Research is beginning to query the dominance of Western-influenced perspectives on emancipation. It identifies a significant contextual oversight in the discourse surrounding the emancipation of women in entrepreneurship in non-Western settings. To this end, we employ an integrative literature review to unpack the research practices through which emancipation in women's entrepreneurship is constructed and understood along a macro-micro lens. Our analysis identifies how emancipation is constructed through three intra-acting research practices: portraying women entrepreneurs as victims, framing agency as inherently constrained, and assessing emancipation based on its scale and presumed intentionality. Building on this, we contribute a processual perspective on emancipation which draws upon Karen Barad's agential realist. In a way, we reconceptualize agency and emancipation as phenomena emerging through contextually embedded intra-actions. This perspective facilitates a more nuanced empirical understanding of women's entrepreneurial practices, recognizing their significance for women entrepreneurs in non-Western contexts, with implications for studying emancipation as a process of becoming.

Purpose This study conceptualises entrepreneurship education through the lens of nascent entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa. It develops theoretical explanations and perspectives regarding nascent entrepreneurs' soft, technical, and entrepreneurship-specific skills, as well as their entrepreneurial readiness in a resource-constrained setting. The resulting conceptual confluence contributes novel theoretical insights, detailing how African values are integrated into the nascent entrepreneurship process to foster the cognitive competencies necessary for validating and exploiting business opportunities in a resource-constrained context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Design/methodology/approach This multivariate study analysed a sample comprising 300 South African nascent entrepreneurs, selected from a broader population of 7,352. To ensure the representativeness of the sample, a Raosoft sample size calculator was employed, targeting a 95% confidence level, a 5% margin of error, and a 50% response distribution. Data analysis was conducted using linear regression and structural equation modelling techniques. Findings The findings of this study indicate that soft skills significantly influence venture creation, innovative financing, and organisational growth. Technical skills further explain the readiness of nascent entrepreneurs in a resource-constrained context. Crucially, within the framework of African entrepreneurship education, the processes of identifying, validating, and exploiting business opportunities demonstrate a positive and significant relationship with the entrepreneurial readiness of nascent African entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the results provide insights into their proficiency in resource optimisation while exploring and exploiting opportunities within their specific entrepreneurial environments. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in its theorisation of an entrepreneurship education system that underpins the activities of nascent entrepreneurs in a resource-constrained setting, where local and cultural systems, social norms, and values permeate every aspect of society. Consequently, it provides an understanding of the components of entrepreneurship education within the framework of a sub-Saharan African entrepreneurship education system.

Despite considerable scholarly attention to entrepreneurship and poverty, research linking women's entrepreneurship and poverty in slum neighborhoods has been slow to progress. Drawing on an entrepreneurship-poverty nexus and regression results on 12,519 observations, we theorize women's everyday entrepreneurship in Kenya's slum neighborhoods. Our analysis offers theoretical insights into the complexities of necessity-driven everyday entrepreneurship in which women are dominant. We distinguish women's entrepreneurial activities that are embedded in slum systems of everyday entrepreneurship and focused exclusively on a tapestry of essential goods and services, including labor, fuel, energy (for example, charcoal), water, food, and farming. This understanding translates women's entrepreneurial engagements into quantifiable socio-economic outcomes suitable for slum-like conditions where government resources are considered too few to support basic needs. This has academic, social, and policy implications.

PurposeThis study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on small to medium enterprises (SME) resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, synthesizing entrepreneurial responses through the lens of ambidexterity, crisis adaptation and relational support.Design/methodology/approachUnlike narrative literature reviews, which are considered less comprehensive, an SLR was deemed appropriate for this study. Its methodological rigour enabled a systematic search of several bibliographic databases, resulting in an initial sample of 2,616. Rigorous and structured qualification criteria were applied to ensure that suitable articles were selected for analysis, resulting in 175 articles.FindingsThis study revealed that, due to the pandemic's significant impact on small businesses, their owners had to be ambidextrous in pivoting between exploration and exploitation. This included leveraging their capabilities while adventurously applying technology and innovation, and being flexible, agile and able to tolerate ambiguity. This involved entrepreneurially identifying previously unexploited opportunities, viewing "dire circumstances" as opportunities and continuing business in the face of mounting COVID-19 adversities.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has both academic and practical implications, as well as social and policy implications. Its perspectives encourage additional research and policy initiatives to mitigate the impacts of a crisis on SMEs. SME owners acquire knowledge in dealing with adversities and learn how to promote a resilient workforce during a pandemic.Originality/valueThis paper is unique in that it integrates exploration, bricolage and ambidexterity within the context of SME resilience, developing a model of SME resilience that incorporates entrepreneurial adaptability and relational networks.

