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This thesis reports research into elements of entrepreneurial performance with a particular focus on gender differences and their determinants. Inductive research during the initial literature review uncovered a range of factors affecting performance leading to an investigation of smallholder dairy entrepreneurs in Central Malawi. The primary research utilised a mix of both quantitative and qualitative instruments including innovative use of an adaptation of the ‘circle and stones’ proportional piling instrument. This participatory technique explored changes in the household economy following the introduction of the dairy enterprise, including projecting entrepreneurial intentions into the future. A notable feature of the research was the use of a range of context-specific performance measures developed from an outcomes model. These were both separately applied in a performance ranking exercise, and compiled into an overall performance rating (OPR) which was then compared with the initial post-interview field performance rating (FPR). The research involved extensive use of internal and external triangulation of information sources, comparing results from different instruments in the field research, and situating and comparing primary research findings with those from the academic literature and analysis of secondary data. Despite controlling for factors including industry-type, size of enterprise, provision of business and extension support, and taking into account differences in age and educational background, the research uncovered gender disparities in entrepreneurial performance. The performance disparity was greater for those females who are the de facto head of their households, and lesser for those who have the support of a resident male partner. The finding of female underperformance runs contrary to the a priori expectation of industry key informants in Malawi, and much of the academic literature. The research included exploration of risk mitigation strategies and their potential effect on entrepreneurial performance, as possible explanatory factors. Follow-on fieldwork then sought alternative explanations for the gender differentials through focus group discussions and key informant interviews, which uncovered time constraints of females as a potential factor in underperformance. Future research direction indicated includes an in-depth exploration of the intra-household dynamics of time allocation in managing enterprises.

<p> The United States government manages a wide range of programs directing federal contracts to firms on the basis of criteria other than commercial suitability. Examples include goals for the percentage of contracts awarded to small businesses, preferential treatment to minority business owners and grants to small businesses for research and development. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of such programs on economic outcomes. Economic theory implies two competing hypotheses. Directing contracts based on firm characteristics orthogonal to commercial suitability may encourage rent seeking and other counterproductive behavior. Alternatively, entrenched incumbents or historical patterns of discrimination may have left &ldquo;money on the table&rdquo; in the form of smaller, more productive firms that are excluded from competition. This analysis examines which of these theories predominates by examining firm-level outcomes of preferential contracting programs. It incorporates contracting data from the Federal Procurement Data System with performance measures in the National Establishment Time Series to generate a comprehensive data set which I then analyze through a variety of quasi-experimental methods. The results are broadly consistent across programs and model specifications, suggesting the rent-seeking hypothesis, rather than the &ldquo;money-on-the-table&rdquo; hypothesis, predominates. With few exceptions, preferential contracting programs tend to inhibit growth in the overall population of participating firms and to encourage rent seeking and strategic behavior. </p>

This thesis examines self-employment from a labour economics perspective. Thus far the self-employment literature is relatively modest, and the analysis presented here attempts to fill some of the gaps that remain. This objective is met in the following ways. First, issues hardly addressed by the economics professions are examined in detail: self-employment job satisfaction is an example of this. Second, the two datasets used are both British, whereas most existing studies use US data: this permits us to examine whether the results obtained for these US studies are generally applicable, or are the consequence of idiosyncrasies in the US labour market. Third, there is replication for the self-employed of models frequently adopted for analyses of the wage and salary sector; these replication analyses permit us to see if they are applicable to the self-employed; the analysis of the human capital earnings model is an example of this. Fourth the analyses have been undertaken in a framework more consistent with the issues identified in the literature as relevant to the self-employed. With this general framework in place, three particular issues were examined in depth. First, the employment status decision. Second, the determination of job satisfaction in self-employment. Third, the determination of earnings in self-employment. Each analysis provided a number of interesting insights; a formal compensating differences framework in the analysis of the employment status decision showed the trade-off accepted when switching between self-employment and wage and salary work, the analysis of self-employment job satisfaction showed the importance of treating job satisfaction as a measure comparing current circumstances with a benchmark, while the analysis of self-employment earnings showed the insufficiency of the human capital model for examining self-employment earnings. In these and other ways this thesis adds to the self-employment literature.

D.Phil. / My social entrepreneurship case study, and in particular my life as a “Draytonian Changemaker”, takes the form of an autoethnographic dissertation journey (Garratt, 2003). You are cordially invited to witness this journey, which will be presented by using a relatively new qualitative method. Autoethnography, a relatively new qualitative method, represents: “… a multilayered, intertextual case study that integrates private and social experience and ties autobiographical to sociological writing …” (Ellis, 1995, p. 3). I trust that you will enjoy my expedition as a social entrepreneur but, more importantly, in the words of the leading social entrepreneur of autoethnography, Prof. Carolyn Ellis (University of North Carolina, USA), urge her readers to “experience the power of autoethnography, feel its truths as well as come to know it intellectually!” (Ellis, 2004, p. xix). You will encounter the many people who influenced my life, amongst others, Prof. Willem Schurink, my promoter, who acted as my “tour guide” and “Ultra City” en route. I am an activist by nature and this characteristic naturally has also taken root in my writing (see Sparkes, 2002). Ultimately, I would like you to embrace my world: the world of the Draytonian Changemaker, of people who believe that we can change the world with our burning desire to make a difference through revolutionary social innovations. The following points are of particular importance for this rather unusual journey: • The journey also represents the cultural setting of my world – the world of Susan Steinman – the social entrepreneur, activist and workplace violence expert in the greater universe of social entrepreneurs. This relatively new concept is explored in Part I of this thesis in which the terrain of the journey is mapped by acquainting the reader with the concept of social entrepreneurship as it is understood by scholars, as well as the viewpoints of Ashoka, a fellowship of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

