BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE OF INFORMAL SOCIAL MICROENTERPRISES (ISMs) IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES-QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE EVIDENCE

The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine business environmental factors, and sustainability performance ofinformal social microenterprises’ (ISMs’) within the context of developing countries like Bangladesh. A mixed method research design was used. In the field study, data were obtained from eight ISMs owners, three NGOs, and three Local Governments via one-to-one personal interview. Inductive and deductive process was applied to extract, classify, and cross examine of the data. In the quantitative approach, questionnaire was developed and data were collected from 438 ISMs owners. The data were analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling.Results from this field study and survey in exploring the relationship between the business environment and sustainability performance in context of ISMs in developing countries vibrates well with the existing literature and establish the hypothesis.The model is unique in the sense that it has been developed based on data obtained from previous literature and quantitative field study analysis ensuring that the factors and constructs are specific to explain ISMs sustainability performance. The successful exclusion of traditional performance constructs such as nonfinancial, financial, and archival financial performance and introduction of social, economic, and natural sustainability performance constructs reflect the unique contribution.In order to create more favourable environment and ensure the sustainability performance, the policy makers, professional bodies could formulate decent requirements for ISMs to have a code of business practices and sustainability performance.

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