Gender, Culture and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

Abstract

This study looked into how different cultural factors affect gender involvement in entrepreneurship in a multi-ethnic country, Kenya. A majority of previous similar studies have been done in Western, developed societies where national cultures have evolved and have dominated the literature on the 'cultural perspective' on gender and entrepreneurship. In the majority of sub-Saharan countries, ethnic cultures play a more dominant role in moulding the values and perceptions of its citizens than national cultures. The differential rate of gender involvement was compared among four Kenyan ethnic groups namely Luo, Kikuyu, Kalenjin and Kamba. A significant outcome of the study, is that there were neither significant gender differences on community perception of entrepreneurship nor the extent on the presence (or absence) of personality traits associated with entrepreneurship. From the study, it appears that for the communities studied, ethnic cultural influences play a larger role in women's propensities towards entrepreneurship and their view of their community perception towards the same, than does gender. This is pronounced even when men and women from the same communities are compared along the same dimensions.

Generic Strategies and Firm Performance: An Investigation of Informal Sector Micro-Enterprises in Kenya

“…It is also relatively insensitive to departures in normality and homogeneity of variances. A similar approach was used by Dess and Davis (1984) and Mungai and Ogot (2012).…”

Cultural Value Dimensions and Ethnicity within Kenya

“…However, a review of the extant literature reveals a gap in studies examining cultural differences from an ethnic perspective using Hofstede et al's (2008) scale. This is in spite of the existence of numerous societies with multi-ethnic populations globally and the fact that ethnicity remains a paradigm by which individuals in some societies primarily identify themselves with (Mungai & Ogot, 2012). This study aims to contribute towards filling this gap.…”

“…Research on cultural differences between societies continues to interest management scholars due to its implications on various facets of organizational management, such as leadership styles (House, 2014;Schein, 2010), entrepreneurship models (Mungai & Ogot, 2012), and marketing approaches (Yoo, Donthu, & Lenartowicz, 2011). Cultural research has been explored through examination of values at one of two levels: The individual-level (Rokeach, 1936 as reported in Schwartz, 1994) and the societal-level (Hofstede, 1980;House et al, 2004), while other researchers have undertaken cultural research by examining attitudes practices and tastes of participants (Dheer, Lenartowicz, Peterson, & Petrescu, 2015).…”

Culture and Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy in Kenya

“…Still, other researchers have alluded to the existence of subcultures within societies or organizations and conceptualized culture based on the racial (Gibson, 2008) or ethnic roots of participants (Mungai & Ogot, 2012). Consequently, various tools for measuring this construct have been developed with Hofstede's (1984) scale being one of the most widely used.…”

“…McGee et al (2009) called for examination of the relationship between these two constructs while Mungai & Ogot (2012) pointed to the scarcity of entrepreneurial studies from an African context in the extant literature, noting that studies that had been undertaken from a Western paradigm could not be generalized to Africa because of differences in the stages of cultural evolution. Ethnicity in African countries remains the cultural perspective by which members identify themselves; in contrast, Western sub-cultures have evolved to reflect the national cultures of the specific countries (Mungai & Ogot, 2012).…”