Tested by the COVID-19 economic shock: peace-positive entrepreneurship and intergroup collaboration in post-conflict business recovery

Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Denisa Kostovicova and Fikret Causevic

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

Abstract: Establishing economic collaboration between previously antagonistic groups during post-conflict business recovery advances peacebuilding by nurturing intergroup ties. However, we have a limited understanding of how post-conflict intergroup economic collaboration develops and how it is sustained. We address these gaps from the perspective of peace-positive entrepreneurship. Specifically, an ecosystem approach that we apply directs analysis to dynamic entrepreneurial action in the local context. To examine the role of intergroup interactions in decision-making of entrepreneurs in post-conflict business recovery and in response to the economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted fieldwork on two micro-economies in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our findings demonstrate that entrepreneurs’ engagement across ethnic lines was a main facet of resource mobilisation strategies that enabled them to (re)establish and develop market presence post-conflict. Likewise, intergroup economic collaboration was a lynchpin of entrepreneurs’ effective response to the COVID-19 economic shock. This path-dependent analysis of entrepreneurial action shows that intergroup economic collaboration is not simply a side-effect of post-conflict business recovery and development. Rather, intergroup economic collaboration also needs to be actively pursued by entrepreneurs attuned to the local context. Intergroup economic collaboration can be instrumental in business (re)engagement in the post-conflict economy, generating wider benefits to peacebuilding.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; interethnic relations; political economy; peacebuilding; Bosnia and Herzegovina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2024-11-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-sbm
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Published in Conflict, Security and Development, 30, November, 2024, 24(5), pp. 425 - 450. ISSN: 1467-8802

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