Research identifies digitalisation as the 'holy grail' of entrepreneurship. But the interplay of digital self-efficacy, technostress, and entrepreneurial behaviour in a non-Western setup is unsubstantiated. Using a digital technology-technostress-entrepreneurial intention interface, we examine multiple relationships influencing early-stage South African entrepreneurs. Regression results derived from 643 of these entrepreneurs confirm that digital self-efficacy impacts the link between perceived behavioural control and technostress. Entrepreneurial passion and the benefits of digital technology amplify this effect. Similarly, digital self-efficacy affects perceived behavioural control and technostress. However, the link between technostress and entrepreneurial passion is weak. Test results on the impact of technostress on entrepreneurial intention are inconclusive. Thus, the originality of these observations lies in revealing how ambivalence towards technology differentially influences the various relationships of digital self-efficacy, technostress, and entrepreneurial behavior in a non-Western context. This ambivalent effect at the intersection of digital technology, technostress, and entrepreneurial intention has socio-economic and policy implications.

PurposeThis study analyzes technostress in African entrepreneurship. It advances contextualized theoretical explanations of technostress depicting its impact on entrepreneurs who excessively consume digital technology in Africa. The study also describes how research linking transactional benefits to digital technology has created an imbalanced literature that ignores technostress and well-being in African entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachConsidering the study’s theoretical explanations derived at the technostress–entrepreneurship–well-being nexus, structural equation modeling (SEM) was deemed appropriate. Unlike qualitative–based methods, SEM experiments on 643 observations of early–stage African entrepreneurs in South Africa enabled robust statistical interpretations of their social settings. Thus, strengthening our analysis and focus on the interplay between the variables of technostress, including overload, invasion, complexity and uncertainty, and their impact on entrepreneurship intentions defined through perceived behavior control, entrepreneurship passion and digital self-efficacy.FindingsSEM experiments on these African entrepreneurs revealed technostress dimensions of overload, invasion, complexity and uncertainty as moderators of their entrepreneurial actions encompassing perceived behaviour control and entrepreneurship passion in connection with their entrepreneurial intentions. The results also suggested that perceived behaviour control, entrepreneurship passion, and the digital self-efficacy of these entrepreneurs influenced their entrepreneurial intentions.Research limitations/implicationsBesides inspiring more studies on technostress and well-being in varied entrepreneurial contexts, this research also initiates debate on policy and social reforms geared toward entrepreneurs considered vulnerable to excessive digital technology consumption.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study lies in its theoretical explanations derived at the technostress–entrepreneurship–well-being nexus. This conceptual overlay elevates the interpretations of the findings of this study beyond the averages in entrepreneurship and information technology (IT) research. Specifically, it increases their inferential value by revealing subtle and hard to dictate social interactions inherent in how African entrepreneurs consume and are impacted by technology as they pursue their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Research links ambidexterity and innovation. However, the impact of the relationship between ambidextrous innovation and resilience relative to ambidexterity outcomes in the developing world remains atheoretical. Accordingly, this study introduces an ambidextrous innovation–resilience–ambidexterity interface to investigate 300 developing world SMEs. From this phenomenon–theory interface, equation, and regression modelling, we deduce theories to articulate the tenuous relationship between ambidextrous innovation strategies (IT [information technology] and learning capabilities) and resilience relative to ambidexterity outcomes for these SMEs. Juxtaposed against the ambidexterity–resilience link found in mainstream research, we show how the interplay of these ambidextrous innovation strategies with resilience weakens ambidexterity outcomes in a developing world setting, where essential entrepreneurship resources are too limited to meet SMEs’ needs. This study is original because it suggests that ambidextrous behavior may not always yield positive outcomes in a developing world setting, which has implications for research, policymaking, and SME practice.

Considering that EL is yet to advance as a practice in leadership and SME research, this study operationalises it to develop understanding of its impact on decision-making in emerging economy SMEs. Twenty-five entrepreneurs sampled in three business clusters encompassing IT/software development, services and manufacturing/production, in Iran, provided data for analysis. Through analysing detailed narratives about their decision-making approaches, it emerged that the entrepreneurs matched operational ambiguities inherent in their businesses and distinct markets with a heterogeneous entrepreneurial architecture built upon leadership, heuristics, collectivism and social relations. To decipher their integrated decision-making structure, the research interweaved EL with behavioural decision and situated entrepreneurial cognition concepts leading to new theorisations about their decision-making approach. Thus, and by paying attention to the entrepreneurial orientation of decision makers in emerging economy SMEs, the study advances EL and SME research with profound theoretical and practical entrepreneurship implications for academics, practitioners, and policy institutions.

