Paper short abstract:

Within the context of entrepreneurs' response and coping strategies in turbulent environments, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that interrogates and integrates the relationships between spiritual capital, environmental turbulence, entrepreneurial resilience and firm survival.

Paper long abstract:

Increasingly, businesses in the 21st century have to grapple with the challenges of operating in turbulent environments characterised by market volatility, political instability, and terrorism These challenges are relevant to developing countries, where institutional weaknesses exacerbate environmental turbulence; and developed countries, where, for example in the UK, businesses are grappling with the uncertainties of BREXIT. In order to survive and compete, firms mobilise external resources and develop new strategies. For instance, scholars have observed that social capital in the form of cooperative alliances enables rival firms to combine resources, share costs, achieve economies of scale, and mitigate risk and uncertainty in innovation. Recently, a new interest has emerged in the role of spiritual capital-that is, the set of personal, intangible, and transcendent resources that emanate from an individual's spiritual or religious beliefs and experiences and may be used in economic activity. Spiritual capital is especially relevant in sub-Saharan Africa where there are greater institutional voids, and religion and spirituality play a dominant role in society. While recent studies have drawn attention to the impact of spiritual capital on firm level innovation and performance and corporate governance practices, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that interrogates and integrates the relationships between spiritual capital, environmental turbulence, entrepreneurial resilience and firm survival.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper reviews the available evidence on how frugal innovations (i.e. the activities of 'frugal' entrepreneurs) in the health care, energy, and mobile money sectors are governed, how such innovations in turn trigger new regulations, and what this means for entrepreneurial resilience.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds on the growing body of knowledge on frugal innovation. Frugal innovation is often defined as 'meeting the desired objective with a good-enough, economical means' (Soni et al 2014: 31). There are now numerous case studies on the role of Multinational Corporations as well as domestic firms in bringing about "low-cost, good-enough" products and services in developing countries (ibid.). However, there is a surprising lack of systematic studies on how the processes and outcomes of frugal innovations are governed, as well as how in turn, frugal innovations can trigger government action in terms of policy and legislation, and with what effects. This paper aims to contribute to filling these gaps. The paper will review the available evidence on this two-way causal relationship to answer two research questions: on the one hand, 'How do norms, institutions and (sustainability) standards influence the behaviour of producers of frugal innovations?' and on the other hand, 'How do high technology systems and infrastructures affect effectiveness of governance and regulations with regard to inclusive and sustainable frugal innovations?' Given the availability of relevant case studies, the focus will be on the health care, energy, and mobile money sectors. The paper will contribute to this DSA panel by outlining the regulatory, legal, and policy conditions in which entrepreneurs in developing countries operate, and what this means for their ability to be resilient in turbulent environments.

Reference: Soni, P., & T. Krishnan, R. (2014). 'Frugal innovation: aligning theory, practice, and public policy'. Journal of Indian Business Research, 6(1), 29-47.

Paper short abstract:

In SSA, firm-level evidence reveal the competitive behaviour of informal enterprises as 'unhealthy' and a top three obstacle formal businesses face. This paper fills the gap by investigating the relationship between informal competition and innovativeness of formal firms in 5 SSA countries.

Paper long abstract:

Product market competition is argued to enhance the innovation activities of firms (Blundell et al., 1999). In SSA, interactions between formal and informal businesses in product markets continue to grow in the face of increasing informality. Firm-level evidence however reveal the product market competitive behaviour of informal enterprises

as 'unhealthy' and one of the top three obstacles formal businesses face in SSA. With scant empirical evidence available, this paper fills the gap in the literature by investigating the relationship between informal product market competition and sales from innovative products introduced by formal firms. Using data for 5 SSA countries namely: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and employing two econometric approaches that

localise informal competition in the product market at the first-level of estimation

and controls for self-selection and sample selection biases at the second level of estimation,

we have shown that 'local' informal competition matters for the performance

of product innovations. The main results show that local informal competition has a negative effect on the performance of product innovations while industry informal competition has a positive effect on product innovation. Both local and industry levels of informal competition were however found to have no effect on the probability of introducing product innovations. We also found through indirect mechanisms that firms with larger market share tend to have 'escape-competition effects'. We argue that informal competition matters for the performance of product innovations but only for formal firms that lack strategic collaborative 'footholds' in the informal economy.

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Paper short abstract:

We examine the nature and performance of women's firms in comparison to men's, in sub-Saharan Africa. We highlight empirical facts and expose myths that don't hold up to data.

Paper long abstract:

Women account for half of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and women entrepreneurs are increasingly playing an important role in the business sector. But, gender gaps in entrepreneurship are hardly studied in the SSA context, leaving gaps that have important policy implications. SSA lies beneath the global economic frontier, and in this context, female entrepreneurship is important because women entrepreneurs tend to have comparatively larger impact on household welfare than men. However, gender discrimination in education, access to finance, information and social network limit their participation in economic activities. Consequently, most female-owned businesses reside in low-profit and informal industry sectors such as retail. They are also comparatively smaller, less productive and less growth oriented. Some authors however, maintain that women's firms are not structurally different from men's. In this talk, I will summarise my recent research in SSA, which examines the structure and performance of women's and men's firms. I have found that women-owned firms are sometimes less productive than men's, but they are not necessarily systematically less productive. History and institutions play some roles in these findings. These insights extend the perimeter of discussions on gender equality and inclusiveness, which have hitherto centred on access to education, finance and social services rather than long-term issues like women's participation in productive economic activities particularly at the bottom of the pyramid.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper attempts to show enterpreneurship grows and thrives in peripheries of mega cities like Mumbai, inspite of growing de-industrialisation and poor working conditions.

Paper long abstract:

Subaltern is a social group who are socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony or the colonial home land.The peripheries and slums of mega cities produce informal entrepreneurs who contribute to the growth and functioning of megacities. Slums and peripheries of megacities may be termed as 'warehouses' that produce cheap labour force for the big and small industries. These small industries are run by the inhabitants of the slum and peripheral towns, who we can also be term as 'subaltern entrepreneurs'. These subaltern entrepreneurs most of the times escape the government policies, industrial laws and labour laws to run the enterprise with minimum investments leading to inhuman working conditions. The paper tries to highlight how the people at peripheries of megacities become entrepreneurs with no or minimal government support and policies. However, as a result of not coming under government regulation these entrepreneurs suffer in terms of, capital and financial requirements, technological upgradation, safety issues etc. The paper thus tries to show how Enterpreneurship thrives and grows in the peripheries of mega cities like Mumbai and is a response to the lacking framework of policy making. These entrepreneurs use their social relations to sustain in their occupation with little or no support from the state.

Paper short abstract:

We investigate how creativity correlates to employment growth, and how the paired input-variables either complement or substitute each other to impact employment growth at firm-level. We use robust OLS, Tobit, and Heckman two-stage models for the analysis.

Paper long abstract:

The serendipity of innovation makes employees' creativity vital for overall firm performance. While empirical studies linking innovation to creativity and employment are well-documented, to our knowledge, there are no studies relating to employment and creativity via innovative firms. This study, therefore, examines the collective impact of creativity and innovation on firm-level employment growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using well-documented enterprise and innovation-follow-up surveys from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for 11 selected countries and employing Heckman's two-stage model, our results offer strong evidence of the positive link between creativity on firm-level employment growth. Similarly, we find positive impact of product innovations on employment, but no effect from process innovations. Also, we find evidence for a complementary effect arising from combination of creativity with managerial experience and internal R&D. In contrast, combining creativity, the employees' level of education and skills results in a substitution effect. Our results have important managerial implications on the role of employees' creativity in supporting a compelling combination of innovation inputs.