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Review of literature suggests mixed findings on the relationship between the church and micro women entrepreneurship development. This signals that questions remain about the roles of churches in entrepreneurial development. Thus, this paper aims to explore what entrepreneurial activities are provided by churches to their micro women entrepreneurs and how do these activities influence their entrepreneurial start up and growth.

Phenomenological research methodologies were used to purposive collected data from 38 women entrepreneurs and four church administers in Tema. Results were analyzed using the emergent strategy.

The results suggest that churches provided four entrepreneurial activities which are categorized as finance, networking, promotion of self-confidence and impartation of ethical values. These factors promoted the growth of women entrepreneurial growth but not the start-up of entrepreneurial ventures. The study concluded that the church should provide more support for new entrepreneurial ventures. Therefore, embeddedness because of membership of a church is a critical part of women entrepreneurship development.

Further studies will need to replicate these findings with other types of businesses, in other locations.

This study suggests that policymakers should be working in conjunction with churches in a bid to promote micro women entrepreneurship development.

Limited research has been conducted on church entrepreneurial activities in the development of micro women entrepreneurs in developing economies such as Ghana. This empirical research provides important insights into this field.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on women’s entrepreneurship in emerging economies. This is a thematic review to identify patterns and trends to better understand this literature. From the analysis, this study offers ideas for useful and theoretically informed research. In addition, this paper proposes the concept of restricted agency that helps to explain the practice.

This study identifies the nature, what is interesting, what it sees as important and considers what is neglected in this literature. The analysis sought important issues, interesting directions and the potential for useful future work. Thematic analysis is ideal for messy and unstructured material such as the literature used in this study as the data set. The process is qualitative, iterative and inductive but ontologically appropriate for the socially produced knowledge of the literature.

This paper finds the literature tends towards descriptive papers. Few papers make substantial contributions to theory. Many papers reported the barriers women to encounter, reporting general and typical processes of responding to obstacles and the implications for practice. Interestingly this study perceives overcoming and sometimes using, the cultural and physical restraints of gendered entrepreneurship. This paper proposes the concept of restricted agency explaining the gendering of entrepreneurs and explains what they can do. Moreover, the concept helps explain why and what. Most promising theoretically, is how the application of this agency is slowly and contextually differently changing the rules of the game.

This study covers a large and extensive literature, so might have missed themes.

This paper starts with the notion of the “otherness” of women’s entrepreneurship. The literature is good at explaining both how and why women’s entrepreneurship is different and in effect, marginalised. This study conceptualises this gendering process as a restricted agency. Moreover, the concept helps explain why and what. Most promising theoretically, is how the application of this agency is slowly and contextually differently changing the rules of the game. It may be the mechanism for emancipation.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on women involved in offshore and inshore fisheries entrepreneurship in the coastal communities of the Niger Delta region.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total 800 respondents were sampled across the coastal communities of the Niger Delta region.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that the GMoU model is gender insensitive, as extensive inequality restrains fisherwomen’s participation in the offshore and inshore fisheries entrepreneurship, often due to societal norms and customs that greatly frustrate women’s development in fisheries.

This implies that if fisherwomen continue in this unfavourable position, their reliance on menfolk would remain while trying to access financial support and decision-making regarding fisheries entrepreneurship development.

The inshore and offshore fisheries entrepreneurship development can only succeed if cluster development boards of GMoUs are able to draw all the resources and talents and if fisherwomen are able to participate fully in the GMoUs intervention plans and programme.

This research contributes to the gender debate in fisheries entrepreneurship development from a CSR perspective in developing countries and rationale for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help in solving problems of public concern, and that CSR priorities in Sub-Saharan Africa should be aimed towards addressing the peculiarity of the socio-economic development challenges of the countries and be informed by socio-cultural influences.

This paper aims to facilitate researchers, academicians and entrepreneurs gain insights on the social entrepreneurship concept and future research opportunities in the context of the Asia-Pacific countries (APAC).

The diversity of social entrepreneurship phenomenon visible in 101 journal publications was reviewed and analyzed to identify research perspectives and opportunities, with special focus on papers published on the APAC context between 1998 and 2015. The keywords for search were “social entrepreneurship”, “social enterprises”, “social entrepreneur” and the names of all countries in APAC.

