Abstract This Concept of micro-entrepreneurship deriving from APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), it is said that the best method to improve women¡¦s economy is to encourage them by involving into it. Traditionally, Taiwan indigenous peoples had always earned their living by farming, foresting, fishing, and herding as primary industries, which relatively caused tribal society an inferior situation and low income. With recent years of social, industrial, and educational change in structure, the development of knowledge economic gives indigenous peoples an option to start their own enterprise, or chances to serve in all walks of life. On the other hand, our government also makes every effort to popularize to start a enterprise and provides plural entrepreneurship loans. After effective guiding and assisting, a number of entrepreneurships grow by 3000 to 5000 cases per year and have higher portions for women. In 2006, entrepreneurship for women is up to 44.9% and not far from 55.1% for men. From 2002 to 2006, Council of Indigenous People, Executive Yuan had issued 822 loan cases in total from Indigenous People Developing Fund, whiled 346¡]40%¡^ were for women. Therefore, entrepreneurships for indigenous women are growing in market. In Taiwan, about one hundred thousand small and medium-sized enterprises establish every year, but only twenty thousand exist. Low capitalization and less-than-five-people micro enterprises turn over faster. Entrepreneurship is easy, but holding achievements is hard. Council of Indigenous People, Executive Yuan had selected 14 successful indigenous women in 2006. This study, thus, focuses onindigenous women who have their own business by using In-Depth Interviewing and ATLAS.ti software. And we get the result that the key factors for indigenous women in entrepreneurship are keeping practicing and possessing great sense of mission for indigenous culture. We have demonstrated with figures of network. This study finds that when surveying their experiences and progress, responders recalled the major problems were lack of entrepreneurship capitals (mainly), lack of turnover capitals, lack of managing experiences, and lack of adaptable talents. Some would think that government is not a helper but a barrier during entrepreneurship progress. In the future, government should let it as a mirror when driving indigenous policies.

The thesis examined the phenomenon of micro-entrepreneurship, social selling and relationship management on WeChat. I used autoethnography as my research methodology, and the findings contribute to academic area on social selling, micro-entrepreneurship, social marketing, relationship management, and strategic communication. This paper also explored how WeChat users conduct their management strategies and relationship marketing in the common Chinese culture background. Findings revealed that WeChat is an ideal social selling and marketing approach for Chinese individual sellers to accomplish their business goal.

[pt] Em economias emergentes, a população de baixa renda migra ao empreendedorismo como forma de contornar obstáculos, como a falta de empregos formais, ou até mesmo pela necessidade de independência, sendo considerado, o empreendedorismo, um vetor da prosperidade e do desenvolvimento nessas economias. Destaca-se, portanto, a criação de pequenos negócios, incluindo o autoemprego. Considera-se que o capital humano, bem como habilidades individuais desses empreendedores, importantes para a sobrevivência do negócio. Contudo, a carência delas se mostra presente, juntamente com a falta de estrutura, a informalidade e a falta de capacitação, sendo um problema para o desenvolvimento desses negócios. Isto posto, programas de treinamento em gestão podem ser um fator essencial para aprimorar as habilidades desses empreendedores, contribuindo no desempenho do negócio. Dessa forma, dentro do contexto brasileiro, um grande apoiador nacional para o desenvolvimento dos pequenos negócios é o Sebrae, a exemplo do programa de treinamento TOP Empreendedor, programa ofertado a microempreendedores formalizados de comunidades de baixa renda do Rio de Janeiro. Em vista disso, este estudo buscou realizar uma avaliação do impacto do programa por meio de testes T e de regressões lineares para 55 e 46 microempreendedores em 2020 e 2021, respectivamente. Os resultados sugerem que o treinamento se mostra mais benéfico para empreendedores com menor conhecimento prévio, que aspectos ligados à motivação impactam suas práticas de negócio, mas que não há como confirmar o impacto das práticas de negócio no desempenho, ainda que se tenha detectado o aumento do desempenho entre antes e depois do treinamento. / [en] In emerging economies, low-income populations migrate to entrepreneurship as a way of overcoming obstacles, such as the lack of formal employment, or even out of the need for independence. Entrepreneurship is considered a vector of prosperity and development in these economies. The creation of small businesses, including self-employment, is therefore highlighted. It is considered that the human capital, as well as the individual skills of these entrepreneurs, are important for the survival of the business. However, the lack of these skills is evident, along with the lack of structure, informality, and lack of training, which is a problem for the development of these businesses. Thus, management training programs can be an essential factor in improving the skills of these entrepreneurs, contributing to the performance of the business. Within the Brazilian context, a major national supporter for the development of small businesses is Sebrae, for example, the TOP Entrepreneur training program, which is offered to formalized microentrepreneurs from low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro. In view of this, this study sought to evaluate the impact of the program through T-tests and linear regressions for 55 and 46 microentrepreneurs in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The results suggest that the training is more beneficial for entrepreneurs with less prior knowledge, that aspects related to motivation impact their business practices, but that it is not possible to confirm the impact of business practices on performance, although an increase in performance was detected before and after the training.

