Understanding community entrepreneurship in Nigeria (towards a new entrepreneurship development model)

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Olaniyan, R.M., 2015. Understanding community entrepreneurship in Nigeria (towards a new entrepreneurship development model). DBA, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

This is an investigation into the influences of the triadic factors of culture, Institutional rules and entrepreneurship development policy instruments on entrepreneurship development at the community level within Nigeria. The research objective is to utilise a better theoretical understanding of how these factors impact on entrepreneurial behaviour at the community level, to then proffer a diagnostic model that better calibrates the environmental munificence of target communities. In order to achieve this, the study seeks answers to four research questions that focus on the nature, relevance, impact and inter-relatedness of each of the triadic factors on the entrepreneurial behaviour of community-‐based entrepreneurs in such a complex and emerging country as Nigeria. It is expected that such a model will enable the design and implementation of community entrepreneurship development policy and programmes that are better suited to the environmental context of targeted communities.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A multiple case-study approach is taken to compare three community ventures within Nigeria. The use of a multi-method approach made it possible to collect multiple data on different levels by combining data collection methods, such as observations, interviews, questionnaires and the content analysis of official government documents. In this regard the study benefits from both narrative and quantitative analysis.

Findings: Heritage and culture had a strong bearing on how the community ventures came about, and were ultimately managed. The community‐based entrepreneurs see the ventures, along with the skills and knowledge required to produce the crafts, as cultural artefacts in their own right, which are passed down through generations utilising various techniques of cultural reproduction chief amongst which is an apprenticeship system.

While the entrepreneurial ventures are lacking in formal structures and processes, there is a strong social energy and network that binds the operators of the ventures together and offers them what they themselves recognize as their competitive advantage.

The institutional and policy environment within which these community entrepreneurs play is perceived as being exceedingly harsh and in some instances debilitating, creating occasional tensions in the way the community entrepreneurs interpret the formal institutional rules within which they must do business.

There is a conceptual disconnect between the rhetoric offered by the guiding policy document studied and the organising framework that guided this research, which presupposes an inherent weakness within the document.

The study finds that cultural and institutional factors and their influences on community-based entrepreneurs are interpreted in different ways, creating different environmental contexts within the communities studied.

Practical Implications/Contribution: The research contributes to the theoretical area of community entrepreneurship. It offers a new way of understanding community entrepreneurship, as well as an empirical basis for crafting the entrepreneurship policy agenda. It argues for monolithic national enterprise development policy agendas to be discontinued in favour of a more bespoke arrangement that tailors such policies and programme regimes to the specific needs of the community in line with the assessment of the entrepreneurial environment of the community.

It makes a contribution to practice by offering a diagnostic model that helps calibrate and categorise the environmental munificence (defined here as the quality of the overall context of the triadic environmental factors) of target communities.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Olaniyan, R.M.
Date:	February 2015
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re‐use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	27 Nov 2019 11:15
Last Modified:	27 Nov 2019 11:15
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/38567