Carla Canelas, Felix Meier zu Selhausen and Erik Stam
Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to…
Abstract
Purpose
Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to the income and productivity of small-scale producers, evidence of cooperatives' social and economic empowerment of female smallholders remains limited. We apply Sen's capability approach to female entrepreneurs' socioeconomic empowerment to examine whether women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative from rural western Uganda benefits their social and economic position within their household. First, we study the relationship between women's cooperative participation and their household coffee sales and savings. Second, we investigate the link between women's cooperative participation and their intra-household decision-making and whether the inclusion of the husband in his wife's cooperative strengthens or lowers women's decision-making power.
Design/methodology/approach
We carry out a case study of a hybrid coffee and microfinance cooperative that promotes social innovation through the integration and empowerment of female smallholders in rural Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey of 411 married female cooperative members from 26 randomly selected self-help groups of Bukonzo Joint Cooperative and 196 female non-members from the identical area, employing propensity score matching, this paper investigates the benefits of women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda. We present and discuss the results of our case study within an extensive literature on the role of institutions in collective action for women's empowerment.
Findings
Our findings provide new empirical evidence on female smallholders' participation in mixed cooperatives. Our results indicate that women's participation in microfinance-producer cooperatives appears to be a conditional blessing: even though membership is linked to increased women's intra-household decision-making and raised household savings and income from coffee sales, a wife with a husband in the same cooperative self-help group is associated with diminished women's household decision-making power.
Research limitations/implications
The focus of this study is on female coffee smallholders in an agricultural cooperative in rural western Uganda. In particular, we focus on a case study of one major coffee cooperative. Our cross-sectional survey does not allow us to infer causal interpretations. Also, the survey does not include variables that allow us to measure other dimensions of women's empowerment beyond decision-making over household expenditures and women's financial performance related to savings and income from coffee cultivation.
Practical implications
Our empirical results indicate that female smallholders' cooperative membership is associated with higher incomes and coffee sales. However, husband co-participation in their wives' cooperative group diminishes wives' decision-making, which suggests that including husbands and other family members in the same cooperative group may not be perceived as an attractive route to empowerment for female smallholders. For these reasons, an intervention that encourages the cooperation of both spouses and that is sensitive to context-specific gender inequalities, may be more successful at stimulating social change toward household gender equality than interventions that focus on women's autonomous spheres only.
Originality/value
While the literature thus far has focused on microfinance's potential for women's empowerment, evidence on agricultural cooperatives' affecting women's social and economic position is limited. First, our findings provide novel empirical evidence on the empowering effects of women's participation in a self-help group-based coffee cooperative in rural Uganda. Second, our data allows us to explore the role of husbands' participation in their wives' cooperative and SGH. We embed our hypotheses and empirical results in a rich discussion of female entrepreneurship, microfinance and cooperative literature.
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Julie Hermans, Johanna Vanderstraeten, Arjen van Witteloostuijn, Marcus Dejardin, Dendi Ramdani and Erik Stam
In the study of entrepreneurial behavior types, “ambitious entrepreneurship” recently emerged as a new research concept. Unfortunately, a systematic overview of what is known (and…
Abstract
In the study of entrepreneurial behavior types, “ambitious entrepreneurship” recently emerged as a new research concept. Unfortunately, a systematic overview of what is known (and not known) about this topic is missing. In particular, insights into the various definitions, measures, and antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship are lacking. In this chapter, we offer a state-of-the-art review and analysis of extant research on ambitious entrepreneurship. We structure the literature review by providing insights into antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship, and extensively discuss the conceptualization and operationalization of this research concept. We clarify the differences between related concepts such as growth intention, expectation, and aspiration, and argue how all these concepts fit into a unifying framework of ambitious entrepreneurship. We summarize promising future research avenues for the study of ambitious entrepreneurship, both from a methodological and a conceptual point of view.
Erik Stam and Jan Lambooy
In a society with dispersed knowledge, entrepreneurs have to identify opportunities, recognize them as relevant, and match them with (demand) preferences, technological…
Abstract
In a society with dispersed knowledge, entrepreneurs have to identify opportunities, recognize them as relevant, and match them with (demand) preferences, technological feasibilities, and their own skills. According to Austrian theory, this is done on a subjective basis: different people not only have different preferences but also different perceptions, interpretations, and understandings of values and feasibilities, which they adapt in mutual interaction and communication in specific contexts over their unique life courses (Nooteboom, 2000). Different minds think different things (Lachmann, 1978), and the entrepreneurial opportunities people perceive very much depend on their prior knowledge (Shane, 2000).