The study identifies three prominent themes in need of more research in the APAC countries: contextual, institutional and personal factors surrounding social entrepreneurship; usage of market orientation by social enterprises to generate economic and social value; and impact of social entrepreneurship education on generating talent pool for social enterprises.

During the review on the social entrepreneurship concept, it was felt that most research originated from both sides of the Atlantic rather than the APAC. Interestingly, no review was found on research published on social entrepreneurship as perceived and practiced in APAC. Therefore, this paper would be of particular value to any researcher who would conduct social entrepreneurship research in the Asia-Pacific context. Asia-Pacific offers immense scope for empirical research for theory generation and theory testing in different contexts.

Researchers have been trying to identify different psychological attributes which influence entrepreneurial intention (EI) and role of entrepreneurial education and training programs to develop these attributes among women. Therefore, the purpose of this study is twofold: firstly, to evaluate the difference among psychological attributes before and after an entrepreneurial education and training program. Secondly, to examine the effects of psychological attributes on EI among female students in Saudi Arabia.

A detailed program was designed with the combination of entrepreneurial education and training program throughout a 14-week semester. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 310 female university students studying in a Saudi university and participated in this program. SPSS, version 20, was used to analyze the data.

Entrepreneurial education and training programs based on active learning and learner-centered approaches play an important role to significantly improve the level of psychological attributes and EI of female students. Furthermore, findings of this study also suggest that psychological attributes (training retention, self-confidence, tolerance of ambiguity, innovativeness and achievement motivation) positively influence EI.

Previous studies only focused on relationship testing among psychological attributes and EI. This research proposes strategies to design entrepreneurial education and training program to improve psychological attributes and EI which can be considered practical version of EntreComp conceptual model.

The past two decades have witnessed a surge in entrepreneurship training (ET) programmes among religious organisations in Ghana. Despite this, current studies on the topic have revealed a gap in the perception of ET initiatives and the actual needs and expectations of trainees. This paper aims to explore the characteristics of ET programmes in Christian organisations in Ghana and the perception of beneficiaries on the relevance of these schemes.

A qualitative research approach was used for the study. The study used interviews and document reviews as data collection instruments. In investigating research questions one and two for case study one, interviews were used. For case study two, data were collected mainly through a review of documents for research question one and interviews for research question two. The data were analysed using thematic analysis techniques.

The results show some similarities in ET characteristics in the two cases studied, specifically regarding objectives and target outcomes. Therefore, ET programmes identified in both cases were targeted at both potential and practicing entrepreneurs in the congregations. Further, content appears adequate with an emphasis on topics that develop business management skills. The teaching approach varied within the studied religious organisations and although some practices were similar to best practice guidelines suggested in literature, there are lapses in the system. Regarding respondents? perception on the relevance of the ET programmes, the authors observed a positive outlook among all respondents who argued that the scheme addressed key issues at individual, organisational and national levels. However, the study revealed that religious institutions were unwilling to provide seed funding to beneficiaries.

Further studies will need to validate findings in other Christian denominations not captured in the study. Furthermore, replicating this study among non-Christian religious institutions would be beneficial for policymaking.

This study suggests that managers of ET programmes in churches need to be helped to focus their programmes on developing business competencies, specifically technical skills.

There is a gap in understanding of the nature of ET programmes in religious institutions in Ghana and globally. This study provides insights on the characteristics of ET programmes in churches; thus allowing us to understand how they can be supported to deliver effectively.

This study aims to analyze the effects of microentrepreneurs’ knowledge transfer (KT) on personal improvement (PI) and business improvement (BI).

The study was developed in two stages: a literature review based on KT and the learning process in microenterprises to have managerial competence and PI and BI to acquire the managerial competence that entrepreneurs need. The second stage was constructing a structural model based on 107 questionnaires and bootstrapping of 5,000 replications of microentrepreneurs who went through a training program (quantitative) and a focus group (qualitative). This study had a mixed approach, exploratory scope and experimental design.

The research showed real evidence about the performance level of microentrepreneurs when they passed through the process of KT and its impact on PI and BI. This research considers their managerial competencies, and the findings show a relationship between the theory of individual and organizational learning.

This study considered Peruvian microentrepreneurs who participated in a virtual training program that included several courses related to their current environments and topics of interest. The analyzed period covered the years affected by COVID-19.

The model reveals that KT is relevant to PI and BI. Performance was measured regarding growth, income, innovation, productivity and responsibility before and after the program.

