Entrepreneurs are found globally in all industries. In the tourism industry, entrepreneurs feature strongly in the events sector. The purpose of this study is to determine the entrepreneurs' role at festivals and in this case a national arts festival. The literature revealed that this type of study has not previously been conducted in South Africa. The literature review indicates that arts festivals as income generating events can be seen as an entrepreneurial opportunity to maximise economic activity. Entrepreneurs play a vital role in the success of an event such as arts festival. Entrepreneurs initiate transformation and serve as catalysts of innovation. Entrepreneurs are important role players since they attract and retain visitors and contribute to forming cultural identity of the arts festival. In order to achieve the objective, a survey of all small businesses that were trading at one of South Africa's largest arts festivals, namely the Aardklop National Arts Festival held annually in the city of Potchefstroom, was conducted. Two hundred and twenty two useable questionnaires were captured on Excel and the data analysis included a factor analysis and descriptive results. The questionnaire consisted of three sections: section A - demographical information - 7 questions; section B - information on the business - 8 questions; and section C - festival information - 6 questions. The main results reveal that the most important characteristics contributing to entrepreneurship are: a need for achievement, being successful, having the necessary organising skills, self-edification, being explorative, and commitment. The entrepreneurs indicated that they perceive their role at the arts festival to deliver unique, quality products and services and to market their businesses. The findings from this study contributes to the limited academic research on entrepreneurs at arts festivals and will be beneficial for arts festival organising committees to determine future strategies on including entrepreneurs at arts festivals. / Thesis (M.Com. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

It is vital that a culture of entrepreneurship is developed in order to unleash the economic potential of all people in South Africa. However, because of the South African woman’s inherited gender role and historical imbalances, women entrepreneurs are faced with unique challenges and barriers when attempting to establish and grow their own businesses. Thus, this study investigated the unique challenges and barriers faced by women when conducting entrepreneurial activities. The literature study provided background information on entrepreneurship in general as well as information on the importance of entrepreneurship to the economy and constraints of entrepreneurship. The woman entrepreneur was explored in terms of her characteristics, motivation to become an entrepreneur and the unique challenges she had to face. The empirical study consisted of a questionnaire developed by the North– West University, specifically the Potchefstroom Business School situated on the Potchefstroom Campus. A total of 120 questionnaires were distributed and 87 were fully completed and collected, which resulted in a response rate of 72.5%. The data collected was statistically analysed using Statistica 10 (Statsoft, 2011). The data from questionnaires was coded and investigated and then transformed to useful outputs such as frequency tables. The frequency tables were used to draw conclusions and to make recommendations regarding the development of women entrepreneurs in South Africa. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Entrepreneurs are found globally in all industries. In the tourism industry, entrepreneurs feature strongly in the events sector. The purpose of this study is to determine the entrepreneurs' role at festivals and in this case a national arts festival. The literature revealed that this type of study has not previously been conducted in South Africa. The literature review indicates that arts festivals as income generating events can be seen as an entrepreneurial opportunity to maximise economic activity. Entrepreneurs play a vital role in the success of an event such as arts festival. Entrepreneurs initiate transformation and serve as catalysts of innovation. Entrepreneurs are important role players since they attract and retain visitors and contribute to forming cultural identity of the arts festival. In order to achieve the objective, a survey of all small businesses that were trading at one of South Africa's largest arts festivals, namely the Aardklop National Arts Festival held annually in the city of Potchefstroom, was conducted. Two hundred and twenty two useable questionnaires were captured on Excel and the data analysis included a factor analysis and descriptive results. The questionnaire consisted of three sections: section A - demographical information - 7 questions; section B - information on the business - 8 questions; and section C - festival information - 6 questions. The main results reveal that the most important characteristics contributing to entrepreneurship are: a need for achievement, being successful, having the necessary organising skills, self-edification, being explorative, and commitment. The entrepreneurs indicated that they perceive their role at the arts festival to deliver unique, quality products and services and to market their businesses. The findings from this study contributes to the limited academic research on entrepreneurs at arts festivals and will be beneficial for arts festival organising committees to determine future strategies on including entrepreneurs at arts festivals. / Thesis (M.Com. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