Present-day development theory and practice highlight the potential of micro-entrepreneurship for poverty reduction in least developed countries. Fostered by the seminal writings of microfinance founder Muhammad Yunus and the bottom-of-the-pyramid propagator Krishnarao Prahalad, the new approach is marked by a stress on participation and sustainability, and the new, market-based development models. With the growing popularity of the new approach there has been an increased demand for research on the efficacy and impact of innovations. What has scarcely been addressed, however, is the legitimacy of the new paradigm within its contexts of application. Since engagement and participation have been made the focal point of the new approach, my research investigates how the innovative, mostly market-based models have been received by the local populations on the ground. This doctoral dissertation is looking up-close at the rural populations of Burundi, describing and explaining their perceptions, behaviors and actions in response to the market-based development innovations: microfinance, rural entrepreneurship and community social enterprise. Do the concepts of entrepreneurship, community engagement and participation find a fertile ground among the poorest rural dwellers of sub-Saharan Africa? Can subsistence farmers be entrepreneurs? How to create social value in the context of extreme resource scarcity? It is investigating these and other questions that guided the subsequent stages of my work. I based my dissertation on extensive field research, conducted periodically over the period of four years in the remote areas of rural Burundi.In the first chapter, I question the applicability of entrepreneurship-based interventions to the socio-cultural context of rural Burundi. Basing my quantitative analysis on a unique cross-section dataset from Burundi of over 900 households, I look into the entrepreneurial livelihood strategies at the near-subsistence level: diversifying crops, processing food for sale, supplementary wage work and non-agricultural employment. I find that the farmers living closer to the subsistence level are indeed less likely to pursue innovative entrepreneurial opportunities, unable to break the poverty cycle and move beyond subsistence agriculture. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on by analyzing its drivers and inhibitors in the context of a subsistence economy. It questions the idea of alleviating rural poverty through the external promotion of entrepreneurship as it constitutes ‘a denial of the poor’s capacity for agency to bring about social change by themselves on their own terms’.Drawing on these findings, the second chapter focusses on the role of local communities as shareholders of projects. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the agrarian communities in rural Burundi accommodate the model of a community social enterprise. The project understudy, implemented by the UNICEF Burundi Innovation Lab, builds upon the provision of green energy generators to the village child protection committees in the energy-deficient rural regions of the country. The electricity-producing machines are also a new income source for the groups, transforming them into economically viable community enterprises. Since the revenue earned is to directly support the village orphans’ fund, the communities in question engage in a true post-development venture: they gradually assume the role of the development-provisioning organizations.The third chapter of this work focusses on the complex interaction between the microfinance providers and the population of its clients and potential clients: the rural poor. It draws on the existing research on positive deviance among African communities and explores the social entrepreneurial potential of the rule-breaking practices of microfinance programs’ beneficiaries. Using the storyboard methodology, I examine the strategies employed by the poor in Burundi to bypass institutional rules. My results suggest that transgressive practices and nonconformity of development beneficiaries can indeed be seen as innovative, entrepreneurial initiatives to reform the microfinance system from within, postulating a more participatory mode of MFIs’ organizational governance. The three empirical chapters provide concrete examples illustrating the contested nature of the development process. In the last, theoretical, chapter, I examine how the different conceptualizations of social entrepreneurship have been shaped by the disparate socio-political realities in the North and in the South. I then analyze how the process of constructing academic representation has been influenced by the prevalent public discourses.Since doubling or tripling of the external development finance has not sufficed to bring about systemic change, the assumption that technology, managerial efficacy and the leveraging power of financial markets could be applied to solving the problem of persisting global poverty has a lot of appeal. At the same time, my findings point to the fact that if the ultimate objective of development is broadly defined value creation, the definition of what constitutes value should be negotiated among all the stakeholders. The dissertation makes an important contribution to the understanding of participation, entrepreneurship and community engagement in the context of development studies.I strongly believe that development organizations must have a quality understanding of the social and cultural characteristics of the need or problem they are targeting in order to make productive decisions about the application and scaling of interventions. I very much hope that my work can provide some guidance for their work on the ground. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Le but de cette thèse est de déterminer si les objectifs que se fixent les institutions demicrofinance (IMF) en France en matière de lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion, et en matièrede soutien au micro-entrepreneuriat, se traduisent dans les faits. Il s’agit plus précisémentd’apprécier la performance sociale des IMF tant en termes de portée sociale qu’en termesd’impact. Nous montrons dans une première partie que le microcrédit extra-bancaire en France aclairement un impact social car octroyé principalement aux personnes les plus pauvres et à cellesles plus en risque d’exclusion. Sa capacité à servir durablement le plus grand nombre estcependant remise en cause compte tenu du fait qu’aucune institution étudiée ne répond à lacontrainte de pérennité qu’est l’autosuffisance financière. Le maintien des subventions dans cecontexte s’avère donc indispensable. Nous trouvons en outre une adaptation de l’offre auxbesoins de la clientèle et mettons en évidence l’existence d’une stratégie dichotomique dans lesecteur (sociale vs économique), ce qui entraine un traitement différencié de la clientèle suivantl’objectif poursuivi par l’IMF. Dans une seconde partie, nous trouvons que dans un contextemarqué par la persistance de la crise économique, le microcrédit démontre une certaine capacité àsoutenir la création d’entreprises et d’emplois de qualité. Cette capacité dépend cependant dutype de microcrédit dont il s’agit (entrepreneurial vs insertion sociale). L’accompagnement serévèle fort utile dans l’ensemble, mais nous montrons des différences de perception parmi lesbénéficiaires. Le microcrédit se révèle en outre avoir un fort impact psychologique mais sesretombées économiques sont de faible ampleur. Nous trouvons en effet une amélioration globalede la situation professionnelle des bénéficiaires, mais soulignons la précarité des emplois occupéset la faiblesse des revenus. Ceci suggère un contraste entre perception et réalité économique / This thesis aims at determining whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) in France succeed inovercoming poverty and exclusion and in supporting entrepreneurship. More precisely, we assessthe social performance of the MFIs both in terms of outreach and impact. We show in a firstsection that non-bank MFIs in France reach the poor and individuals at high-risk of exclusion,and their offer is adapted to their clientele. However, because none of these IMFs are viable,their capacity to durably serve the largest number is questioned. This underlines the need formaintaining subsidies. We also highlight the existence of two types of strategy within the sector(social vs economic), which leads to a differentiated treatment of customers according to theobjective pursued by the MFI. In a second section we show that in a time of persistent economiccrisis, microcredit demonstrates some ability to support business and job creation. However, thisability depends on the type of microcredit in question (micro-enterprises lenders vs socialinclusion lenders). Business support shows itself very useful on the whole, but we bring to theforeground differences in perception among the beneficiaries. Besides, microcredit proves tohave a strong psychological impact even when economic gains are low. There is an overallimprovement in the working position of beneficiaries, although gains are limited by theprecariousness of jobs and relative low incomes. This suggests a contrast between perception andeconomic reality.

MCom / Department of Business Management / Africans are, by nature, collectivist people. This is especially true for countries such as South Africa, where people live their lives as a community – they celebrate life’s achievements together and mourn life’s tragic moments together. Africans support each other as one big family, at least theoretically, however, in the recent past, effects of urbanisation and globalisation have reshaped, reorganised, and reoriented African families. The once communal and collectivist views towards life (that the community or family comes first before the individual) are fast being replaced by individualistic perspectives towards life. The nuclear family is rapidly taking centre stage. In the process, individual needs are crowding out those of the family and community. Communal needs are now being viewed as a burden. To describe this ‘new’ burden, modern society has coined a term to express its mixed emotions towards its responsibility towards the extended family; they call it “black tax”. As a form of tax, supporting one’s extended family results in greater good, at least in the long-run, however, in the short-run, high levels of indebtedness and growing personal needs make one’s obligation to the family almost seems morally wrong, insensitive, and illegal, hence, the word “black,” as in the black market – an informal underground market that is often immoral and illegal. By extension, contemporary South Africans seem to be saying that whilst looking after one’s extended family in the 21st century is immoral, insensitive, unreasonable, and expensive, we still will try our best to be play our part, whenever and wherever we can. Clearly, black tax affects the lives of individuals, particularly those being black taxed. Despite this growing phenomenon, the literature has largely ignored the effect of black tax on the life of ordinary people. The few available studies focus mostly on black tax within the middle class, employed, working population. Very little studies have looked at the effect of black tax on entrepreneurs, as they too are not immune to black tax. It was, therefore, opportune for this dissertation to address this gap within the literature. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of black tax on micro-entrepreneurs, as well as to identify coping strategies employed by the latter to balance business needs and communal expectations. A qualitative case study was conducted in which 12 entrepreneurs from the Thulamela Local Municipality area participated. Data were collected using in-depth interviews. After transcription, the interviews were analysed by means of thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti. Results indicate a high prevalence of various forms of black tax, challenges as well as well-structured coping strategies, as employed by the entrepreneurs. The value of this dissertation is that it is among the first in contributing towards understanding the impact of black tax on micro-entrepreneurship within the South African context. Several theoretical and practical implications have been suggested. / NRF