Journal of Development Entrepreneurship Articles

The Nigerian Context - A Story of Decline: Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
Nigeria is usually referred to as the giant of West Africa in that, with a population estimated at over 100 million, one in every two West Africans is a Nigerian. The country's GDP is larger than that of all the other countries in West Africa combined. Its GDP is actually larger than that of all countries in the African continent with the exception of South Africa. (Adaya, 1998).

The Nature of Growth Oriented Enterprises: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
Categorizing an enterprise as "growth oriented" implies that there is an intention within the top management of the enterprise to grow. An initial assumption, when the current research was undertaken in 1999, was that being a growth-oriented enterprise per se does not imply anything about the size of the company. A self-employed person may have started an enterprise with the intent to grow, whereas an existing enterprise of twenty people may think they have grown enough.

Respondent Profile : Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
A majority of the 81 entrepreneurs surveyed were males (72%) and operated in the capital city of Maiduguri (52%).

Results: Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
A confirmatory factor analysis of the "reasons leading to start-up" items was performed to ascertain if a resolute set of start-up reasons or outcome factors existed.

References: Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
References

References: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
References

Policies and Regulations: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises - Click To Read Article
The enabling environment is important-especially as the enterprise grows. This would appear to be related to the fact that the larger the enterprise becomes, the more difficult it gets to operate outside the formal economy. In talking about the enabling environment entrepreneurs tend to emphasize macro-economic conditions per se, rather than specific regulations. This implies that they are quite capable of working their way through (or around) regulations, but that they find it more difficult to deal with economic downturns.

Methodology : Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
A sample of 160 entrepreneurs located in different parts of Borno State in the North Eastern part of Nigeria was randomly selected from a list of small businesses furnished by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The ministry is the main agency responsible for registering small and medium enterprises and addressing issues related to their development in the state. Since the focus of this study was on business start-ups after the economic decline had began, only those entrepreneurs who had started their businesses after 1983 qualified for inclusion in this study.

Methodology: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
The study involved nine Focus Group Discussions with altogether forty participants in three countries - Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Market Orientation and Competition : Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises - Click To Read Article
Enterprises that grow do so because they are good at finding their market niche and understanding market demands. Most enterprises start by targeting the home market, often at the higher income niche. As the home market gets saturated, they look to expand their markets geographically, and eventually consider exporting. Few enterprises start exporting initially.

Information and Networks: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
It has been said that no man is an island. Although the entrepreneurs did not say so explicitly, it was apparent that most of the larger enterprises had benefited greatly from obtaining outside influences.

Human Resources : Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises - Click To Read Article
Human resources are very important for enterprise growth (see e.g. PAPA, 2000). This becomes increasingly important the higher up in the organization one gets.

Government Support for Entrepreneurship in Nigeria : Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
Recognizing the indispensability of the small-scale, private sector enterprise as the dynamic impetus for general economic development, many countries have instituted enterprise support networks and structures to fuel the development of these enterprises. Nigeria is not an exception in this regard. At various times since the 1970s, the government has designed and introduced a variety of measures to promote small and medium enterprise development. These measures included fiscal, monetary and export incentives.

Financial Management : Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises - Click To Read Article
Whereas the enterprise managers are well aware of the importance of external finance, they seem to underestimate the importance of financial management. This is an issue that the entrepreneurs did not raise directly themselves as a constraint, but something that was deduced from analyzing the empirical data.

Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
The paper explores entrepreneurship in a period of economic decline by identifying reasons for business start-ups under such conditions and examining whether the reasons were extrinsic in nature and entrepreneurial in origin.

Conclusions and Implications : Exploring entrepreneurship in a declining economy - Click To Read Article
The results indicate the presence of a fundamental set of reasons for business start-up under conditions of economic adversity, with strong emphasis on extrinsically aligned motivators.

Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
In its efforts to promote the creation of quality jobs within the small- and medium-scale enterprise sector, the Regional Project Office for the International Labor Organization's (ILO) Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) program in Harare, Zimbabwe has undertaken two studies aiming to find out what growth-oriented enterprises look like and how the ILO can assist them in their aspirations to grow. This article presents the key findings from the latter of these two studies.

Conclusion: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises in the southern and eastern African region - Click To Read Article
Enterprises that are about to grow and employ 5-15 people and enterprises that are in the process of growing and employ 10-30 people, both claim that their most important constraint is short- and long-term capital.

6.0 The African Entrepreneur Behavioral Patterns: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Successful entrepreneurs display a pattern of behavior different than the less successful ones. This is not surprising given that entrepreneurs differ in important demographic and psychological traits.

