CPUT Academic scoops continental research fund award
ENTREPRENEURSHIP GURU: Prof Chux Gervase Iwu, HOD: Entrepreneurship, has bagged this year’s Emerald African Management Research Fund Award
Prof Chux Gervase Iwu, Acting Assistant Dean: Research & Innovation in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, has added another feather to his cap after a collaborative research team he leads walked away with this year’s Emerald African Management Research Fund Award.
Iwu was recently presented with a certificate and funding for their research project entitled, “The wholesale-retail nexus: An assessment of the role of immigrant African wholesalers in the development of the retail entrepreneurship in South Africa”.
Iwu has won numerous accolades for his outstanding research work and has presented papers at many international conferences.
“Considering that I have received almost similar awards in the past, it sort of validates the necessity of researching emerging economies’ socioeconomic matters.”
Emerald Publishing was founded in 1967 to champion new ideas that advance the research and practice of business and management. It manages a portfolio of nearly 300 journals, more than 2 500 books and over 1 500 teaching cases.
Emerald supports researchers through its awards programme which includes various research fund awards among others.
In addition to teaching entrepreneurship to students, Iwu is also assembling a team to gather data for the project.
“It makes me feel good that people are acknowledging the value of immigrant/migrant focused research so that we can start debunking the myths that immigrants are here to take people’s jobs and wives,” he jokingly adds.
“But seriously, the characterisation of migrants as desperate, dirty and dangerous (the infamous 3D euphemism) by the International Labour Organisation seems to represent indigenes’ overall perceptions of the average migrant.
“And we can’t say that the ill-treatment of immigrants by locals, and please note that this is not unique to South Africa, is not a reflection of the anxiety of locals. So, the value of this study is such that the reader gets to know that immigrants actually add value to mainstream socioeconomic dynamics of any nation.”