In “An Austrian Theory of Spatial Land,” Fred E. Foldvary addresses the disregard of spatial issues in basic Austrian economic theory as formulated by Carl Menger (1871) and…
Abstract
In “An Austrian Theory of Spatial Land,” Fred E. Foldvary addresses the disregard of spatial issues in basic Austrian economic theory as formulated by Carl Menger (1871) and elaborated upon by Ludwig von Mises (1940). Foldvary shows that Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1826) and Henry George (1879/1884), in particular, serve to fill these gaps in the classical Austrian theory of the market process. Moreover, a theory that incorporates spatial land leads to the conclusion that Austrian business cycle theory is incomplete: The “malspeculation” that accompanies urbanization whenever capital and labor rather than land are the main sources of tax revenue will have to be added to the malinvestment that is caused by expansionary monetary policies.
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Karin Hellerstedt, Karl Wennberg and Lars Frederiksen
This chapter investigates how regional start-up rates in the knowledge-intensive services and high-tech industries are influenced by knowledge spillovers from both universities…
Abstract
This chapter investigates how regional start-up rates in the knowledge-intensive services and high-tech industries are influenced by knowledge spillovers from both universities and firm-based R&D activities. Integrating insights from economic geography and organizational ecology into the literature on entrepreneurship, we develop a theoretical framework which captures how both supply- and demand-side factors mold the regional bedrock for start-ups in knowledge-intensive industries. Using multilevel data of all knowledge-intensive start-ups across 286 Swedish municipalities between 1994 and 2002 we demonstrate how characteristics of the economic and political milieu within each region influence the ratio of firm births. We find that knowledge spillovers from universities and firm-based R&D strongly affect the start-up rates for both high-tech firms and knowledge-intensive services firms. Further, the start-up rate of knowledge-intensive service firms is tied more strongly to the supply of university educated individuals and the political regulatory regime within the municipality than start-ups in high-tech industries. This suggests that knowledge-intensive service-start-ups are more susceptible to both demand-side and supply-side context than is the case for high-tech start-ups in general. Our study contributes to the growing stream of research that explains entrepreneurial activity as shaped by contextual factors, most notably academic institutions, such as universities that contribute to knowledge-intensive start-ups.
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Moritz Zoellner, Michael Fritsch and Michael Wyrwich
The purpose of this paper is to review the results of studies that investigate the most important active labour market policy (ALMP) measures in Germany. A focus is also on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the results of studies that investigate the most important active labour market policy (ALMP) measures in Germany. A focus is also on programmes devoted to foster entrepreneurship which can make important contributions to a country’s growth and social welfare.
Design/methodology/approach
The study relies on quantitative and qualitative assessments and a comparison of results of previous studies on ALMPs.
Findings
The available evidence suggests that most ALMP measures increase labour market prospects of the participants. In particular, evaluations of the entrepreneurship promotion activities show high success rates as well as high cost efficiency. The bulk share of participants of entrepreneurship measures is still self-employed after several years and nearly one-third of these businesses had at least one employee. The authors mention problems regarding the evaluation of previous programmes and highlight future challenges of German ALMP.
Originality/value
This is the first study on ALMP that has an extensive and explicit focus on entrepreneurship-promoting programs.
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Erik Beuck, Nourah Shuaibi and Wonjae Hwang
By examining the link between the two types of FDI and intrastate conflict from 1990 to 2015 in 138 countries, this paper intends to test the peace-through-FDI thesis.
Abstract
Purpose
By examining the link between the two types of FDI and intrastate conflict from 1990 to 2015 in 138 countries, this paper intends to test the peace-through-FDI thesis.
Design/methodology/approach
To empirically test the hypotheses, this study examines county-year observations from 1990 to 2015 for 138 countries. An instrumental variable method is utilized to this end.
Findings
This paper shows that, while greenfield FDI generates pacifying effects on intrastate conflict, M&A investment is likely to promote the onset of intrastate conflict.
Originality/value
Despite the extensive literature on FDI and the onset of intrastate conflict, many have approached FDI as a singular phenomenon, and have not broken it down into its constituent parts of greenfield and brownfield investment types. Theorizing that this practice had oversimplified and blurred the relationship of FDI on intrastate conflict onset, the authors pursued the collection of novel data in order to more completely distinguish between the two types of FDI. With this novel approach dividing FDI into its component parts, the authors break open the black box of FDI to empirically find out the extent of its diverse influence on the onset of intrastate conflict.