It is vital that a culture of entrepreneurship is developed in order to unleash the economic potential of all people in South Africa. However, because of the South African woman’s inherited gender role and historical imbalances, women entrepreneurs are faced with unique challenges and barriers when attempting to establish and grow their own businesses. Thus, this study investigated the unique challenges and barriers faced by women when conducting entrepreneurial activities. The literature study provided background information on entrepreneurship in general as well as information on the importance of entrepreneurship to the economy and constraints of entrepreneurship. The woman entrepreneur was explored in terms of her characteristics, motivation to become an entrepreneur and the unique challenges she had to face. The empirical study consisted of a questionnaire developed by the North– West University, specifically the Potchefstroom Business School situated on the Potchefstroom Campus. A total of 120 questionnaires were distributed and 87 were fully completed and collected, which resulted in a response rate of 72.5%. The data collected was statistically analysed using Statistica 10 (Statsoft, 2011). The data from questionnaires was coded and investigated and then transformed to useful outputs such as frequency tables. The frequency tables were used to draw conclusions and to make recommendations regarding the development of women entrepreneurs in South Africa. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Gender equality and women empowerment are two of the most up-to-date concerns on the international arena today. Several methods are being adopted with the aim to allow women’s equal social, economic and political participation. Entrepreneurship has been highlighted as a useful tool to foster women’s empowerment and hence the promotion of entrepreneurship has become a prominent approach in modern development efforts.   In Uganda, women constitute the majority of the informal labour force and are widely engaged in micro-business activities. Thus, this ethnographically inspired research aimed to assess if entrepreneurship can contribute to increased social power among female entrepreneurs in urban and suburban Kampala, Uganda. To do this, John Friedmann’s (Dis)empowerment model has been used as the main frame of interpretation. To fit into the context of women, it has been complemented with a gender analysis in order to identify the structural inequalities that may constrain the empowering impact of entrepreneurship.   This research was carried out as a field study in Kampala City and in three Kampala suburbs: Kyaliwajjala, Kireka and Kinawataka. It was financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and was conducted during nine weeks in September-November 2014. In total, 45 interviews were carried out with local business women as well as with local representatives and stakeholders in women entrepreneurship and women empowerment.   The conclusions drawn from this study is that entrepreneurship has contributed to increased social power among the women participating in this research, but that traditional gender norms and structures can constrain the empowering process. Greater economic responsibilities have not eased women’s obligations in the domestic sphere and thus created a double burden.

Cette thèse documente l'émergence et la structuration du champ des musiques actuelles en France depuis les années 1970, à travers une étude de cas de huit associations qui exploitent aujourd'hui un lieu dédié à la pratique de ces musiques. En mobilisant la théorie néo-institutionnaliste et le concept d'entrepreneur institutionnel, nous montrons la manière dont les fondateurs et dirigeants de ces associations ont activement participé à la constitution de ce nouveau champ organisationnel. Nous proposons une modélisation en trois étapes de ce processus, ainsi qu'un éclairage sur les conditions ayant favorisé l'action des entrepreneurs. La thèse souligne l'influence mutuelle entre acteurs associatifs et pouvoirs publics et apporte un regard original sur la dimension institutionnelle des associations loi 1901.

My dissertation focuses on foreign entrepreneurs—individuals who establish firms outside of their native countries. Despite the prevalence of foreign entrepreneurs, their strategic choices have received little attention in the research literature. For example, when starting a firm, an entrepreneur must decide whether to manage the business personally or hire a local manager, yet we know little about how this choice affects firm performance. To examine this issue, in the first study I use a novel dataset of foreign entrepreneurial firms in Russia and a visa policy change as an instrument for the owner-manager choice. Contrary to the expectation that foreign entrepreneurs would underperform local managers due to the liability of foreignness, I find that foreign owner-managers can benefit their firms: Exogenous assignment of a local manager in place of a foreign owner-manager reduces profits. Foreign owner-managers benefit their firms by hiring cheap native-country labor as well as through reduced agency costs. The second study examines how private benefits of occupying a managerial position affect an entrepreneur’s choice between owner-management and hiring an agent. I show that foreign entrepreneurs with a strong desire to reside in a host country are more likely to become owner-managers. These results are consistent with the idea that entrepreneurs expecting to gain private benefits from managing their firms are more likely to become owner-managers. Moreover, I demonstrate that entrepreneurs are willing to substitute the non-pecuniary benefits associated with relocation for firm profit. These findings add to a growing literature exploring the role of personal preferences in entrepreneurs’ strategic decisions, such as location choice and ownership structure. The third study examines the impact of media coverage on the location choices of foreign firms. Publicly available media information has largely been ignored by the location literature, perhaps because its impact on location choice is expected to be trivial. This study challenges this assumption: Using a new instrument for media coverage (a major anniversary of a city’s establishment date), I show that extensive foreign media coverage of a city increases the number of foreign entrants. Moreover, this effect is strongest for socially and geographically distant firms and entrepreneurs.

