The tangled historical roots of entrepreneurial growth aspirations

Stephanie Decker, Saul Estrin and Tomasz Mickiewicz

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Research Summary: We consider what configurations of historical and geographic dimensions influence entrepreneurial growth aspirations (EGA). Our theoretical framework combines geography (coastal location, resource dependence), long-term colonial history (ethnic heterogeneity, legal origins), and postcolonial history (low levels of conflict and population displacement; not having “bad neighbors”). We employ abductive reasoning to link the social science and historical literatures via analytically structured histories of Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola. Next, we undertake a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on sub-Saharan Africa countries to investigate which particular configurations of these dimensions are important for EGA. We demonstrate the importance of configurations over individual variables and add context-bound dimensions to the study of entrepreneurship in developing countries, through historical analysis. Managerial Summary: Our analysis may offer entrepreneurs a template for identifying potential opportunities and threats in order to calibrate their strategies for scaling up their venture in sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that environments rich in entrepreneurial growth opportunities are associated with configurations where negative aspects are more than compensated by positive ones. For Botswana, the low levels of internal conflict compensate for unfavorable location. For Angola, the positive impact of coastal location and relatively low ethnic heterogeneity counterbalance the negative effect of resource rents. Resource-driven economies are more entrepreneurial: better economic opportunities can sometimes result from having extractive industries. For African entrepreneurs it is not only relevant what happens in their own countries, as their opportunities are directly affected by economic or political turmoil in neighboring countries.

Keywords: Africa; entrepreneurship; global enterprise monitor; history; qualitative comparative analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2020-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 1, December, 2020, 14(4), pp. 616 - 638. ISSN: 1932-443X

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:102989

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