The tangled historical roots of entrepreneurial growth aspirations (original) (raw)
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An Integrative Framework for Entrepreneurship Research in Africa
Despite the good intentions in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), previous policy initiatives on entrepreneurship have been disjointed, unambitious, and implemented without commitment and required resources. Furthermore, there has been limited research that can provide insight into the reasons why some of the policy initiatives appear to be successful while others fail. Some scholars have suggested that without a context-specific classificatory guide, policymakers are unlikely to be accurate in their assessment of the growth capabilities of prospective candidates for specific promotion initiatives and this can explain some of the policy failures. This observation has motivated the present paper. Our aim is to provide a framework that helps identify the different contextual dimensions influencing enterprise creation processes in SSA.
An Integrative Framework for Entrepreneurship Research in Africa.docx
Despite the good intentions in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), previous policy initiatives on entrepreneurship have been disjointed, unambitious, and implemented without commitment and required resources. Furthermore, there has been limited research that can provide insight into the reasons why some of the policy initiatives appear to be successful while others fail. Some scholars have suggested that without a context-specific classificatory guide, policymakers are unlikely to be accurate in their assessment of the growth capabilities of prospective candidates for specific promotion initiatives and this can explain some of the policy failures. This observation has motivated the present paper. Our aim is to provide a framework that helps identify the different contextual dimensions influencing enterprise creation processes in SSA.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a classificatory framework for mapping out entrepreneurs and small businesses with growth potentials in Africa. Design/methodology/approach – The study undertakes a review of the existing development economics and entrepreneurship literature to determine the need for the framework and how to proceed in developing it. Findings – The literature review informs that although enterprise-led growth provides a greater promise for absolute poverty reduction, policymakers lack guidelines on how to identify those with highest potentials for job creation and tax revenue generation. Furthermore, African entrepreneurs can purposefully be classified in terms of their motives and degree of innovation. The classification produces a 2×2 matrix that maps out the growth capabilities of businesses found in a given country or community. Research limitations/implications – The framework provides researchers and policymakers with descriptive categories that can guide their strategies and decisions. Originality/value – Introducing innovation-imitation dimension into the classificatory framework extends and improves previous typologies of small enterprises available in the literature. Keywords Entrepreneurship, Africa, Typology, Classification, Small business, Classificatory framework Paper type Conceptual paper
Developing entrepreneurship in Africa: investigating critical resource challenges
Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 2018
Purpose By drawing upon institutional theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of four critical resources (credit, electricity, contract enforcement and political governance) in explaining the quality of entrepreneurship and the depth of the supporting entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative approach based on ordinary least squares regression analysis was used. Three data sources were employed. First, the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) of 35 African countries was used to measure the quality of entrepreneurship and the depth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa which represents the dependent variable. Second, the World Bank’s data on access to credit, electricity and contract enforcement in Africa were also employed as explanatory variables. Third, the Ibrahim Index of African Governance was used as an explanatory variable. Finally, country-specific data on four control variables (GDP, foreign direct investment, ...
Echoes and Reverberations of Entrepreneurship in West Africa: Any Missing Links
The positive economic picture, trends and development news that have emerged from Africa over the past decades, contradicts the everyday livelihood reality of Africans. The deficiencies in entrepreneurship and management in Africa has been identified as the bane to poor resource management. Entrepreneurship was adopted to reduce this gap. Corrective actions, have been implemented to provide support for "creative initiatives" and management from all sides in the past 50 years without significant success. This has been done without an understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship in Africa. This paper aims to provide this understanding. It reviews the elusive concept of entrepreneurship as understood and practiced in the African continent, highlights the role of entrepreneurship in market operations and governance (this will guide policy and programmes direction), highlights areas of breakthroughs, challenges, echoes to provide a syntheses of thoughts in accelerating entrepreneurship in Africa. The review method is adopted. The study shows that Africa was at certain stage of her own entrepreneurship before the distortion by colonialism with her new thoughts. It is recommended that, while the various programmes, projects, aid, support and assistance have been designed to boast African Entrepreneurship it should begin from where the interruption started. JEL classification numbers: M14, M54
Impact of socio-cultural factors on entrepreneurial development in Nigeria
Entrepreneur development takes place within a framework of forces that constitute the system environment, which are either external or internal. A critical issue in the entrepreneurial development and growth is firms' ability to adapt to their strategies to a rapidly changing system environment to which the entrepreneurs' role is critical to the success or failure of such firm. For the entrepreneur to be successful, he must be able to identify and find a useful niche within the large environment where it takes risk, makes strategic business plan and takes/implements decisions. The various institutions and forces which determine the success or failure of the entrepreneur is the habitat also referred to as eco-system or critical factors affecting the entrepreneur who is equally dependent on the stability of the environment within which he operates. Environmental stability exists in various degrees. Strategic management of the environment is required for entrepreneurial development to survive in its varying degrees. Generally, the internal forces that the business eco-system entrepreneur must face and take strategic action to adapt in Nigeria are controllable, while the external forces are generally uncontrollable. This paper limits itself to the socio-cultural factor which impacts seriously on entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. These are general environmental forces that do not directly touch on the short-run activities of the organization but that can, and often do influence its long-run decision. These external factors are: (i) demographic forces, (ii) economic conditions (iii) social and cultural forces, (iv) political and legal forces, and (v) technological innovations. The entrepreneur should understand that both the social (external) and task environment must be monitored to detect the strategic factors that are likely to have strong impacts on corporate success or failure. Based on our findings, we recommend that to increase the legitimacy of entrepreneurship, there should be a change in traditional values which have been assumed to be opposed to entrepreneurial development. The issue of security of lives and property should no longer be left in the hands of the government alone, our traditional rulers and town union governments should bring out measures that will collaborate with the efforts of the government in tackling the issue of insecurity. This is because a secured enviroment increases investment.