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Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

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Full-Text Articles in Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations

Trading With The Enemy: A Coopetitive Perspective Of Resource Exchange At Arm’S Length, Zhefei Li, David Gomulya, Heli Wang Jan 2026

Trading With The Enemy: A Coopetitive Perspective Of Resource Exchange At Arm’S Length, Zhefei Li, David Gomulya, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Summary: Research on inter-firm cooperation often focuses on long-term strategic alliances while overlooking the distinct form of arm's-length resource exchanges. Our study addresses this gap using the National Basketball Association (NBA) data for precise resource exchange measurements. Contrary to strategic alliances, where competitive pressure fosters cooperation, we find that competitive pressure reduces cooperation in arm's-length exchanges. However, relational capital helps to facilitate resource exchanges. We also found that while resource bundling exacerbates the negative effect of competitive pressure, it amplifies the positive effect of relational capital. Interestingly, relational rivalry intensifies the impact of competitive pressure but does not diminish …


Liberalizing Home-Based Business, Sumit Agarwal, Tien Foo Sing, Changcheng Song, Jian Zhang Dec 2024

Liberalizing Home-Based Business, Sumit Agarwal, Tien Foo Sing, Changcheng Song, Jian Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Working at home benefits entrepreneurs by lowering fixed costs and allowing them to engage in joint market and household production. We evaluate a large-scale reform in Singapore, the Home Office Scheme, that allowed business creation at one's residential property and study whether home-based entrepreneurship spurs entrepreneurial activities. The difference-in-differences estimate shows that the reform led to a significantly higher level of business creation and that the firms newly created in response to the reform had a higher survival rate. The effect is more pronounced for low-income female individuals and industries with high startup capital, implying that financial constraints and nonpecuniary …


Ceo Humility And Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Evidence Based On A New Unobtrusive Measure, Amy Y. Ou, Qian Lu, Xina Li, Chi-Nien Chung, Guoli Chen Aug 2024

Ceo Humility And Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Evidence Based On A New Unobtrusive Measure, Amy Y. Ou, Qian Lu, Xina Li, Chi-Nien Chung, Guoli Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Chief executive officers (CEOs) are expected to guard their firms against corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) incidents. In this study, we hypothesize that CEO humility relates negatively to CSIR occurrence and positively to correction because of CEO preferences for protecting stakeholder interests and employing systematic information processing. These associations are stronger in industries with a high number of CSIR incidents and when top management teams have a higher ratio of gender and racial minorities. We develop and validate a new unobtrusive measure of CEO humility by using automated, objective behavioral indicators derived from earnings conference call transcripts. Our arguments and hypotheses …


A Theory Of Host Country Sentiments: An Illustration In Cross-Border Acquisitions, Daphne W. Yiu, William P. Wan, Xiaocong Tian, Kelly Xing Chen Aug 2024

A Theory Of Host Country Sentiments: An Illustration In Cross-Border Acquisitions, Daphne W. Yiu, William P. Wan, Xiaocong Tian, Kelly Xing Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capitalizing on massive sentiment diffusion and mobilization aided by mass media and social media nowadays, we introduce a general theory of host country sentiments to illuminate the granular, context-situated, and time dynamic power of social sentiments. We posit that host country is a value-laden context wherein a foreign entity’s strategic action stimulates host country stakeholders’ social sentiments and engagement in systems of discourses (“sentiment arousal”), mobilizes social sentiments toward the foreign entity (“sentiment competence”), and legitimizes social sentiments and the strategic action of the foreign entity (“sentiment resonance”). To test our theory, we employ a context of inward acquisitions by …


Competing With The Platform: Complementor Positioning And Cross-Platform Response To Entry, Aldona Kapacinskaite, Ahmadreza Mostajabi Jul 2024

Competing With The Platform: Complementor Positioning And Cross-Platform Response To Entry, Aldona Kapacinskaite, Ahmadreza Mostajabi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research SummaryThis study contrasts traditional entry dynamics with platform owner entry into a complementor market and examines cross-platform complementor response to competition with the platform. Generalists experience low repositioning cost and are more likely to shift effort away, while specialists focus their effort on the focal platform. We examine Apple's “Files” app entry and find support for our hypotheses: generalists shift effort toward the competing platform, while specialists double down on the focal platform. Moreover, empirically comparing Apple's entry with that of other large firms, we find that only the platform owner elicits a strong complementor response. This article contributes …


Traceability Technology Adoption In Supply Chain Networks, Philippe Blaettchen, Andre P. Calmon, Georgina Hall Mar 2024

