Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how senior managers in a transitional economy context deal with the challenge of handling competing institutional logics through legitimacy work.

The paper draws on the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 34 senior managers in Ethiopia in matched pairs of four commercial organisations in private and state sectors and secondary sources.

The research reveals how the erstwhile protected state-owned organisations responded to institutional complexity, by seeking to extend their legitimacy claims whereas the emergent private sector organisations sought to construct a new legitimacy, in part by adopting some of the logics used by state-firms.

Extending this study with longitudinal comparative case studies across other emerging market economies could cast light on the varied ways in which organisations manage institutional complexities.

It is imperative that the government and policy makers have clarity in issuing directives and other signals about valued objectives to be pursued by enterprises. Otherwise, the organisational level actors may remain uncertain about the acceptable behaviours and responses and are likely to waste time and resources in trying to anticipate an unclear sense of direction.

This is a novel study which examines how organisational actors manage institutional complexity in a transitional economy context by undertaking legitimacy building work and appearing to meet state-public expectations.

This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.

The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).

The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.

The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.

The findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.

The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

This paper examines mechanisms through which social capital strengthens microfinance impact on fostering female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, the study focuses on how, and to what extent, resources embedded in social networks determine MF impact on entrepreneurial success.

Survey data were collected from 276 female micro-institutions entrepreneurs using multi-stage stratified random sampling across 80 MF institutions in three South-Western Nigerian states. Hypotheses were tested using ordinal regression analysis.

The study found that relational and network social capital had a positive and significant influence on female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, intra-group trust and productive network ties amongst female entrepreneurs in poor communities predicated the positive impact of MF on entrepreneurial success. Also, resources embedded in networks are more positively correlated to education level and marital status. Furthermore, MF could have more positive impact for borrowers with sustainable relationships with loan officers who organise MF provisions and understand the entrepreneurs’ context.

The research provides empirical evidence for the relationship dynamics between female entrepreneurs and MF institutions, by emphasising the importance of deploying different forms of social capital in sustaining MF impact on female entrepreneurial success.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how various value dimensions of Harambee, the Kenyan culture, affect the fostering of entrepreneurial behaviours. Theoretically, we draw upon perspectives that view culture as a toolkit and use cultural variables provided by Hofstede to examine the links between national culture and entrepreneurial endeavours in an African context.

The paper is based on review and synthesis of accessible secondary sources (published research, country-specific reports, policy documents, firm-level empirical evidences, etc.) on the topic and related areas to understand and advance research propositions on the link between enterprising efforts and national culture specific to the Kenyan context.

Several theoretical propositions are offered on themes of collective reliance, social responsibility, enterprising, resource mobilisation and political philanthropy to establish relationships, both positive and negative, between values of Harambee and entrepreneurial behaviours. Further, the study provides initial insights into how actors blend both collectivistic and emergent individualistic orientations and display collective identity in the process of mobilising resources and engaging in entrepreneurship.

The conceptual framework presented bears a considerable relevance to the advancing theory, policy and practice associated with the national culture and entrepreneurial behaviour in the African context and has potential to generate valuable insights.

This original study provides a springboard for studying the relationship between African cultural context and entrepreneurial behaviours.

This study aims to develop a framework that enables the identification of sustainability factors from industry-specific environmental issues, and it proposes that these factors, in turn, can influence the corporate environmental performance (CEP) of firms in such an industry. It also validates the factor identification aspect of the framework.

The paper starts by reviewing relevant literature extensively and then developing an issue-based environmental sustainability framework to highlight the structural relationship of industry-specific sustainability factors with CEP. By involving 131 participants from academics in Niger Delta, the paper uses exploratory factor analysis techniques to reduce industry-specific sustainability factors from several environmental and socio-economic issues in the Nigerian oil and gas (O&G) industry.

Environmental risk originates from business environmental issues, and it triggers community reaction, which impacts negatively on corporate image. The nature of firm’s strategic responsiveness to these factors determines CEP.

The study draws from the perspectives of academics on environmental issues in Niger Delta to validate the factor identification aspect of the framework. The views of other stakeholders are not included, and hence, it should be applied with caution.

Useful in identifying and managing industry-specific environmental issues, and thus, achieving some sustainable development objectives.

Although most previous studies have focused on generic CEP drivers, this study proposes sustainability factors that can originate from industry-specific environmental issues as crucial drivers of CEP in such an industry. It provides empirical evidence of such credible sustainability factors emerging from the Nigerian O&G industry’s environmental issues.

To explore senior managers’ knowledge and thinking about strategy and organisational capabilities, and developments of both during a time of transition.

Interpretive case research based on semi‐structured interviews with 44 senior managers in a number of business organisations in Ethiopia supplemented by secondary sources.

Senior managers had a narrow and contingent knowledge of, and interaction with, the external environment. The notion of “strategy” was problematical for them. Managers’ knowing of their environment and organisational aspects were differentiated, context specific and subject to changes and reinterpretations depending on shifting roles, responsibilities and changing contexts.

This research sheds light on how assumptions about the often “taken‐for‐grantedness” of the strategic “manageability” of change by senior managers may be exaggerated. This was revealed, at one extreme, in this research but it may extend also into other situations in varying degrees. In this and other ways the study of senior Ethiopian managers could be used as a way to reflect back upon conventional thinking about strategizing in other contexts.

The research can help managers gain insight into how their everyday ways of knowing and seeing are unnecessarily limited and constrained.

Work in business knowledge is just commencing and hence its continuity would further both scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the knowledge work of managers in varied contexts and environments.