5.0 The African Entrepreneur Social Status/Relations: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Studies show that entrepreneurs enjoy higher social status and wider social relationships in their respective communities than non-entrepreneurs do.

7.0 The African Entrepreneur Entrepreneurial Competencies: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Empirical studies linking education and training to entrepreneurial success have had mixed and contradictory results.

8.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
In addition to competencies of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship requires effective and dynamic organizational arrangements in order to remain successful.

9.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm Organization Form: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Organization form refers to the design, structuring and management of the entrepreneurial firm, including descriptive (e.g., age, size, location, sector), and structural (e.g., ownership) variables.

Access to Finance: Constraints of growth-oriented enterprises - Click To Read Article
The starting point for a Focus Group Discussion was an exercise whereby the participants were asked to write down constraints they had encountered in growing or trying to grow their enterprises. These responses were printed on cards, which were placed, in clusters of similar constraints, on the wall for all to see. They became the starting point for more in-depth discussions and were used to reflect the groups' main concerns.

1.0 What is known and what needs to be done: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
This article summarizes what is known about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa using three broad categories: The Entrepreneur, The Entrepreneurial Firm, and The External Environment.

3.0 The African Entrepreneur Personal Traits: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
More than twenty personal traits of entrepreneurs have been linked to entrepreneurial success in Africa (LeVine, 1966; Benedict, 1979; Frese, 2000), and elsewhere (Stewart, 1996). Debate continues as to whether psychological variables, socio-demographic factors or external factors are the best determinants of entrepreneurial behavior and performance (Frese, 2000; Buame, 1996).

4.0 The African Entrepreneur Race/Ethnicity: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Wherever society is highly differentiated along racial/ethnic lines, race and ethnicity have been used to predict entrepreneurial success or failure.

2.0 The African Entrepreneur Demographic Characteristics: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Various personal demographic variables appear to differentiate successful from less successful entrepreneurs in Africa, as they do elsewhere (Kallon, 1990; Mead, 1999; Mead & Liedholm, 1998; Stewart, 1996). Earlier studies found that successful African entrepreneurs tended to be male, middle-aged, married with a number of children, and more educated that the general population.

10.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm Networks Clusters and the Octopus: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
While networks and clusters contribute to business success and continuity, the African entrepreneur experiences difficulties establishing and maintaining effective business networks and clusters (Barr, 1999; Kiggundu, 2001; Ramachandran & Shah, 1999).

11.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm Capital Resources: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
The degree to which capital by itself is a major obstacle to the growth of African entrepreneurship remains debatable.

12.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm Corporate Governance: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Very few studies of entrepreneurship concern themselves with corporate governance. This is particularly true in Africa where by far the majority of entrepreneurial firms are very small and operate in the informal sector.

13.0 The Entrepreneurial Firm The External Environment: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
The third category of factors accounting for the success or failure of entrepreneurship is the external environment within which both the entrepreneur and the firm exist and operate.

14.0 What Needs to be Done - Producing Useable Knowledge: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
The way forwarded should be guided by four key strategies. These include generating useable knowledge, producing better research, scaling up, and mainstreaming entrepreneurship. Each is explored below.

15.0 What Needs to be Done - Producing Better Research: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Most researchers and policy makers have tended to use the information summarized in Table I in an isolated way. Researchers have concentrated either on the entrepreneur (e.g., Frese, 2000), the entrepreneurial firm (Jorgensen, et al., 1986), or the external environment (Buame, 1996). Rarely have they taken a holistic approach to study the combined and interactive effects of the three factors on entrepreneurial success or failure across time and space.

16.0 What Needs to be Done - Scaling Up: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Individuals, organizations, communities and governments involved in the development of African entrepreneurship need to scale up. By scaling up is meant increasing the level and sophistication with which we study, develop and implement policies, finance, management extension and support programs for African entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms and entrepreneurship. Scaling up takes different meanings for researchers, public policy makers, support program managers, and the entrepreneurs themselves.

17.0 What Needs to be Done - Mainstreaming Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
The fourth and final factor that is needed involves the mainstreaming of African entrepreneurship. There has been a tendency to treat entrepreneurs either as marginal members of society and the economy, or to romanticize them as heroes or saviors even when they make little or negative contributions to society and the economy. Both treatments are erroneous.

18.0 Conclusion: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
Ultimately, the future of entrepreneurship in Africa must be in the hands of the Africans themselves.

19.0 References: Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Africa - Click To Read Article
References


Like this article? Share it with your friends

---

	No article feedback found.
	Leave Your Feedback

---

To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us.