Traceability Technology Adoption In Supply Chain Networks, Philippe Blaettchen, Andre P. Calmon, Georgina Hall

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern traceability technologies promise to improve supply chain management by simplifying recalls, increasing visibility, and verifying sustainable supplier practices. Initiatives leading the implementation of traceability technologies must choose the least-costly set of firms—or seed set—to target for early adoption. Choosing this seed set is challenging because firms are part of supply chains interlinked in complex networks, yielding an inherent supply chain effect: benefits obtained from traceability are conditional on technology adoption by a subset of firms in a product’s supply chain. We prove that the problem of selecting the least-costly seed set in a supply chain network is hard to …


Demand Pull Versus Resource Push Training Approaches To Entrepreneurship: A Field Experiment, Simone Santamaria, Niloofar Abolfathi, Ishtiag Pasha Mahmood Mar 2024

Demand Pull Versus Resource Push Training Approaches To Entrepreneurship: A Field Experiment, Simone Santamaria, Niloofar Abolfathi, Ishtiag Pasha Mahmood

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We compare the efficacy of two broad approaches to entrepreneurship training: a training prioritizing demand-side activities versus a training prioritizing resource-side activities. We do so by running a field experiment inside a 6-month entrepreneurship program involving 236 early-stage entrepreneurs. Inspired by our training, the first group invested more time interacting with potential customers and developing a deep understanding of customer needs and problems. The other group, in contrast, spent more time identifying and exploiting their core resources such as their network. Our results reveal that the training prioritizing demand-side activities is substantially more effective. At the end of the program, …


Multinational Family Firms’ Internationalization Depth And Breadth Following The Global Financial Crisis, Sebastian P. L. Fourné, Miriam Zschoche, Christian Schwens, Reddi Kotha Apr 2023

Multinational Family Firms’ Internationalization Depth And Breadth Following The Global Financial Crisis, Sebastian P. L. Fourné, Miriam Zschoche, Christian Schwens, Reddi Kotha

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how large family firms react to a macroeconomic shock in terms of their internationalization depth and breadth. Building on new internalization theory and acknowledging the dysfunctional manifestations of bifurcation bias in large family-owned MNEs, we argue that an unexpected shock induces family firms to recombine their family firm-specific resources with their thus far underutilized or unequally treated nonfamily resources. This recombination allows most family firms to economize on bifurcation bias and leverage their resources as firm-specific advantages (FSAs) resulting in an increased depth and breadth of internationalization post shock (while some of them may continue to suffer …


Do Ambitious Entrepreneurs Benefit More From Training?, Reddi Kotha, Balagopal Vissa, Yimin Lin, Anne-Valérie Corboz Feb 2023

Do Ambitious Entrepreneurs Benefit More From Training?, Reddi Kotha, Balagopal Vissa, Yimin Lin, Anne-Valérie Corboz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Does growth training help entrepreneurs scale-up new ventures? Our field experiment answers this question using data from 181 Singapore-based, early-growth entrepreneurs drawn from a broad range of industry sectors. Treatment content focused on three growth-catalyst tools relevant for formulating and executing innovation-led growth: business-model design, leveraging external networks, building internal teams. Treatment format comprised interactive lecture sessions and workshops on these tools supplemented by personalized coaching in applying the tools to entrepreneurs’ specific challenges. We find that ventures led by entrepreneurs that received training experienced sales growth of 72.5% compared to 30.3% for those in the control condition. Furthermore, ventures …


Sustainability Impact Assessment Of New Ventures: An Emerging Field Of Research, Klaus Fichter, Florian Ludeke-Freund, Stefan Schaltegger, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Jan 2023

Sustainability Impact Assessment Of New Ventures: An Emerging Field Of Research, Klaus Fichter, Florian Ludeke-Freund, Stefan Schaltegger, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Entrepreneurs and start-ups are key actors in implementing environmental innovation and accelerating sustainability transitions. Thus, analyzing as well as predicting the impact of entrepreneurial ventures is central to management and entrepreneurship research. The sustainability performance, value and impact of incumbent firms and their products and services has been a key topic in business-related sustainability research for many years. However, assessing the sustainability effects of new ventures such as start-ups is a neglected area in the research literature. This article therefore provides an overview, including key definitions, a new conceptual framework, and notions that can help guide and inspire a future …


Experiential Learning: The Case Of Training Mba Students In An Asian School, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jack Jiajun Hong Sep 2022

