Gender, Social Networks, and Entrepreneurship in Ghana

Step-Change: Micro-Entrepreneurs’ Entry into the Middle-Class Market

“…In addition, relational competence entails activities such as scanning, valuing, developing, abandoning, and continuing relationships for access to resources. Research has found that women are good at continuing relationships, whereas men are better equipped to abandon relationships and to develop new relationships (Kuada, 2009;Little, 2002). Such activities may typically be important for making a step-change.…”

“…Their situation is characterized by, among others, inadequate infrastructures and a lack of support from formal institutions (Burgess & Steenkamp, 2006). Micro-entrepreneurs adapt to these conditions through social networking, which enables them to survive by making efficient use of scarce resources (Kuada, 2009;Rutashobya et al, 2009). Hierarchy and embeddedness, such as strong cultural norms, therefore represent important informal institutions that characterize BoP (Burgess & Steenkamp, 2006).…”

“…Although bonding social capital helps micro-entrepreneurs at the BoP to survive, it may also lock them into their current social networks (Kuada, 2009;Rutashobya et al, 2009). Micro-entrepreneurs may be limited by their current networks when, for the implementation of new business opportunities, they seek new information or resources that are currently unavailable in their existing network.…”

“…It creates new insights into how global inequality can be reduced, which is one of the greatest challenges of our time (Narayan, 2014). Furthermore, because previous studies have observed that in developing and emerging markets women are overrepresented in micro-enterprises (Otoo et al, 2012;World Bank, 2012), we also draw implications for the gender debate in development (e.g., Kuada, 2009;Madichie, 2009).…”

Remittances, ICT and Doing Business in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Fourth, as far as we have reviewed, contemporary African business literature has focused on inter alia: legal challenges to doing business (Taplin & Synman, 2004); the cost of doing business (Eifert et al, 2008); determinants of doing business in East Africa (Khavul et al, 2009); the influence of labour regulation externalities on the cost of doing business (Paul et al, 2010); intensity by which trade influences business cycle synchronization (Tapsoba, 2010); the importance of information technology in social outcomes (AmankwahAmoah & Sarpong, 2016;Amankwah-Amoah, 2015; the long-term effect of entrepreneurial training in the mitigation of poverty (Mensah & Benedict, 2010); the relationship between youth entrepreneurship and financial literacy (Oseifuah, 2010); linkages between social networks and gender in entrepreneurship ( Kuada, 2009); motivations behind female entrepreneurs (Singh et al, 2011); entrepreneurial intensions by undergraduate students (Gerba, 2012;Ita et al, 2014); insights into project failures in entrepreneurship (Ika & Saint-Macary, 2014;Hashim, 2014;Ofori, 2014;Joseph et al, 2014); the relevance of cross-border inter-firm knowledge generation on doing business in Africa (Kuada, 2015); a classification of the research agenda on entrepreneurship in Africa (Kuada, 2015) and the role of knowledge economy in doing business (Tchamyou, 2016).…”