State Agricultural Development Programme for the Central Bank of Nigeria Anchored Borrower’s Programme (ABP) for farming businesses. The hypotheses were tested using linear regression analysis. The results from the demographic analysis suggest that agribusiness entrepreneurs have the highest access to radio adverts/programs on financial matters while television adverts/programs exert the highest persuasive influence on these agribusiness entrepreneurs. The outcomes from this analysis indicate that financial information literacy significantly impacts agribusiness performance sustainability among entrepreneurs. In addition, the proposed link between financial information literacy and strategic decision-making effectiveness among agribusiness entrepreneurs was confirmed. It is concluded that financial information literacy is needed for strategic decision-making effectiveness and performance sustainability among agribusiness entrepreneurs, particularly in rural areas, amid frequent innovative financial products and services.

The socioeconomic factors driving the adoption of birth limitation and lengthening birth intervals as fertility control mechanisms in sub-Saharan Africa are a subject of debate. There are also arguments over what accounts for the low performance of the adopted fertility control mechanisms, and the break experienced in the fertility transition process. To fill the gaps, the authors work from a life-course perspective and linked data from the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Population Commission to collect retrospective data from 416 participants. Drawing on the socioeconomic framework, the roles of unemployment and grandparental support in reproductive decisions were tested. Results suggest that the unemployment situation is an underlying mechanism that triggered the adoption of birth control measures in Nigeria. The results also suggest that grandparental support accounts for the slow pace of the fertility transition process. This current study concludes that the unemployment situation pressures parents to reduce the number of childbirth. However, where grandparental support for grandchildren is available, parents tend to have a large family size in line with the pro-natalist nature of Nigerians.