Experiential Learning: The Case Of Training Mba Students In An Asian School, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jack Jiajun Hong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Consulting for a startup company is an effective way for Master of Business Administration (MBA) students to learn about management consulting, and the ways and means of a startup company. This paper discusses the experience of an MBA startup project within the context of a core corporate finance course. The project requires the active engagement of several groups of stakeholders—MBA students, the university’s entrepreneurship incubator, a selection of startup companies, and the project’s academic collaborators. In line with the literature, we find that entrepreneurship education through student-startup collaboration contributes to the students’ entrepreneurial learning, and that the offering of an …


A Foot In The Door: Field-Experiments On Entrepreneurs’ Network Activation Strategies For Investor Referrals, Jared Nai, Yimin Lin, Reddi Kotha, Vissa Balagopal Feb 2022

A Foot In The Door: Field-Experiments On Entrepreneurs’ Network Activation Strategies For Investor Referrals, Jared Nai, Yimin Lin, Reddi Kotha, Vissa Balagopal

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate entrepreneurial network activation—the processes by which entrepreneurs select specific contacts from their existing personal network and persuade the selected contacts to provide referrals to access targeted early-stage investors (venture capitalists or angel-investors). We differentiate between selection of entrepreneur-centric contacts versus investor-centric contacts. We also distinguish between persuasion tactics that induce contacts' cooperation through promises of reciprocity versus offers of monetary incentives. We conducted two field-experiments in India and one in Singapore. Our primary field-experiment involved 42 Singapore-based entrepreneurs seeking referrals from 684 network contacts to reach a panel of four investors. Our evidence suggests that selecting investor-centric contacts …


Leveraging Reward-Based Crowdfunding During Covid-19, Hannah H. Chang, Erin Jasmine Guillermo, Colin Chai Dec 2021

Leveraging Reward-Based Crowdfunding During Covid-19, Hannah H. Chang, Erin Jasmine Guillermo, Colin Chai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the last year, Singapore firms have faced unforeseen market disruptions created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Worldwide country lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, and restrictions on business operations due to public health and safety measures posed non-trivial challenges. Many companies scampered to find alternative sources of revenue and ramp up their efforts at digitalisation - or risk the possibility of business closure.


Platform-Dependent Entrepreneurs: Participants In An Expanding Universe Of Platforms?, F. Ted Tschang Nov 2021

Platform-Dependent Entrepreneurs: Participants In An Expanding Universe Of Platforms?, F. Ted Tschang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The article Platform-dependent entrepreneurs: Power asymmetries, risks, and strategies in the platform economy drew on the intermediary business model to review the damaging actions that platform firms may employ with entrepreneurs. This exchange argues that platform firms may treat entrepreneurs differently on other platform types-particularly ones where complex relationships may cause participants and platforms to become mutually dependent, or where the platform's position depends less on extracting revenue directly from participants. I suggest that particular business models might facilitate the use of alternative strategic actions that are more benign toward entrepreneurs. These situations can determine additional boundary conditions for this …


Bettr Barista: A Shot At Better Lives, Heli Wang, Sheetal Mittal, Adeline Natalia Sue Yi Lai Oct 2021

Bettr Barista: A Shot At Better Lives, Heli Wang, Sheetal Mittal, Adeline Natalia Sue Yi Lai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter presents a case study in which Pamela Chng, the founder of Singapore-based Bettr Barista (BB), believes that a workplace cannot exist aloof from society's challenges and that companies need to be accountable for their contribution to society. The enterprise offers a four-month-long holistic programme, equipping them with job skills as a barista. The chapter highlights the challenge in maintaining the balance between financial and social goals, as this drives most of the decisions taken by the company, be it its value chain or the key stakeholders. The social programme was a comprehensive training course for the marginalised section …


Digital Sustainability And Entrepreneurship: How Digital Innovations Are Helping Tackle Climate Change And Sustainable Development, Gerard George, Ryan K. Merrill, Simon J. D. Schillebeeckx Sep 2021

Digital Sustainability And Entrepreneurship: How Digital Innovations Are Helping Tackle Climate Change And Sustainable Development, Gerard George, Ryan K. Merrill, Simon J. D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We explore how digital technologies are helping address grand challenges to tackle climate change and promote sustainable development. With digital technologies, entrepreneurial organizations have adopted innovative approaches to tackle seemingly intractable societal challenges. We refer to these broadly as digital sustainability activities. By focusing on the digital toolbox employed by pioneering organizations, we propose a research agenda that generates novel questions for entrepreneurship, business models, and ecosystems as well as new ways of thinking about trust and institutional logics. We believe that digital sustainability can spur empirical advances in entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategy with potential for positive impact on society.


