The literature search requires the identification of terms and areas of interest. One of the methodologies used to narrow the number of information provided by the database is PICOC, which stands for population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and context (Barends & Rousseau, 2018). This approach identifies the cohort of interest, what management technique is applied, the comparing group, expected results, and the type of organization or field (Barends & Rousseau, 2018). The area of business and management that I became interested in was female entrepreneurship in Asian countries. The population of interest was women involved in small, medium, or large digital businesses. The intervention was the utilization of partnership-building capacities, and the comparison group was not using these strategies. The expected outcome was that implementing these methods led to a successful business. Since I was particularly interested in the Information Technology sphere, I chose the context of Asia because this field is rapidly developing here. I restricted my article search in the LIRN library to the last five years because the digital sales field has improved dramatically; hence, methodologies used in the early 2000s may not necessarily be effective now.
The title of the article that I selected for this discussion was “Core competencies of women entrepreneurs in building superior online business performance in Indonesia.” It was published in Management Science Letters in 2020 by Sihotang, Puspokusumo, Suna, and Munandar. The null hypothesis in this study was that digital marketing capabilities and partnership-building abilities have no significant impact on the performance of online firms. This paper claims that, unfortunately, most small and medium business enterprises started by women in Indonesia had a low profit. Pre-research that the authors conducted showed that only 8% of online companies owned by females had substantial success, while 45% of them underperformed (Sihotang et al., 2020, p. 1607). The authors conducted the survey through phone calls among 300 women entrepreneurs in Indonesia (Sihotang et al., 2020). This research used qualitative techniques to extract responses and quantitative methods to analyze the participants’ responses. The statistical software used for data analysis was the professional version of SmartPLS (Sihotang et al., 2020). The study’s outcomes were that the null hypothesis was rejected according to the questionnaire results.
This research paper has three implications for research and business. Specifically, the results can be used to improve management approaches in online stores, ameliorate partnership building in digital business, and advance female entrepreneurship. Indeed, the analysis of the participants’ responses confirmed that such qualities as partnership-building and digital marketing skills are essential for better business performance (Sihotang et al., 2020). However, the limitation of this project was that the sample size was small. Moreover, the authors did not provide questions used in the survey; therefore, it was unclear which variables were used during the intermediate data analysis steps in the software.
This article helped me learn about the impact of collaboration, communication, and digital marketing skills on business performance. Since I have always been interested in female leadership and entrepreneurship in developing countries, I wondered if successful online stores owned by women possessed additional features that allowed for their superior development. After reviewing the study outcomes, my first learning point was that the ability to collaborate effectively is more significant for business success than product type. The second learning point was that even in Internet-based companies, partnership building was more critical than knowledge about digital marketing. Lastly, I learned that despite the conventional stereotype that men dominate the entrepreneurship field, the example of Indonesia in this study showed that many women in this country strive to build successful firms.
References
Barends, E., & Rousseau, D. M. (2018). Evidence-based management: How to use evidence to make better organizational decisions. Kogan Page Publishers.
Sihotang, J., Puspokusumo, R. A. A. W., Sun, Y., & Munandar, D. (2020). Core competencies of women entrepreneurs in building superior online business performance in Indonesia.Management Science Letters, 10(7), 1607-1612. Web.