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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in informal enterprises and the moderating role of their survival intent.

This paper used Hofstede's national culture framework and theory of EO to develop a novel conceptual framework. The data were collected using a survey from a sample of 385 informal enterprises and analyzed using partial least square structural equation modelling.

The findings of this paper confirmed that power distance, uncertainty avoidance and normative orientation negatively affect EO in contrast with the positive effect of individualism and masculinity. Although power distance and uncertainty avoidance negatively affect an EO, the findings showed that survival intent weakens the negative nexus between these variables and strengthens the positive effect of individualism and masculinity on EO.

Although this study examined how survival intent moderates the nexus between national culture and EO across informal enterprises in emerging economies, the data were collected in Nigeria only. This study also examined EO in aggregate and considered only one sector.

This study recommends that policymakers and practitioners understand the important links between firms' characteristics, culture and EO while designing training programs, policies and procedures. Doing so will support the successful implementation of entrepreneurship programs, address the prevailing entrepreneurial needs and cultural deficits across enterprises and promote the efficient allocation of resources.

This paper extends Hofstede's framework of national culture and EO in the context of informal enterprises in emerging economies by examining the nexus between national culture and EO, moderated by survival intent.

Subcontracting is a crucial cause behind the simultaneous existence of formal and informal entrepreneurship in India. This article aims to provide an over-time comparative analysis between the subcontracted and the non-subcontracted enterprises within the informal sector. Further, it also brings to fore the contribution of subcontracting towards ensuring sustainability of the informal enterprises.

By constructing a panel data from two rounds of NSS Unincorporated Enterprise Survey Data (2010 and 2015), and employing a PSM-DID method, considering labour productivity and net retained earnings as two critical indicators of growth and development of the informal sector firms, this study has made some broad claims regarding the differences in immediate and long run performances between the subcontracted and non-subcontracted informal sector enterprises in India.

This study finds that subcontracted enterprises have not only been performing at a much lower level than the non-subcontracted enterprises, they are also growing much slowly than their counterparts. However, it has been observed that for the establishments, who are capital abundant and also have a larger production capacity, subcontracting is showing the prospect for deriving sustainable gains.

This article contributes to the existing literature in the following two ways. Firstly, it provides an over-time comparative analysis between the subcontracted and the non-subcontracted enterprises within the informal sector. Secondly, it brings to fore the contribution of subcontracting towards ensuring sustainability of the informal enterprises.

Infrastructure deficiency and supply disruption challenges are quite common among developing economies. While Sub-Saharan Africa is not unique to these challenges, it is the extent of levels of infrastructure deficiency and disruptions that affect the level of performance of small businesses. Literature on the performance of small businesses suggests both infrastructure availability and disruptions affect the performance of small businesses, but the effects on informal enterprises that operate from locations where the supply of infrastructure is weak are less documented. The paper, therefore, investigates the effects of four types of infrastructure supply in two dimensions of availability and disruption levels on the performance of informal enterprises in 12 Sub-Saharan African countries.

The study uses data from World Bank informal enterprises surveys based on a sample of 3 735 informal enterprises. The study uses the multiple analysis of variance method based on the World Bank's Informal Enterprise Surveys (IFS) country-level cross-sectional data collected between 2009 and 2019.

Results show infrastructure supply is quite low irrespective of the form of infrastructure. Infrastructure availability is associated with high supply disruptions. Infrastructure supply deficiency and disruption intensities are negatively associated with informal enterprises' performance. Finally, the effects of both infrastructure availability and supply disruptions are positively associated with informal enterprises' business activity levels.

Due to data limitations, only four types of infrastructure are captured in the analysis. A wider variety of types of infrastructure could improve the analysis.

Given the deficiency level of infrastructure and its implications on informal enterprise development, therefore, policy interventions aiming at addressing informal enterprises' challenges should focus on improving infrastructure supply deficiencies and disruption challenges. This paper provides the link between infrastructure levels, infrastructure supply disruptions and performance of the informal enterprises which is an essential starting point for policy intervention in informal enterprise development.

This chapter evaluates the cross-national variations in the proportion of employment that is in informal sector enterprises and evaluates competing theories which view these cross-national variations to result from either economic underdevelopment (modernisation explanation), high taxes, public sector corruption and over-regulation of work and welfare (neo-liberal explanation) or conversely, a lack of intervention in the realm of social protection (political economy explanation).

