Re-thinking informal entrepreneurship: Commercial or social entrepreneurs?

Williams, Colin C.; Nadin, Sara

doi:10.1504/ijsei.2012.047632

Cited by 15 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…For example, although the literature on informal entrepreneurship has begun to point out how many entrepreneurs combine formal and informal work in various combinations (Llanes and Barbour, 2007;Small Business Council, 2004;Williams, 2006), besides some notable exceptions, few have questioned whether they always adopt commercial logics when engaging in informal entrepreneurship (Williams and Nadin, 2011, 2012a, 2012b. Similarly, the social entrepreneurship literature which blurs the commercial/social dichotomy has seldom examined whether social entrepreneurs sometimes operate informally.…”

Section: Towards the Lived Practices Of Enterprise Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncoupling enterprise culture from capitalism

Williams

2014

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy

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Purpose -The aim of this paper is to contribute to the literature that has sought to deconstruct this ideologically driven depiction by demonstrating how the existent enterprise culture in post-Soviet spaces not only challenges the depiction of the entrepreneur as a heroic icon of the legitimate capitalist culture but also opens up the feasibility of alternative futures beyond legitimate profit-driven capitalism. The starting point of this paper is that the enterprise culture is often viewed as inextricably related to the legitimate capitalist economy. Design/methodology/approach -To unravel the nature of the enterprise culture in lived practice, this paper reports a 2006 survey involving face-to-face interviews with 90 entrepreneurs in Moscow. Findings -Only 7 per cent of the Muscovite entrepreneurs surveyed pursue profit-driven legitimate entrepreneurship. The vast majority adopts social goals to varying degrees and operates wholly or partially in the informal economy. The outcome is to challenge the depiction of an enterprise culture and capitalism as inextricably inter-related and to open up entrepreneurship and enterprise culture in this post-Soviet space to re-signification as demonstrative of the feasibility of imagining and enacting alternative futures beyond capitalism. Research limitations/implications -These findings are tentative, as they are based on a small-scale study of just one post-socialist city. Further research is now required to analyse whether the lived practices of entrepreneurship and enterprise cultures are similarly diverse in other post-Soviet spaces as well as beyond. Originality/value -This is the first paper to evaluate critically the assumption that enterprise culture is a part of the legitimate capitalist economy in post-Soviet spaces.

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Section: Towards the Lived Practices Of Enterprise Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncoupling enterprise culture from capitalism

Williams

2014

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy

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“…Informal entrepreneurship is a burgeoning field and a substantial amount of work has focused on reducing and controlling informal operations (Mukim, 2011), setting institutional boundaries (De Castro et al, 2014;Webb et al, 2020;, processes of migration leading to informal entrepreneurship (Zhu et al, 2019), along with cultural (Canclini, 2019) and psychological dimensions , and social entrepreneurship perspectives (Williams and Nadin, 2012). Informal entrepreneurship has also been studied in terms of resources and capabilities (Khan, 2018;Khan and Quaddus, 2017), as well as the external environment, and competitiveness in relation to informal entrepreneurs (Williams and Bezeredi, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A decision model for sustainable informal entrepreneurship in cities

Khan

Chowdhury²,

Royhan³

et al. 2022

IJCCSM

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Purpose Sustainable development goals and the climate change agenda are becoming widely promoted topics of research for the 21st century. The role of cities is increasingly recognised as central to investigating these topics. Yet, the field of informal sector entrepreneurship which so many urban entrepreneurs in developing countries depend upon is seldom considered. To redress this imbalance, this study aims to develop a decision model in accordance with institutional theory (IT) and resource dependency theory (RDT) for city managers to deploy. The model identifies and prioritises optimal strategies to address the three areas of sustainability requirements environment society and economy within the study context of Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach This study used a mixed methods research design. In the qualitative part, the authors identified the three areas of sustainability requirements (i.e. environment, society and economy) and their corresponding strategies involving the informal sector that operates within the urban environment. In the quantitative part, the authors applied fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) integrated with the 0-1 non-linear optimisation technique to identify optimal strategies. Findings The findings show that strategies such as legitimate frameworks, waste management, allocation of urban public space and training programs contribute in important ways to the three areas of sustainability requirements. Practical implications The proposed decision model will assist policy-makers and city managers to prioritise sustainability requirements and implement optimal strategies to address those requirements. Originality/value Through the integration of IT and RDT, the decision model developed in this study is unique in its application to urban-based informal entrepreneurship in the context of developing countries. The effective application of the fuzzy QFD approach and the optimisation model in the context of urban-based informal entrepreneurship also offers unique contributions to the field of study.

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