Contextual and Structural Factors, Project Modelling and Sustainability of Entrepreneurial Development Projects: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Projects emanate from ideas to solve an underlying need. Ideally, a project aims to solve a problem among beneficiaries. Notwithstanding the imperative role of entrepreneurship in socioeconomic prosperity, sustainability of development projects focusing on the empowerment of entrepreneurs is gaining attention on the wheels of research. Of interest are entrepreneurial development projects that fail to attain the desired impacts despite huge capital investments. Ineffective decision-making associated with unrealistic expectations often implicates sustainable delivery of outcomes. Hoverers, foundations for sustainable delivery of entrepreneurship development projects are elusively theorized. Lack of theoretical consent and standardized practice of modelling project intervention relative to attaining sustainable deliverables deprives us of essential knowledge for decision-making. Failure to align project implementation models to the prevailing reality of entrepreneurship is believed to contribute to this dismal. Against the background, this paper presents a theoretical and conceptual framework for the interaction between contextual and structural factors, project modelling and sustainability of entrepreneurial development project interventions. 21 peer-reviewed articles were selected through screening. Meta-analysis was used to review the converging and diverging issues while identifying and synthesizing research gaps that connect with the research problem identified. While project modelling was found to be critical in achieving sustainable impacts, the findings were based on linear perspectives and ignored the prevailing structural and contextual dynamics. Hence, the proposition that structural and contextual factors mediate and moderate the sustainability of entrepreneurial development projects, respectively.