To evaluate these competing explanations, the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) country surveys that investigate the scale of employment in informal sector enterprise in 43 developing and transition economies, along with the World Bank database of development indicators, are analysed here.

The finding is that lower levels of employment in informal sector enterprises are closely associated with economic development, lower levels of public sector corruption and state intervention in the form of higher tax rates and social transfers to protect workers from poverty.

This chapter reveals the need to move beyond treating these contrasting representations as competing explanations and to recognise how all are required to more fully explain the prevalence of informal sector entrepreneurship.

Tackling employment in informal sector enterprise is shown to require broader economic and social policies associated with the modernisation of economies, tax rates, social protection and poverty alleviation.

One of the first evaluations of the competing explanations for why some countries have higher levels of employment in informal sector enterprises.

The International Labor Organization (2020) estimates that eight out of ten enterprises (i.e. own-account workers and small economic units) are informal worldwide. However, less is known about the internationalization of informal enterprises. Here, it is argued that economic blocs, such as sub-Saharan Africa, with a greater proportion of informal enterprises, may provide broader societal legitimacy for them to operate internationally. Thus, informal firms would need to collaborate with other firms to overcome their resource constraints. Geographic colocation is one way to facilitate positive interfirm interactions that promote networking and subsequently cooperation. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to addresses two questions. Firstly, how and to what extent does interfirm marketing cooperation in geographic colocation influence the internationalization of micro and small informal manufacturing enterprises? Secondly, how do the perceived benefits of local external economies moderate this relationship?

The study draws evidence from 125 randomly selected informal enterprises located in two major clusters in Ghana, using a mixed-method approach.

The partial least square - structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis applied revealed two central points. Firstly, sharing marketing costs allows informal firms to upgrade their phases of export development directly. Secondly, the linkage of increasing sales activities and local external economies encourages the progress of the phases of export development and the scope of internationalization. Results confirm that the cluster benefits of interfirm cooperation and local external economies on the informal firm internationalization process complement each other in addition to their linear relationship.

The study contributes to understanding the nexus of the informal sector, geographic colocation and the entrepreneurial internationalization literature. The results should motivate researchers and policymakers to approach informal firm internationalization through collaborative business activities.

This paper aims to investigate the co-evolve relationship between informal relational governance (i.e. family involvement and personal authority) and family formal governance system in the process of growth and transformation. This co-evolve relationship is especially affected by the external institutional environment and market competition power. Thus, in the comprehensive process of deepening the reform and changing market, the modern transformation of family business means that rediscovery of unique superiority of family business and the core of this transformation is the governance of status privileges and private interests.

To test the hypotheses, this paper uses the 9th Chinese Private Enterprise Survey in 2010. A total of 4,900 questionnaires are issued, 4,614 are recovered and the total recovery rate is 94.16%. After clean the data, the study obtained 1,239 samples. To overcome the possible existence of heteroscedasticity, this study uses the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) to estimate the model. Besides, as for dummy dependent variables, this study uses logistics regression.

This paper makes an empirical test for the evolution of family governance driven by institutional change and organizational growth willingness in the process of growth and transformation, including a co-evolve relationship between family involvement and governance institution. Meanwhile, the empirical analysis comes to the conclusion that the institutional constraint to relational governance improves firm performance, which further promotes the modern transformation of family business governance.

It is the key to transformation to the modern corporate organization that family business could beyond the intervention of the traditional nepotism, patriarchal authority and family will. The fundamental of this process is to take advantage of formal institutions to manage family power.

This paper discusses the modern transformation of the formal organization from the perspective of modern ideal dominant type proposed by Max Weber. Modern organization is a hybrid system of the non-personified and personified institution. The primary reason why modern organization suffered erosion and destruction is that informal institution (status and relationship network) were endowed with legal privileges and private interests in modern organization including family business. The governance of privileges and private interests has become the core issue that whether the family business could play an instrumental value and realize modern transformation successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to identify reasons as to why firms operate informally, and to explore the rationalisation of not moving towards formalisation.

