Farhana Ferdousi

By Farhana Ferdousi

Social enterprise is an emerging global trend to solve society’s major problems through the means of business. After microfinance, Yunus Social Business (Bangladesh) is now getting worldwide attention for its distinctive principles and application. This study attempted to investigate the impact of consumer knowledge and understanding about the social enterprises on their buying behavior. Moreover, consumers’ perceived ethical and environmental awareness or rational considerations have also been investigated. Descriptive statistics shows that 26% respondents have clear understanding about social enterprise and 80% respondents believe that social enterprises can contribute to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Findings of regression analysis show that consumers’ purchase decisions are not influenced by their prior knowledge about social enterprise, ethical perception, and attitude, rather their decision is highly influenced by the information available on the product (P value.001, β.602) and rational behavior that are stimulated through the rational pricing and availability of the product (P value.000, β.258). Thus, the study draws conclusion that to get increased consumer response, social enterprises should provide adequate information about their social and environmental mission and must maintain highest quality and ethical standards to create a trusted brand for all ethical, ecological, and rational consumers.

Part of the book: Consumer Behavior

By Farhana Ferdousi and Md. Qamruzzaman

Purpose: This paper examines the causal and cointegrating relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions in a multivariate framework by including imports and exports as others control variables for an emerging economy like Bangladesh. Design/methodology: The paper applied vector error correction model (VECM) Granger casualty test for assessing the direction of causality and variance decomposition to explain the magnitude of the forecast error variance determined by the shocks to each of the explanatory variables over time. LB (Q-stat) test is to determine data properties and WILD test is to assess short run causality from independent variables to dependent variable. Findings: The study results revealed that variables are integrated in the same order. The results of Johansen Juselius cointegration tests indicate that there is a unique long-term or equilibrium relationship among variables. Again, Granger causality test revealed that short run unidirectional causality are running from carbon dioxide emission to exports, GDP to import, and from import to carbon dioxide emissions. Variance decomposition function shows that the positive shocks in error term will produce positive effects on all variables in the long run. Therefore, a concerted effort from all national and international stakeholders, i.e., enterprises, consumers, and governments are expected to take measures to offset carbon emission and pursue environment-friendly trade plan for better managing the cities and regions in order to fight against global warming and climate change risk.

Part of the book: Management of Cities and Regions

By Farhana Ferdousi and Parveen Mahmud

Promoting entrepreneurship among the youth and women is an emerging global trend for inclusive sustainable development. This study aims to unlock the potential of social business investments in microenterprises for turning unemployment into entrepreneurship and scaling up business growth. According to Prof Yunus, “social business is selfless business to solve social problems” based on seven principles. The study has selected 264 enterprises of Nobin Udyokta (NU) meaning new entrepreneurs under Nobin Udyokta Project (NUP) of Grameen Telecom Trust (GTT). NUs and GTT have co-investments under equity participation for at least one or more than 1 year. NUs are basically emerging micro entrepreneurs, who are often disproportionately burdened with multi-dimensions of poverty and lack of working capital, which inhibits business growth. Findings of regression analysis show that social business fund can significantly influence the growth of NU enterprises and increased investment can also create more employments. Therefore, this study is having value to the promoter, advocates, investors in social enterprises, and policy makers seeking strategy for reducing poverty and unemployment through entrepreneurship for sustainable development leaving no one behind.

Part of the book: Entrepreneurship