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Social entrepreneurship has been a topic of academic enquiry for nearly two decades. However, scholarly research has been challenging. It was observed that most of the surveyed empirical studies have been conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States. The concept has to some extent received attention in developing countries, such as Bangladesh and Venezuela. However, the contextual and empirical understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking in Africa, and South Africa is no exception. The phenomenon of social entrepreneurship has a long history. Since inception, no general consensus has been reached regarding its definition. For the purposes of this study social entrepreneurship is defined as the process through which individuals operate in the commercial sector with the aim of providing products and services that benefit the poor in society. From the onset, social entrepreneurship has consistently been commended as an effective alternative business process of providing much needed social goods and services to society. The activities of social entrepreneurs are significantly important in situations where government facilities have failed or are unable to deliver much needed resources and services such as employment, health care and education. The primary objective of this study was to identify social entrepreneurship intentions among university students in Gauteng province. A quantitative research approach was followed to collect data. A questionnaire was administered among undergraduate and post-graduate students from selected universities in Gauteng. Factor analysis was used to identify factors that influence social entrepreneurship intentions. Six factors which influence social entrepreneurship intentions were identified namely, social entrepreneurial intentions, attitude towards entrepreneurship, proactive personality, attitude towards entrepreneurship education/university environment, perceived behavioural control and risk taking propensity. Furthermore, correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship amongst social entrepreneurship intentions factors. The results were significant which indicated that there was a positive linear inter-factor association. Additionally, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether significant differences exist with regards to the influence of gender, age and year of study on social entrepreneurship intentions factors. Significant differences were found with regard to age and gender on social entrepreneurship intentions. Based on the findings it is evident that social entrepreneurial intentions, attitude towards entrepreneurship, proactive personality, attitude towards entrepreneurship education/university environment, perceived behavioural control and risk taking propensity are factors that influence social entrepreneurship intentions among university students in Gauteng. Given the need to develop social entrepreneurship research in South Africa, it is recommended that future research further explore and identify social entrepreneurship intentions factors using a larger sample size, by including all provinces in South Africa. Future research could also focus on exploring the relationship between social entrepreneurship intentions, and other variables such as personality traits, culture and other demographic variables. / MCom (Entrepreneurship)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015.

Social entrepreneurship has been a topic of academic enquiry for nearly two decades. However, scholarly research has been challenging. It was observed that most of the surveyed empirical studies have been conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States. The concept has to some extent received attention in developing countries, such as Bangladesh and Venezuela. However, the contextual and empirical understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking in Africa, and South Africa is no exception. The phenomenon of social entrepreneurship has a long history. Since inception, no general consensus has been reached regarding its definition. For the purposes of this study social entrepreneurship is defined as the process through which individuals operate in the commercial sector with the aim of providing products and services that benefit the poor in society. From the onset, social entrepreneurship has consistently been commended as an effective alternative business process of providing much needed social goods and services to society. The activities of social entrepreneurs are significantly important in situations where government facilities have failed or are unable to deliver much needed resources and services such as employment, health care and education. The primary objective of this study was to identify social entrepreneurship intentions among university students in Gauteng province. A quantitative research approach was followed to collect data. A questionnaire was administered among undergraduate and post-graduate students from selected universities in Gauteng. Factor analysis was used to identify factors that influence social entrepreneurship intentions. Six factors which influence social entrepreneurship intentions were identified namely, social entrepreneurial intentions, attitude towards entrepreneurship, proactive personality, attitude towards entrepreneurship education/university environment, perceived behavioural control and risk taking propensity. Furthermore, correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship amongst social entrepreneurship intentions factors. The results were significant which indicated that there was a positive linear inter-factor association. Additionally, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether significant differences exist with regards to the influence of gender, age and year of study on social entrepreneurship intentions factors. Significant differences were found with regard to age and gender on social entrepreneurship intentions. Based on the findings it is evident that social entrepreneurial intentions, attitude towards entrepreneurship, proactive personality, attitude towards entrepreneurship education/university environment, perceived behavioural control and risk taking propensity are factors that influence social entrepreneurship intentions among university students in Gauteng. Given the need to develop social entrepreneurship research in South Africa, it is recommended that future research further explore and identify social entrepreneurship intentions factors using a larger sample size, by including all provinces in South Africa. Future research could also focus on exploring the relationship between social entrepreneurship intentions, and other variables such as personality traits, culture and other demographic variables. / MCom (Entrepreneurship)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015.