PurposeThis exploratory study draws upon a phenomenon-theory interface of women entrepreneurship and the concept of village savings to develop a continuum of the financial intermediation banking theory. It foregrounds this theoretical extension at the intersection of women's entrepreneurship financing processes, using a developing world setup and retrospective narratives of women entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachThe research utilises data generated from in-depth interviews involving forty (40) women entrepreneurs in a developing world setup. A research guide comprising semi-structured questions was used to allow participants to recount, as fully as possible, their lived experiences in social settings featuring village saving schemes. The Gioia methodology was adopted for data analysis. Unlike basic thematic analysis, Gioia's data structure, comprising first-order codes, second-order codes and aggregated dimensions, enhanced the rigour in analysing, synthesising and interpreting the stories told by the participants.FindingsThe findings reveal how women entrepreneurs, involuntarily excluded from participating in modern economics due to gender biases about their societal roles and responsibilities, reconfigured the very mechanisms that constrained their economic and social freedoms to establish village saving schemes as a solution to their financial access challenges. Furthermore, they show how these entrepreneurs coalesced, self-organised and self-managed to enable their saving schemes to function. The relationships they establish were influenced by prosocial acts of solidarity, belonging and togetherness with affiliation to these schemes based on family connections, kinship ties and long-standing personal friendships.Originality/valueThe originality of this study lies in the contextualised theoretical perspectives and explanations it develops to decipher the subtle social and economic interactions interwoven in the complex local, cultural and social systems of a classical village savings model. Its contextually grounded approach has value. It transcends empirical methods that scholars use to look beyond sample-wide averages to explore the nuances hidden beneath the surface of economic and social interactions in women's entrepreneurship in the developing world.

Research identifies universal entrepreneurship peculiarities, but how legacy communal family systems impact migrant entrepreneurs has remained esoteric. Accordingly, we introduce an overlapping entrepreneurial action-migrant entrepreneurship theoretical interface to examine 1,284 European and sub-Saharan African entrepreneurs. Compared with a European entrepreneur's nuclear family mindset, regression results reveal that a legacy communal family mindset of belonging and obligation to serve society influences a sub-Saharan African migrant entrepreneur's behaviour, values, and entrepreneurship practice in a European setup. In this context, a legacy communal family system attributable to a migrant entrepreneur's country of -origin underlies their entrepreneurial cognitive processes. This understanding contributes theoretical perspectives to account for how a sub-Saharan African migrant entrepreneur's ingrained legacy communal family mindset does not decay irrespective of their circumstances. It also contributes knowledge, clarifying the prolonged impact of traditional socio-business philosophies in migrant entrepreneurship with academic, business, policy, and social implications.

Over a billion of the world's population reside in slums. However, the configurations of their social and structural ties in these environments remain unsubstantiated. Drawing on a psychosociological rational choice perspective, we introduce theoretical explanations distinguishing slum dwellers' behavior, actions, and attitudes in community asset voucher (CAV) networks. Regression and equation modeling results, based on 19,892 slum dwellers' CAV transactions, reveal intersecting socio-economic dynamics suggesting that twenty-five percent (25%) of these dwellers are entrepreneurially-minded. They leverage CAVs for consumption and enterprise purposes. They also time when to transact in their slum-based CAV networks. Their central position indicates that they influence CAV transactions. But seventy-five percent (75%) of these dwellers are passive. They accept that they cannot change their seemingly unyielding poverty situation; hence, they only receive and use CAVs for consumption purposes. This stark contrast in behavior and attitude carries academic, economic, and social ramifications.

Slums are singled out as ‘outposts’ of inescapable clutches of poverty. This widely held assumption overlooks everyday entrepreneurship in slum–based networks of donated community asset vouchers (CAVs). Utilising the closeness centrality literature, we examine 185,227 transactions involving 4972 slum entrepreneurs across 60 Kenyan shanty towns. Leveraging the panoramic view afforded by their closeness centrality position in their networks, they establish a slum system of economic and social interactions based on timed CAV circulations. This contributes to research by extending the concept of networks to incorporate closeness centrality in unusual slum–based CAV networks with economic, policy, and social implications for over a billion people the UN–Habitat categorises as inhabitants of slums or shanty towns scattered across many parts of the developing world.

