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The purpose of this study is to explore the elements of the Marwari business community’s sociocultural context, which influence entrepreneurial behaviour. The entrepreneurial behaviour of the Marwari community is interrogated in the context of the wider indigenous entrepreneurship literature.

The study adopts a qualitative approach in exploring the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and effectual entrepreneurial behaviour of a sample of Marwari entrepreneurs. An exploratory, qualitative content analysis method was adopted to highlight the emerging insights into traditional entrepreneurship.

The study identifies unique, traditional Marwari behavioural constructs such as Sakh and Samai and the role it plays in trust-based business relationships. Overall, the study finds that although the Marwari practices and ecosystem enable a deep understanding of the entrepreneurial and business process, they do not facilitate creative innovation or entrepreneurial experimentation as seen within modern start-up incubation ecosystems.

The study took a conscious decision to restrict further data collection upon saturation and used a purposeful sampling technique to increase the richness of this study rather than enlarge the sample and dilute the quality of the data.

The study identifies nuances of Marwari’s traditional practices that have come to determine their effectual tendencies that support business growth and sustainability. The study, however, finds that the restrictiveness of the Marwari ecosystem practices on fluency of doing business rather than creative innovation and thought experimentation risks the longevity of the traditional ecosystem advantage enjoyed by the Marwaris for centuries.

The study broadens the understanding of the uniqueness of traditional business communities, which are comparatively marginalized in mainstream entrepreneurship research. Via this study, it is seen that the Marwari form of entrepreneurship is collectivist rather than individualist in nature, which differentiates them from their Western counterparts. This helps to explain why entrepreneurs tend to behave differently; hence, achieving a universal definition of entrepreneurship remains a challenge.

While the relationship between the sociocultural aspects of communities and their entrepreneurial behaviour is known, the role of the constituent elements of the Marwari sociocultural context and influence on business is unclear. This study takes the lead in identifying such elements of the Marwari sociocultural construct and argues how these elements can play a role in the Marwaris demonstrating tendencies of effectual behaviour.

There are notable indigenous business models in the African context that have either been unexplored or are yet to be highlighted and given due attention at the international level. This chapter provides a cross-case analysis of the indigenous business practices of three ethnic groups across West Africa: Nigeria (Igbos), Ghana (Ewes) and the Benin Republic (Guns), thus viewing business models, from anglophone and francophone perspectives. Specifically, the chapter discusses the apprenticeship models igba-boi, of the Igbo society, dorsorsror, among the Ewes, and eyi alo within the Guns society and succession models in the three societies ‘Inochi anya, domenyinyi and eyi kanta’ respectively, with the aim of highlighting insights for practice, policy and academia. Historically, there have been relevant structures to ensure the transfer of knowledge and wealth to the next generation; this is driven by both cultural and traditional systems of the ethnic groups. The findings show that the family unit plays a significant role in building a sustainable channel, though informal, through which the heritage of business models is attained. To this end, the authors recommend leveraging the unique models of apprenticeship and business succession practised in these ethnic groups to support current policies, such as those relating to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

This paper empirically assesses energy efficiency (EE) adoption among firms by examining the factors that drive investment in EE in the Onitsha plastic cluster, South-East, Nigeria.

Self-administered questionnaires were delivered to the selected enterprises. A total of 450 questionnaires were administered of which 423 were certified valid and used for the analysis. A Heckit model was developed and estimated.

Gender, firm size, Joneses effect and expected cost reduction benefits are the significant determinants of EE investment. However, firm structure, government incentives, regulatory requirements and reduction of carbon emission are insignificant drivers of EE investment decisions in the Onitsha plastic cluster.

This paper presents a foremost attempt at analysing the determinants of energy investment in a cluster in Nigeria.

Given the ever-growing fiscal commitments of Nigeria and her chequered history of electricity generation and distribution, the fortunes of the energy sector in the country have been affected by the prevalence of energy poverty. Government policies such as public capital expenditure (PCE) present a crucial option for reducing energy poverty in Nigeria, providing the purpose of this study.

To investigate the relationship between government capital spending and five distinct energy poverty proxies, this research applies the Bayer–Hanck cointegration system and the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test.

The findings indicate that public capital spending in Nigeria worsens energy poverty by reducing access to electricity, urban electrification, renewable energy consumption and renewable electricity generation, with a positive but insignificant influence on rural electrification.

This inquiry presents a pioneering investigation of the nexus between PCE and energy poverty in Nigeria. Also, aside from the variables of energy poverty adopted by existing studies, this study incorporates renewable energy consumption and renewable electricity output with implications for energy poverty and sustainable development.