Transnational entrepreneurship (TE) has been in the spotlight as an emerging field during the last decade. Previously being viewed from international entrepreneurship (IE) and ethnic entrepreneurship (EE) perspectives, TE has recently demarcating its own territory. However, the exact boundary in which TE differs from IE and EE is yet to be studied. This research is aiming to explore the interface of TE, IE, and EE through the entrepreneurs’ sets of resources—economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital. By studying the case of ten immigrant entrepreneurs in Jönköping context, we found four key features that distinguish TE with the rest: access to the sets of resources, economic and social development, ownership structure, and business operations.

Agriculture, which includes all economic activities from the provision of farming inputs, farming and value adding, remains an important sector in the South African economy. In Limpopo Province, most of the agricultural land is embedded within the rural areas and agriculture is practiced at a small scale. Though government development programmes are put in place to promote entrepreneurship, most agribusinesses are still encountering challenges that stagnates entrepreneurial activities. The aim of the research study was to develop an entrepreneurial framework to enhance the agricultural sector within the Limpopo Province. The study was conducted in Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality (GSDM), which is an identified nodal point by government. In order to encourage more farmers or people to start their own agribusinesses this study was conducted in five municipalities of GSDM: Elias Motsoaledi, Fetakgomo, Makhuduthamaga, Marble Hall and Tubatse. A stratified random sampling was used and 54 farmer entrepreneurs participated in the survey. Farmers that are supported by the provincial department of agriculture through development programmes and those that are actively participating in agricultural activities within the identified municipalities took part in the study. Entrepreneurial levels amongst the farmers were assessed as well as the problems that they believe hinder entrepreneurial spirit within the district. The survey findings revealed that most farmer entrepreneurs are in the age group of 40 to 59, have mostly four to five children and have completed Grade 12. The majority of the agribusinesses operate under a mixed farming system comprising both livestock and crop production. Most have been in business for more than five years. Motivation into self employment include the need for independence, need for challenge, existing opportunities, need high job security, insufficient family income, role models and difficulty in finding jobs. Impediments to entrepreneurship have been indicated as follows: Lack of education and training, limited competency in managerial expertise, inadequate entrepreneurial services, inaccessible and distant markets, lack of infrastructure, financing, lack of business network, and limited access to information. Since this study aimed to develop an entrepreneurial framework to encourage agricultural entrepreneurship, the following recommendations were made based on the findings of the survey: • Enhance the environment for entrepreneurship by creating the right culture and conditions for entrepreneurship. • Create the right agricultural entrepreneurial policy. • Invest in a high quality, integrated system of support services. • Foster entrepreneurship education at all levels to ensure capacity building for diverse enterprises. • Strengthen business to business networking opportunities. • Monitor and evaluate entrepreneurship support interventions. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Agriculture, which includes all economic activities from the provision of farming inputs, farming and value adding, remains an important sector in the South African economy. In Limpopo Province, most of the agricultural land is embedded within the rural areas and agriculture is practiced at a small scale. Though government development programmes are put in place to promote entrepreneurship, most agribusinesses are still encountering challenges that stagnates entrepreneurial activities. The aim of the research study was to develop an entrepreneurial framework to enhance the agricultural sector within the Limpopo Province. The study was conducted in Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality (GSDM), which is an identified nodal point by government. In order to encourage more farmers or people to start their own agribusinesses this study was conducted in five municipalities of GSDM: Elias Motsoaledi, Fetakgomo, Makhuduthamaga, Marble Hall and Tubatse. A stratified random sampling was used and 54 farmer entrepreneurs participated in the survey. Farmers that are supported by the provincial department of agriculture through development programmes and those that are actively participating in agricultural activities within the identified municipalities took part in the study. Entrepreneurial levels amongst the farmers were assessed as well as the problems that they believe hinder entrepreneurial spirit within the district. The survey findings revealed that most farmer entrepreneurs are in the age group of 40 to 59, have mostly four to five children and have completed Grade 12. The majority of the agribusinesses operate under a mixed farming system comprising both livestock and crop production. Most have been in business for more than five years. Motivation into self employment include the need for independence, need for challenge, existing opportunities, need high job security, insufficient family income, role models and difficulty in finding jobs. Impediments to entrepreneurship have been indicated as follows: Lack of education and training, limited competency in managerial expertise, inadequate entrepreneurial services, inaccessible and distant markets, lack of infrastructure, financing, lack of business network, and limited access to information. Since this study aimed to develop an entrepreneurial framework to encourage agricultural entrepreneurship, the following recommendations were made based on the findings of the survey: • Enhance the environment for entrepreneurship by creating the right culture and conditions for entrepreneurship. • Create the right agricultural entrepreneurial policy. • Invest in a high quality, integrated system of support services. • Foster entrepreneurship education at all levels to ensure capacity building for diverse enterprises. • Strengthen business to business networking opportunities. • Monitor and evaluate entrepreneurship support interventions. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

The purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship at a historically black university in central Mississippi. The study examined five areas of students’ perceptions: entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial opportunities, entrepreneurship education, and entrepreneurship and technology, and demographic characteristics (i.e., age, sex, academic unit, work status, first generation to attend college, and first in immediate family to attend college). The research design for this study was cross-sectional and descriptive. A 50-item survey was used to collect the data. The research used descriptive statistics, frequencies, and percentages to describe the data. An independent t-test and the ANOVA were used to address the five research questions. When significant statistical differences were reported, a multiple comparison post hoc test (Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference test [HSD]) was computed to determine where the differences occurred between groups. All data analyses were performed at a .05 significance level. The population for this study was 425 students enrolled in classes in the College of Business and School of Engineering. A total of 351 student surveys were analyzed and used in the study. Findings in this study indicated that age and work status impact how students’ perceive entrepreneurship. Also, students’ academic unit impacts how they perceive an entrepreneur. Additionally, students’ generation first to attend college plays a role in their perceptions of entrepreneurial opportunities. Further findings revealed that students from different academic units have similar perceptions of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship and technology. Also, students’ work status plays a role in their perceptions of entrepreneurship education. Based on the findings in this study, it was recommended that future research should be conducted to address factors contributable to students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship based on age and work status. Further research should also address faculty perceptions of entrepreneurship and the educational process. Research should be undertaken to replicate this study in other academic units at the university.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research focused on how entrepreneurs (1) think; (2) see business opportunities; (3) convert an idea into a successful business; (4) observe and tap into consumer behaviour; and (5) how they use the information that they have gathered to their own best advantage. Various researchers and authors attempted (and will attempt) to define an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial traits, opportunity recognition and consumer behaviour. Literature focusses on each individual aspect of an entrepreneur, but no comprehensive literature is available on how entrepreneurs’ minds work ‘prowling’ for opportunities, implementing the opportunity they saw into practice and how they deal with failure. The researcher interviewed six entrepreneurs from his community in the North Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. A questionnaire of 27 specific questions was compiled to direct the discussions, but the candidates were given freedom to relay their stories. The questions were designed not only to cover the 5 issues mentioned in paragraph 1, but also to cover softer issues such as: how they handle failure and difficult situations; why they have beaten the statistics in being a successful entrepreneur and who and what their supporting structures are. All the interviews were recorded, then transcribed for analysis and coding. Once all the data was ‘given a label’, the data was grouped by using axial coding that resulted in the data being grouped into themes. The researcher then looked for core themes emanating from the answers given by the participants. Financial success is usually driven by commercial values, where the primary goal is to achieve the maximum profit by outwitting and outperforming the competition. On the other hand, the entrepreneurial spirit is driven by other values and entrepreneurs are at times totally oblivious of the competition in the market. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to tenaciously listen to themselves with an unflinching trust that success will follow the implementation of their ideas. This research found that the entrepreneurial spirit could not be bottled, labelled, or sold. The entrepreneurial spirit is a natural phenomenon that does not suit everyone. Entrepreneurs have a propensity towards risk-taking, but they take calculated risks. They see risk as a calculated even and not a gamble. The research further found that ‘to see opportunities you have to be in the game’. Opportunities seldom come by sitting on the side-line. A key word that was uncovered was ‘pivoting’ – one idea leads to the next and the new idea and opportunity ‘pivots’ further, causing an idea chain reaction into other business opportunities and diversification. The research finally uncovered that entrepreneurs rely heavily on their support structure, they can see the ‘wood for the trees’ when it comes to failure (not making it a personal failure) and they are quasi-philanthropists, investing in their communities and other emerging companies.