Research on project management describes the essence of projects involving multiple stakeholders, stressing the value derived from diverse work practices. However, this underestimates issues of counterproductive disagreements associated with diverse groups participating in a project. Thus, this study draws on Q methodology and a comprehensive stakeholder-interrelationship-project management interface to develop theoretical perspectives and explanations defining how an East Midlands, UK project team with varied expectations interrelate. Evidence from 23 interviews suggests that over expectations were not only a source of disagreements but also influenced participation. Our findings and analysis led to an overlapping conceptual interface detailing the interplay between behavior, actions, attitudes, and expectations among multiple stakeholders in a regional business development program. Accordingly, we contribute practical insights into project management with implications for engagement and communication strategies in multi-stakeholder projects.

Research indicates that entrepreneurs are relying on digital technology for their entrepreneurial endeavours, yet there is little knowledge on how to balance technology usage and wellbeing. Drawing on the concept of technostress and 643 observations of nascent South African entrepreneurs’ interactions with digital technology, we advance knowledge at the technostress–entrepreneurship nexus. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) results reveal how digital self-efficacy moderates their behaviour and inability to balance digital technology usage with wellbeing. These results confirm entrepreneurship passion and perceived behavioural control as predictors of technostress amongst these entrepreneurs. They also suggest that the benefits of digital technology are not a predictor of technostress in African entrepreneurship; thus, extending a conceptual overlay of digital technology, digital self-efficacy, entrepreneurial passion (EP), and behaviour to define the mechanisms underlying a technostress–entrepreneurship nexus. The results show social, policy, and research implications in today’s technology-driven environments characterised by a mixture of midrange to complete digital transformations.

Since its first use in organisational research, nearly five decades ago, imprinting has gained recognition in entrepreneurship studies. Accordingly, this study utilises the behavioural concept to develop new theorisations to account for the entrepreneurial processes of immigrant entrepreneurs. It pays attention on its effects on immigrant entrepreneurs, particularly when it comes to their decision–making and behaviours towards business creation in Canada. A comprehensive analysis of a dataset generated from a systematically selected group of immigrant entrepreneurs revealed the complexity of their imprints at various stages of their entrepreneurial cycle in the North American country. It emerged that imprinting not only modified their behaviours, attitudes and cognition, but also shaped the trajectory of their entrepreneurial processes. That is, their imprints had an effect on how they identified business opportunities, the types of businesses they pursued, their level of entrepreneurial drive, and the types of resources they acquired or accessed in their new environment. Notably, following a period of normalisation in their new surroundings, their original imprints changed due to diminishing affinity with their country-of-origin. This holds research and policy implications as it uncovers an unfolding but less-understood entrepreneurship phenomenon.

Numerous policy initiatives designed to support the growth of female-owned enterprises in the developing economies have repeatedly failed to achieve their objectives. Research recognizes the lack of contextualized growth models for defining female-owned enterprises in such contexts as the main issue. Thus, and drawing from our qualitative data, we propose a growth model to account for the business development activities of female-owned enterprises from a developing economy perspective. Through analyzing our qualitative data, it emerged that money (access and utilization), management (nonformal education and experience), and market (customer intelligence) were direct determinants of the growth trajectories of female-owned enterprises. Motherhood (household and family), meso- (membership of professional networks and social learning), and macro-environment (sociocultural and economic issues) indirectly influenced their growth by mediating women's access and utilization of the aforementioned direct determinants. From that, we offer recommendations for practitioners including public authorities and key actors within the entrepreneurial ecosystem that provide the support infrastructure for female-owned enterprises in a developing economy.

PurposeThe study aims to explore the role of non-mainstream financial schemes in supporting innovation within SMEs in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. It investigates how informal credit, business group affiliation and foreign and state ownership arrangements influence SMEs’ innovative activities in environments with limited access to formal financial resources.Design/methodology/approachThe research utilizes data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys, focusing on 8,466 firms across 11 sub-Saharan African countries from 2011 to 2020. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the impact of various financial sources on SMEs’ innovation outputs, particularly incremental innovations, due to data constraints on radical innovations.FindingsThe findings reveal that informal credit significantly supports SME innovation, while business group resources can hinder innovative activities by restricting firms to routine tasks. State ownership positively influences innovation, whereas the impact of foreign ownership is inconclusive. These results highlight the critical role of alternative financial mechanisms in the innovation activities of SMEs in resource-limited settings.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the effects of non-mainstream financial schemes on SME innovation in developing countries. It offers new theoretical insights into how SMEs navigate financial constraints to foster innovation and suggests policy implications for improving financial support systems for SMEs in such contexts. The research underscores the importance of contextualizing entrepreneurship studies to better understand the unique challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs in developing regions.