This research analyzed the need for training microentrepreneurs for personal and private reasons under a COVID-19 scenario to foster their businesses and assume financial responsibilities. This study considered Peru’s reality, a country in which 94.9% of companies are microenterprises. The study revealed that microentrepreneurs improved their personal and professional lives and addressed relevant social problems that affect their environments because of the KT effects.

This study bridges the gap in the literature on how the theory of KT can be applied to entrepreneurs. This study revealed significant findings in terms of PI and BIs. The impact of KT indicates the relevance of managerial competencies related to the performance level obtained in terms of growth, income, innovation, productivity and responsibility.

Youth entrepreneurship has been identified as a key driver in overcoming the economic crisis spurred by youth unemployment. However, the understanding of youth entrepreneurship is largely based on research in high-income countries. Furthermore, entrepreneurship studies to date are largely limited to the independent effects of individual traits on entrepreneurial intention (EI). Hence, this study aims to model the cognitive and social conditions, mediating processes and interactions to understand how youth EI can be formed and strengthened in an emerging economy.

A cross-sectional sample of 295 Malaysian youths participating in an online entrepreneurship program were included to assess their family socioeconomic background, individual personality traits and EI using regression, mediation and moderation models. Within the sample, 29 youths who completed the program were examined for pre- and post-training intervention differences to identify whether entrepreneurial traits can be developed.

Results showed that a proactive personality or proactiveness was a key mediator in how an internal locus of control (ILOC) and self-esteem influence EI. Furthermore, ILOC and proactiveness were found to compensate for the lack of parental financial support in the formation of EI among low-income youth. Finally, there was a significant increase in proactive personality scores post-intervention, indicating that this trait can be strengthened through entrepreneurship programs.

This study focused on parental income as an indicator of family socioeconomic background, which may not accurately represent the diversity of the socio-ecological environment of an individual. Therefore, future research should assess the multi-dimensional indicators of socioeconomic status and their relations with psychological attributes in shaping EI. Furthermore, this study observed a small sample size for the pre- and post-intervention analysis. Hence, more studies with large sample sizes are needed to examine the impact of entrepreneurship education.

Considering that entrepreneurship is envisioned as an instrument to lift youths out of poverty, this study has important implications for entrepreneurship programs that target low-income youths. The findings suggest that such programs need to first emphasize developing ILOC and proactiveness among these youths, thus enabling them to overcome various structural barriers toward entrepreneurship, as opposed to a purely knowledge-based learning approach.

To effectively lift youths out of poverty through entrepreneurship, policymakers and educational institutions need to first recognize that the EI of youth from varying socioeconomic backgrounds are formed differently. Hence, the approach of entrepreneurship programs catered toward youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds will differ from programs catered to youths who are financially secure. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, entrepreneurship programs targeted at low-income youths must first emphasize building their mindsets of ILOC and proactivity to overcome financial challenges as opposed to focusing solely on building entrepreneurial skills and knowledge.

The findings offer a more holistic and nuanced view of the contingencies where the efforts of policymakers, educational institutions and practitioners are more likely to succeed in stimulating EI among youths in emerging economies. In addition, the study also bridges the gap between the theoretical understanding of EI and the practical implications of developing effective entrepreneurship programs by combining the cross-sectional analysis and pre- and post-intervention test in the same study. Importantly, the study highlighted the importance of considering youth’s socioeconomic background in the design and implementation of entrepreneurship programs.

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.

Using functional contextualism, this study aims to explore how Ghanaian micro-entrepreneurship of women (MEW) impacts on the achievement of four targets of sustainable development goal 1 (SDG) (income, social protection, economic resources and resilience) with the cultural factors of women as a mediator.

Using a mixed methods approach, semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 171 micro women entrepreneurs in Tema. The data collected was analyzed using thematic and multiple regression techniques.

The study reveals that micro women entrepreneurship relates significantly to earning incomes and procuring economic resources. These targets cannot be achieved without the significant effects of cultural factors.

This paper contributes to the literature on micro women entrepreneurship and sustainable development goals by indicating that a better appreciation of the relationship of micro women entrepreneurship and achievement of SDG 1 targets will have to be examined within the cultural setting of women. The theoretical contribution is in showing that MEW to be an enabler for achieving the earning of income and procuring economic resource targets of SDG 1. Micro women entrepreneurship is both a process (earning income) and outcome (procuring economic resources) for achieving SDG 1 targets.