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This article inductively builds theory on how transaction costs may be alleviated and institutional voids bridged in developing economies, based on the case study of successful migrant entrepreneurial involvement in Nigerian agriculture: Shonga Farms. We argue that the iterative process of building conditions of trust through long-term commitment, involvement of regional government, appropriate modes of financial contracts and the gradual transitioning of controlling interests to private actors are factors of success. We draw additional lessons by contrasting our case study with other similar migrant schemes that have failed.

SMEs collectively account for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions and so there is a need for urgent action to be taken by SMEs in the journey to achieve net zero. In this article, we provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for SMEs to draw from in the journey towards net zero by synthesizing the academic and grey literature. By bringing together key strands of the literature, we derive a conceptual model that provides a clear pathway for SMEs to embark on their net zero journeys. The framework we invent involves understanding the position of the SME in the value chain, understanding the pressures from stakeholders, undertaking greenhouse gas accounting to measure current levels of carbon emissions, undertaking internal changes towards the net zero agenda, undertaking external facing changes towards the net zero agenda, uncoupling, community participation, and updating business activities regularly. This model acts as a progressive decision-making and continuous improvement framework that will be an asset to SMEs as they undertake net zero activities. Overall, the paper contributes to the sustainability literature by being the first to synthesize the academic and grey literature to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for SMEs to attain net zero.

This paper examines the economic returns to being employers, paid workers and self-employed own account individuals in a lower middle income economy using quantile regressions while accounting for selection using Heckman selection models. The results suggest that although the majority of employers experience labour wage premiums throughout the income distribution, self-employed own account individuals experience a wage penalty at the lower quantiles of the income distribution where paid workers reap benefits from minimum wage guarantees, suggesting that minimum wage legislations may push individuals with low skills into selfemployment. Furthermore, female employers and paid workers tend to be relatively well educated implying that education enables females to escape the job glass ceiling although males typically earn significantly more than females.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the occupational status and entrepreneurship research in developing countries by proposing that there are implications for household consumption depending on the occupational status proportion of households. When the occupational proportion of the household changes, household consumption is affected. This effect also changes depending on what quantile level the household is in terms of household consumption. Design/methodology/approachThe paper makes use of OLS and quantile regressions to examine 6,919 Households comprising of 40,294 Individuals from the 2009 Nigerian Living Standards Measurement Survey. FindingsThe paper finds that there are implications for household consumption based on the proportion of individuals in each occupational category. The contributions of each employment proportion changes at different quantiles with self-employed individuals increasing household consumption at the lower quantiles but reducing household consumption at the upper quantiles. Crucially, having a higher proportion of unemployed individuals in the household is oftentimes better than having a higher proportion of self-employed individuals. Research limitations/implicationsThis paper offers new insights into how occupation proportion influences household consumption in developing countries. As a result, the household could seek to organize its members in such a way as to maximize combined household consumption since diverse occupational statuses contribute differently to the household consumption at different quantile levels. Practical implicationsThe proportion of employment statuses in the household has implications for household consumption and so the mix of employment in the household is important. The self-employed could also be involved in activities to enhance household consumption that are not captured by labour income. However, self-employment does not seem to always have a positive effect on household consumption and sometimes unemployment might be better. Originality/valueThe paper provides a new way to view the household as an organizing entity in terms of how it can allocate employment proportions to maximise household consumption.