Discrimination against Religious Minorities in Nigeria: An Analysis with Reference to Human Development in the 21st Century

  This study examines religious discrimination against religious minorities like Muslims living in Christian populated areas in the south east, Christians are as well living in Muslim dominated areas. Minority Traditional worshippers in either Muslim or Christian majority areas, private institution, companies owned by Christians or Muslims etc. The discrimination against religious minorities has mitigated the peaceful co-existence among religious identities and other major life events which has culminated national development in all spheres of human engagement such as economic, social, political, security, etc. The researchers have tried to provide an analytical study of the empirical data as well as of the existing literature. The result of our findings shows that many religious identities have been denied of securing job opportunities, professing religion of their choice, finding it difficult to receive health care services, managing religious institutions, denied of equal rights of citizens, get political appointments, among others. The study recommends that people of different religions should embrace and tolerate one another, avoid the use of fanaticism, allow religious minorities to practice religion of their choice in order to dislodge prejudices from the society.

Corporate Entrepreneurship, Agency Cost and Firm Performance: Evidence from Developed and Developing Economies

This study aims to extend the relationship of corporate entrepreneurship and agency cost, to firm performance. It also examines this relationship in the presence of behavioral biases to address the behavioral finance approach, and validates it in developed (USA) and developing (Pakistan) economies, in order to generalize the study. The design of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship of corporate entrepreneurship, agency cost and firm performance across both behavioral and traditional approaches of finance. The validated construct has been adopted to measure the corporate entrepreneurship, behavioral biases and risk perception of USA and Pakistani non-financial sector companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), respectively. The data for firm performance and agency cost has been taken from Balance Sheets Analyses (SBP Report) for Pakistani companies and from annual reports of the USA companies on a three yearly average bases (2009, 2010 and 2011). The findings highlight the significant negative relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and agency cost in USA, showing that corporate entrepreneurship can act as an excellent technique in reducing agency problems within organizations, ultimately leading to high performance, however, there is an insignificant impact between corporate entrepreneurship and agency cost in Pakistani context. Regarding the behavioral finance approach, both economies didn’t show any significant relationship of behavioral biases on risk perception; however, a significant relationship of risk perception on corporate entrepreneurship, depicts behavioral biases didn’t impact corporate finance decisions. It shows that corporate finance decisions may differ from person to person irrespective from culture to culture and from country to country, pointing towards individualistic approach. This study provides a foundation for future studies on the relationship of corporate entrepreneurship, agency cost and firm performance. My study helps executives to assess their own scenario while making effective entrepreneurial and financial decisions within companies and how to control or reduce the impact of behavioral biases in particular situations, in order to maximize their return Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship, Agency Cost, Firm Performance, Behavioral Biases, and Corporate Financial Decisions.