This dissertation focuses on how entrepreneurs learn to acquire entrepreneurial knowledge and competence, which ultimately can open doors to business success. Contemporary critics suggest that programs designed to develop general competence are not sufficiently relevant to these entrepreneurs. On the other hand, scholars and practitioners have recently noticed that external relations in formal learning networks can be a notable opportunity for learning in entrepreneurs. The aim of this dissertation is to elaborate on the processes and outcomes of government supported learning networks among entrepreneurs who work in small and medium sized enterprises. It draws on reports of four separate but interrelated research studies that author conducted. The research described in the dissertation is based on multiple theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and data sources. To gain a full understanding of the experiences of the different network participants, as well as the interactive processes within the learning network, data were collected from multiple sources: interviews, participant observation, and videotaping. The conclusions stated in appended paper 1 and 2 are primarily based on the interviews, but they are also supported by the observations and written material. Paper three focuses on the videos in combination with the interviews. Finally, to complement the qualitative research with insights regarding the relationships among trust, learning, and self-efficacy, the last paper reports the results of a quantitative survey study. The dissertation makes several major contributions to knowledge. First and foremost, by combining entrepreneurship theory and learning theory, it describes the outcomes that can emerge from formal learning networks and shows how these outcomes can have entrepreneurial consequences. Second, it suggests how the learning situation can be characterized and describes an appropriate learning environment for entrepreneurs from small and medium sized enterprises. The research also contributes to theory on how trust in formal learning networks is built and how this trust contributes to entrepreneurial learning. At the same time, it shows that the potential benefits derived from trust cannot be realized without incorporating the entrepreneur’s level of self-efficacy in the analysis. The dissertation concludes by offering suggestions for exploiting learning and business opportunities through the construction and utilization of learning networks.

This is a narrative study in which five entrepreneurs in the experience-based tourist industry have told their life-stories in connection with their establishing and running their own enterprises.   Over the last decades the number of adventure-based companies has markedly increased in tourist industry, but the knowledge gained through the research on the persons who establish these companies is scant.  Through focusing on the constructions of  identity of the entrepreneurs, this study gives nuanced pictures of the chain of events that had lead an individual to establish one`s own company.  In addition, these pictures offer deeper understanding of how these individuals perceive themselves as the founder and manager of an experience-based company. Over the last decades research in entrepreneurship has criticized the imbalanced focus on the entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and it's use as an explanation of their entrepreneurial activities. In the same critical vein I question whether motivational studies are able to explain why certain individuals choose to establish their own business. Indeed, these five stories show that an entrepreneur is not something one is but something one becomes. Although the concept of an experiential economy appeared at the end of the 1990s, the production of experiences has a long tradition in the tourist industry. Norwegian tourism has faced an uphill struggle for several decades, which worries both the authorities and the industry itself.  In recent decades the focus has been directed more and more on the dimension of experience. One hopes that the creation of new and attractive adventures will help to reverse the negative trend in the industry.  Effecting this reversal places a heavy responsibility on the entrepreneurs since they are to be the driving force in this process. Tourist adventures have been one of several core themes within the field of research in tourism for decades, but this focus has mainly been on the perspective of the consumer. In contrast, this study concentrates on the producers, a group about whom we know much less. The five entrepreneurs who tell their story in this study give detailed descriptions of their life until the establishment of their businesses, and we see that each of them describes a number of causal chains that are interwoven and together create a meaningful picture of their choice. Through focusing on their reflexive identity-constructions and viewing these in light of the concrete situations they were in, before they established their enterprises, we gain a deeper understanding of this choice. Through the process of categorizing these reflexive identity-constructions, three  distinct ontological positions emerge, that is, different ways in understanding reality. The study shows that there is a connection between these ontological positions and the ways that the entrepreneurs run their businesses, as well as their understanding of how they create and produce adventures for their guests.

In the discussions today about Africa’s way out of poverty the main focus has been on SME’s, and there potential to increase the economy. In my thesis I research a network of small scale producers in Zanzibar called UWAZI. The thesis compares the theory of Robertson and Lussier, with UWAZI’s situation in Zanzibar. The two most important factors for success are identified as networks and financing which this thesis is focusing on. The conclusion is that UWAZI needs a better financing programme in order to be successful in the future and if this is implemented there is no reason for them to fail. They have a strong network and cooperation and a good mentor programme linked to the business. This thesis proves that it is possible for a women network to reach a successful enterprise in Africa.