Business Commons^™

Social Structure, Reasonable Gain, And Entrepreneurship In Africa, Gerard George, Reddi Kotha, Priti Parikh, Tufool Alnuaimi, Abubakr S. Bahaj

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the context of desperate poverty, characterized by households at subsistence level that experience economic loss and social fracture, explanations for why individuals undertake entry into entrepreneurship are limited. We find that individuals rely on their social relationships to enable entrepreneurial activities that have the potential to create a reasonable income gain. In a sample of 1,049 households in rural Kenya, we test whether the disintegration of social structure attenuates entrepreneurial behavior. When coupled with factors such as income loss, gender of the household head, and access to communal resources, social structure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial action. We …