This dissertation analyzes problems related to barriers to innovation. In the first chapter, “Delegation and Learning”, I study an agency problem which is common in many contexts involving financing of innovation. Consider the example of an entrepreneur, who has an idea but not the money to implement it, and an investor, who has the money but not the idea. In such a case, how should a financial contract between the investor and the entrepreneur look like? How much money should the investor provide the entrepreneur? How should the surplus be divided between them in case the idea turns out to be profitable? There are certain common elements in situations such as these. First, there is an element of learning. This is because initially it is unknown if the idea is profitable or not and hence the idea has to be tried out in the market and both the investor and entrepreneur learn about the profitability of the idea from observing market outcomes. Second, there is an element of delegation in the above situation. This is because decision rights regarding where and when should the idea be tried out is typically in the hands of the entrepreneur and he knows his idea better than the investor. Finally, the preferences of the investor and the entrepreneur might not be aligned. For instance, the investor may receive private benefits, monetary or reputational, from launching products even when these are not profitable. In such a case, how should a contract that incentivizes the entrepreneur to act in the investor’s interest look like? To study these issues, I develop a model in which a principal contracts with an agent whose ability is uncertain. Ability is learnt from the agent’s performance in projects that the principal finances over time. Success however also depends on the quality of the project at hand, and quality is privately observed by the agent who is biased towards implementation. I characterize the optimal sequence of rewards in a relationship that tolerates an endogenously determined finite number of failures and incentivizes the agent to implement only good projects by specifying rewards for success as a function of past failures. The fact that success becomes less likely over time suggests that rewards for success should increase with past failures. However, this also means that the agent can earn a rent from belief manipulation by deviating and implementing a bad project which is sure to fail. I show that this belief-manipulation rent decreases with past failures and implies that optimal rewards are front-loaded. The optimal contract resembles the arrangements used in venture capital, where entrepreneurs must give up equity share in exchange for further funding following failure. In the second chapter, “Informal Risk Sharing and Index Insurance: Theory with Experimental Evidence”, written with Francis Annan, we study when does informal risk sharing act as barrier or support to the take-up of an innovative index-based weather insurance? We evaluate this substitutability or complementarity interaction by considering the case of an individual who endogenously chooses to join a group and make decisions about index insurance. The presence of an individual in a risk sharing arrangement reduces his risk aversion, termed “Effective Risk Aversion” — a sufficient statistic for index decision making. Our analysis establishes that such reduction in risk aversion can lead to either reduced or increased take up of index insurance. These results provide alternative explanations for two empirical puzzles: unexpectedly low take-up for index insurance and demand being particularly low for the most risk averse. Experimental evidence based on data from a panel of field trials in India, lends support for several testable hypotheses that emerge from our baseline analysis. In the third chapter, “Investment Timing, Moral Hazard and Overconfidence”, I study how overconfidence and financial frictions impact entrepreneurs by shaping their incentives to learn. I consider a real option model in which an entrepreneur learns about the quality of project he has, prior to implementation. Success depends on the quality of the project as well as the unknown ability of the entrepreneur. The possibility of the entrepreneur diverting investor funds to his private uses, creates a moral hazard problem which leads to delayed investment and over-experimentation. An entrepreneur who is overconfident regarding his ability, under-experiments and over invests compared to an entrepreneur who has accurate beliefs regarding his ability. Such overconfidence on behalf of the entrepreneur creates inefficiencies when projects are self financed, but reduces inefficiencies due to moral hazard in case of funding by investors.

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