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Examining the impact of gender on various aspects of business performance has gained research and policy traction, although the empirical evidence remains inconclusive. This paper aims to focus on one type of business, namely, informal enterprises and one dimension of business performance, namely, product innovation, to better understand how product innovations affect employment in both female- and male-owned informal enterprises.

This paper relies on a unique data set of 513 informal enterprises located in two urban centres in Ghana (Accra and Tema), covering the period between 2013 and 2015 and the Dose-Response Model to examine the effect of product innovations on employment in informal enterprises in urban Ghana.

The findings suggest that product innovation has considerable beneficial impacts on the creation of employment in informal enterprises. The results do not show systematic differences in the factors affecting product innovation in female- and male-owned enterprises. However, they suggest that although female-owned enterprises are less likely to introduce product innovations, they do sell more innovative products.

These findings support the view that innovation is “gendered”, and therefore, requires a “gendered” policy lens.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether female workers’ years of education do mediate the influence of gender diversity on innovative capability of enterprises in Nigeria.

The study uses three waves Nigeria Enterprise Surveys panel dataset collected in 2007, 2009 and 2014, for a sample of 1,566 enterprises to circumvent the problems associated with application of cross-sectional designs in mediation studies. The study applies Hicks and Tingley’s (2011) two equations mediation analysis approach with robust standard error.

The results of the inferential analysis indicate that female workers’ years of education mediate fully and positively the effect of gender diversity on innovative capability of enterprises in Nigeria.

For gender diversity to enhance the innovative capability of an enterprise, female workers must be empowered with higher levels of formal education.

Female workers should be empowered with formal education in order to enhance the ability of firms to innovate. Gender diversity alone does not enhance the innovative capability of an enterprise without empowering female workers with formal education.

Although past studies do provide substantial evidence on the positive relationship between gender diversity and the innovative capability of enterprises, the mediating effect of education on this relationship has been ignored. This is particularly relevant in a country such as Nigeria with low levels of innovation. Furthermore, despite the presumed positive effect of gender diversity on innovative capability, existing empirical research does not yield consistent findings to clearly resolve how or why gender diversity does affect the innovative capability of enterprises. This paper tests whether it could be the result of a mediating (intervening) variable.

The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclusion and diversity in knowledge production.

The paper proposes practices and recommendations to decolonise knowledge production in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It provides a brief literature review on the concepts of decolonisation of knowledge and epistemological freedom, and its origins; assesses the need for knowledge decolonisation, emphasising on the integration of local knowledge from grassroots women-led initiatives in instances where disasters and crises are being investigated in vulnerable communities, especially in the Global South; and finally the paper proposes to decolonise knowledge production through activating co-learning and co-production. The practices have been developed from the work of relevant authors in the field and case studies.

Through a brief literature review on previous discourses on the topic of knowledge decolonisation and analysis of recent case studies on disaster and crisis management and community resilience, the paper finds that there exists a lack of pluralism and inclusion in epistemology which limits the pursuit to obtain the whole truth in the production of knowledge in research studies.

This paper adds to the discussion of decolonisation of knowledge in the field of disaster and climate change research studies, and research processes in general. It provides in-depth analyses of recent case studies of emerging community resilience and local practices that were crucial in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

This paper aims to explore the factors that influence innovation and productivity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manufacturing enterprises in Colombia, in comparison with larger firms.

The study was based on firm-level panel data extracted from a census of Colombian manufacturing firms between 2007 and 2014. The authors used an adapted version of the Crepon-Duguet-Mairesse (CDM) sequential approach that interrelates R&D intensity, innovation outputs and productivity.

This study's findings indicate that investing in R&D has a positive impact on innovation in both SMEs and larger firms. However, the effect on productivity is significantly higher for SMEs. Evidence also suggests that the innovation performance of SMEs and larger firms is influenced by co-evolution among the firm's resources and capabilities, knowledge flows with external organizations, access to funding and knowledge appropriability conditions. However, highly qualified personnel, internal and commercial sources of funding, and market knowledge sourcing are crucial for innovation in SMEs. These conclusions are especially relevant for the design of industrial and innovation policies in developing economies, where innovation is a prerequisite for catching up and economic advancement.

The paper provides new empirical evidence on the determinants of innovation in SMEs, the mechanisms by which innovation capabilities and outputs affect its productive performance, and how the relationship between these dimensions varies with firm size in the context of a developing country.