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To date, limited studies have examined the country-specific social institutions to explain the informal entrepreneurial activities of women, particularly, within the context of the Middle East. This research paper attempts to close this gap through identifying the contextual and personal factors of domestic informal female entrepreneurs (DIFE) within the context of Turkey as a representative case of the Middle East region. The chapter takes national culture as the external context to identify the informal institutions that shape women's informal entrepreneurial activities and uses the Globe Project cultural dimensions to describe the sociocultural context. The qualitative research presented here was conducted with 38 DIFEs who participated in an EU-funded project in Turkey.

The profile of the informal domestic female entrepreneur reflects a middle-aged woman, married with children, literate with a low-level education and a necessity-type entrepreneur at the beginning who gradually evolves into a pull-type sociocultural entrepreneur in time. The findings show that, the perceived sociocultural environment can be categorized as a socially supportive culture – SSC (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013, p. 713) which is one of the facilitators of informal entrepreneurial activities and creates a fertile and socially legitimized ground for the informal commercial activities of women in Turkey.

One of the important and strategic aspects in developing entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector, especially corn commodity, is the institutional aspect. Institutions have an essential role in reducing production costs and transaction costs to improve farm profits and impact economic growth. This study aimed to map the key variables and actors in reducing transaction costs in maize farming in Dompu Regency, West Nusa Tenggara. Data collection techniques in this study used questionnaires, expert interviews, and focus group discussions (FGD). Data analysis in this study used the prospective analysis method with the MICMAC and MACTOR tools. MICMAC performs critical variable mapping analysis, while MACTOR performs strength analysis between objectives and actors. The MICMAC analysis results show that 10 key variables determine the success of the development of corn farming in Dompu Regency, West Nusa Tenggara, namely the input market, capital, land, pesticides, seeds, fertilizers, labor, pests, bonds, and output markets. MACTOR analysis shows that the relationship between actors has weak direct interactions. We need a collaborative and integrative institution that is formed at the local level through the Village Integrated Agribusiness Service Center (PLATDes) and BUMDes in the form of BKD and UDes legal entities.

Factors of production (labour, land, capital), technology and technical progress are usually cited as the main sources of economic growth and development. However, there are a number of other factors that have a significant impact on the possibilities and extent of their use or their further improvement and development. These factors undoubtedly include the institutional environment, within which corruption is also a consideration. In this chapter, attention will be focused on the various institutional variables that are used to assess the quality of a country's institutional environment, including corruption. A number of studies have shown that a quality institutional environment and low levels of corruption are prerequisites for long-term economic growth. Using an analysis of individual indicators of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs), published annually by the World Bank, supplemented by the Corruption Perception Index (published by Transparency International), we look at where Czechia has moved over the last decade or two in terms of institutional quality and corruption.

This essay provides evidence that the invention of agriculture was not a dramatic technological advance in the history of humankind and that agriculture was quite consistent with nomadic hunting and gathering. The available clues also suggest that exact origins of agriculture do not seem important. Rather, the crucial question is why certain societies dramatically increased their dependency on agriculture for subsistence two to ten millennia ago. Unfortunately, most of the major theories purporting to explain the neolithic revolution – either the origins or the spread of agriculture – are either untestable or inconsistent with the available evidence. What is at stake for economic historians is to rethink the process of the adoption of agriculture using a multi-causal approach.

The small size of female founded and owned businesses is discussed as a weakness towards business survival and growth and also as a solid foundation for sustainable innovation (SI) through maintaining stronger ties with suppliers and customers. In smaller businesses, the closeness to the key stakeholders facilitates knowledge transfer and internalisation of knowledge which leads to faster decision making and creating SI. This paper aims to examine networking strategies of established female entrepreneurs and to develop better insights into the extent of social dialogue, collaboration and cooperation maintained between the entrepreneur and her network contacts towards SI and value generation. Successful business sustainability strategies and subsequent outcomes of established female entrepreneurs are also examined. This paper presents the findings from quantitative survey-based research conducted with 240 established female entrepreneurs from the UK and Turkey (120 from each). The respondents were selected on the basis of business survival and success. National culture is used to identify the established authoritative guidelines for social behaviour. Hofstede’s Culture Model is applied to the case countries to describe the sociocultural institutional context. From the business sustainability strategies (BSS) perspective, the findings show that the studied elements of established female entrepreneurs vary between two different cultural environments. And yet, the both group reported a high level of social dialogue, collaboration and cooperation with their network contacts although they demonstrated fundamentally different networking patterns within the context of type of contact; networking motivation; frequency of contact; and helpfulness of contact. Also established female entrepreneurs’ business sustainability strategies show significant differences between the case countries linked to the level of power distance, individualism and uncertainty avoidance culture dimensions. The paper generates valuable insights into internationalisation strategies for female entrepreneurs and possible areas for facilitation for policy makers.