The effects of poverty remain continuous in the third world, with the youth being amongst the hardest hit groups in society. The minimal levels of skills among the youth, coupled with a very limited access to financial facilities undermine their abilities to exploit resources that may be available to them to enable them to start their businesses. While the youth should be a priority in the economic growth and poverty eradication targets of the third world states, small business development initiatives and entrepreneurship education become the best options to equip them with the necessary skills to start their own businesses that would create employment for themselves and their unemployed peers. This study evaluates the Start and Improve Your Business Youth Entrepreneurship training program implemented in Lesotho in 2007. It is anchors on a view that entrepreneurship education is a good strategy to equip the youth with the necessary skills to enable them to start their own businesses to create their own employment and that of their unemployed peers. It goes further to suggest that an effective entrepreneurship program is one that goes beyond classroom learning to emphasise action based learning, for a sustained small business sector and generation of sufficient employment prospects.

South Africa is blighted by high levels of unemployment and poverty. Entrepreneurship and particularly technology entrepreneurship has been seen as a possible solution to generate innovation, grow the economy and create jobs, thus reducing poverty. However, the country has struggled to commercialise its research output. This research sought to empirically test the effectiveness of the non-predictive strategy, effectuation, in improving technology commercialisation amongst South African firms. Effectuation was considered as a moderator of the EO-performance relationship amongst firms. Further, the research also tackled a research gap by exploring relationships between effectuation and established entrepreneurship and management theories such as EO and environmental hostility. Questionnaires were distributed to South African companies via email containing the web link to the survey on Qualtrics. Of the 500 emails sent, 94 companies responded with usable responses. Multiple regression analysis was used as the main statistical tool to test the hypotheses. The main findings of this study are that, for entrepreneurial high and medium technology companies, EO and environmental hostility positively predict effectuation. Further, effectuation positively moderates the relation between EO and innovative performance. The results of this study suggest entrepreneurial firms, Venture Capitalists (VCs) and government officials who wish to optimise innovative performance should revisit their emphasis on causal planning and market research.

Crowdfunding is heralded as ‘the next big thing’ in venture capital, advocating the democratisation of capital access for entrepreneurs through online mechanisms. However, current research indicates that entrepreneurs experience high failure rates in crowdfunding, similar to ‘traditional’ venture capital approaches. This stresses the need for investigations that unveil why some crowdfunding campaigns succeed and others fail. This thesis examines entrepreneurial activities associated with capital assembly through crowdfunding and comprises a portfolio of three empirical studies. These may be read independently or conjointly, the latter of which allows for a more nuanced understanding of entrepreneurial crowdfunding. The first study adopts an explorative quantitative research approach, utilising records of 421 crowdfunding campaigns published on Kickstarter, a leading reward-based online crowdfunding platform. Various crowdfunding campaign characteristics are investigated to analyse how these features drive fundraising performance and outcomes. Findings reveal that entrepreneurs can exploit particular online pitch elements to create a project narrative, which enables them to establish project legitimacy within the context of crowdfunding platform communities. The second study utilises a dataset of 81,829 crowdfunding campaigns and multivariate and probit analysis methods to examine the role of the entrepreneurs’ network size and the quality of the network relationship for capital assembly and fundraising outcome in crowdfunding. The analysis demonstrates that the quality of the network relationship, in addition to the size of the network, contributes to crowdfunding performance and outcomes. Results show that the relationship between the quality of the network relationship, the size of the network and capital assembly in crowdfunding are positive. Further, the results highlight that the addition of network relationship quality specifications improve the explanation of variation in capital assembly. This suggests that estimations that do not include network relationship variables are ineffective in explaining how entrepreneurs can facilitate capital assembly and achieve success in crowdfunding. Accordingly, the study emphasises the role and importance of network relationship quality activities as additional determinants of crowdfunding outcomes. This study enunciates the importance for entrepreneurs to form ‘project-syndicates’, a project-related community that co-creates the project narrative and legitimacy, leading to better fundraising performance and outcomes. The third study complements the two previously discussed quantitative studies by comprising qualitative data that elicits interpretations over a twenty-four month period in a longitudinal single case study. This study investigates the role, behaviour and experience of entrepreneurs during the crowdfunding process and relates entrepreneurial activities to fundraising performance. This study reveals three identity strategies, demonstrating how the entrepreneur can leapfrog from one side of the bimodal funding distribution in crowdfunding to the other extreme following an identity transition. This study sheds light on the entrepreneurial micro-foundations of crowdfunding by focusing on the entrepreneur’s processes pre-, during and post-crowdfunding. As such, this research provides valuable insights into entrepreneurial crowdfunding. This thesis, taken as a whole, contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial capital assembly through crowdfunding, and develops new theory that advances the current knowledge of crowdfunding performance and outcomes. As such, this thesis contributes to entrepreneurship theory by investigating crowdfunding from three different perspectives, utilising theories related to entrepreneurial narratives and legitimacy, networking and role identity to study the unique context of crowdfunding, where much remains to be explored.

This study was trying to develop guides to help the designing of Entrepreneurship Management Education Program. Research progressed from extensive paper-reading and case study. The result of this study is a set of guides or model divided into three stages and four types of courses.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983.