Building on empirical data collected through interviews with the entrepreneurs of the informal service enterprises of Delhi and peripheral areas, this paper presents the results of the survey conducted in 2017. By using the analytical tool developed by I. Bross, the authors have identified the most significant contributing factors to informality.

In the research, the authors establish that competition and lack of awareness are the most dominant reasons due to which informal firms are hesitant in moving towards formalisation. For successful transition towards formalisation, a “new pact” between the workers, enterprises and governments needs to be developed, based on capacity building, productivity gains, enabling business environment, empowerment and entitlements to social and economic rights.

The research is limited only to informal service enterprises located in Delhi, the national capital of India, and the peripheral areas.

By identifying the most dominant factors, focussed steps can be taken to reduce the size of the informal sector.

The informal service enterprises are not a widely explored community by researchers and policy makers. This sector can employ more people with less investment, and hence requires intensive study. The use of RIDIT approach to rank the identified factors due to which the firms do not move towards formalisation is the novelty of this work.

Examining the impact of gender on various aspects of business performance has gained research and policy traction, although the empirical evidence remains inconclusive. This paper aims to focus on one type of business, namely, informal enterprises and one dimension of business performance, namely, product innovation, to better understand how product innovations affect employment in both female- and male-owned informal enterprises.

This paper relies on a unique data set of 513 informal enterprises located in two urban centres in Ghana (Accra and Tema), covering the period between 2013 and 2015 and the Dose-Response Model to examine the effect of product innovations on employment in informal enterprises in urban Ghana.

The findings suggest that product innovation has considerable beneficial impacts on the creation of employment in informal enterprises. The results do not show systematic differences in the factors affecting product innovation in female- and male-owned enterprises. However, they suggest that although female-owned enterprises are less likely to introduce product innovations, they do sell more innovative products.

These findings support the view that innovation is “gendered”, and therefore, requires a “gendered” policy lens.

Among the various global options for self-employment, venturing into the micro-enterprise sector has been recognized as an important way for employment generation and poverty alleviation in many developing/emerging economies. In this context, women-owned businesses at the grassroots play a vital role in developing countries like India far beyond contributing to job creation and economic growth. The informal sector is a sizeable and expanding feature of the contemporary global economy.

However, the informal economy operates at the cusp of the institutional framework, which makes them susceptible to many risks like lack of formal financing options, legal aid or increasing margin through access to formal markets. Non-Profit Development Agencies (NPDAs) have emerged as a viable and essential middle ground support in promoting women entrepreneurship in their capacity to contribute beyond governmental institutions.

The study adopted an inductive qualitative option through a case study design to explore the approaches adopted by NPDAs in promoting micro-entrepreneurship among women at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in the urban informal sector in India. The findings suggest that the NPDAs created an impact through the services, which translated into monetary earnings for the entrepreneurs. They could make financial contributions to their families, which boosted their self-confidence and overall personality. The findings also indicate positive changes like increased self-confidence, self-dependence, and inner strength as reported by the entrepreneurs.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the literature that has sought to deconstruct this ideologically driven depiction by demonstrating how the existent enterprise culture in post-Soviet spaces not only challenges the depiction of the entrepreneur as a heroic icon of the legitimate capitalist culture but also opens up the feasibility of alternative futures beyond legitimate profit-driven capitalism. The starting point of this paper is that the enterprise culture is often viewed as inextricably related to the legitimate capitalist economy.

To unravel the nature of the enterprise culture in lived practice, this paper reports a 2006 survey involving face-to-face interviews with 90 entrepreneurs in Moscow.

Only 7 per cent of the Muscovite entrepreneurs surveyed pursue profit-driven legitimate entrepreneurship. The vast majority adopts social goals to varying degrees and operates wholly or partially in the informal economy. The outcome is to challenge the depiction of an enterprise culture and capitalism as inextricably inter-related and to open up entrepreneurship and enterprise culture in this post-Soviet space to re-signification as demonstrative of the feasibility of imagining and enacting alternative futures beyond capitalism.

These findings are tentative, as they are based on a small-scale study of just one post-socialist city. Further research is now required to analyse whether the lived practices of entrepreneurship and enterprise cultures are similarly diverse in other post-Soviet spaces as well as beyond.

This is the first paper to evaluate critically the assumption that enterprise culture is a part of the legitimate capitalist economy in post-Soviet spaces.