Tips For Sme Transformation Amid Covid-19 Pandemic, Siow-Heng Ong Apr 2021

Tips For Sme Transformation Amid Covid-19 Pandemic, Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The author shared that following the economic downturn in 2020, revival in 2021 can only be very gradual. SMEs in different sectors of the economy face different challenges and have different options for response. Overall, SMEs are hopeful rather than confident. SMEs are generally hoping to manage cash flow and stretch their current funds for immediate business sustainability. Inevitably, their focus is on meeting critical business needs. Turnover and profits are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels so any increase in hiring or other planning for the future will be slight. He suggested that for pragmatic managers of SMEs …


Building Growth Enterprises In Singapore: Public-Private Partnership, Annie Koh, Esther Kong Feb 2021

Building Growth Enterprises In Singapore: Public-Private Partnership, Annie Koh, Esther Kong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter traces the growth and development of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from post-independent Singapore in 1965 to its current day digital transformation age. Singapore’s SME landscape has evolved from one of low wage, low productivity entrepot trade, to supporting multi-national corporations, and transforming into the innovative, digital and agile enterprises of today. The four main challenges faced by SMEs are in human capital, internationalisation, innovation and financing, and dependency on government policies are highlighted. Moving ahead, digitalisation, and building TIEs that bind leveraging on Trust, Innovation and Internationalisation, and Entrepreneurship, will be key to propel the nation and family …


Emergence Of Private Markets And Exchanges As An Alternative Source Of Financing For Small- And Medium-Sized Enterprises (Sme) In Singapore, Ser Keng Ang Feb 2021

Emergence Of Private Markets And Exchanges As An Alternative Source Of Financing For Small- And Medium-Sized Enterprises (Sme) In Singapore, Ser Keng Ang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the engine for growth for any economy, whether big or small and developed or emerging. In the US, small firms with less than 500 employee represent 99% of all employers, provide over 80% of net new jobs and account for about one-half of the national workforce. Singapore is no exception. Hence, the well-being of the SME sector in Singapore bears huge importance in the growth and development of its economy.In practice, financing of private companies, particularly small companies, is a challenge. In general, their small size makes private firms more susceptible to exogenous shocks. …


How To Make Venture Capital Funding Work For You, Ser Keng Ang Nov 2020

How To Make Venture Capital Funding Work For You, Ser Keng Ang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

From Facebook to Google, some of the biggest brands we know today got their start from venture capital funding. Prof Ang Ser Keng from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, shares how and when involving venture capitalists in your startup can propel it to success.


Outcomes Of An Expert Survey: Are Singapore’S Manufacturing Small And Medium Enterprises Ready To Embrace Industry 4.0, Gopalakrishnan Surianarayanan, Thomas Menkhoff Nov 2020

Outcomes Of An Expert Survey: Are Singapore’S Manufacturing Small And Medium Enterprises Ready To Embrace Industry 4.0, Gopalakrishnan Surianarayanan, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Industry 4.0 encompasses adopting opportunities from end-to-end digitalisation with connected computers and increasingly autonomous automation systems equipped with intelligent machine learning algorithms that control the robotics without much input from humans. Smart manufacturing technologies (a part of the smart industry, an extension of Industry 4.0 initiatives and implementation) involve automating various processes. It aims to connect various units in real-time while enhancing profitability by reducing costs, increasing labour productivity, and improving overall efficiency. The impetus for our paper is the assumption that the adoption of smart manufacturing technologies such as advanced robotics, cyber-physical systems, or the Internet of Things (IoT) …


The Dark Side Of Sustainability Orientation For Sme Performance, Teemu Kautonen, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Johannes Gartner, Henri Hakata, Katariina Salmela-Aro, Kirsi Snellmand Nov 2020

The Dark Side Of Sustainability Orientation For Sme Performance, Teemu Kautonen, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Johannes Gartner, Henri Hakata, Katariina Salmela-Aro, Kirsi Snellmand

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article examines how a firm’s willingness to make trade-offs that favour sustainability over commercial goals attenuates the relationship between firm-level sustainability orientation and subsequent performance. The hypothesis development draws on stakeholder theory and the literature on mission and revenue drifts, while the empirical analysis is based on two waves of original survey data on Finnish manufacturing SMEs. We find that sustainability orientation is positively associated with performance only when the willingness to make sustainability trade-offs is low, whereas the relationship becomes negative when the willingness to make such trade-offs is high. Our findings thus suggest that the popular adage …


The Resilience Of Family Controlled Business Groups: Survival Of The Unfit, Nirmalya Kumar, Phanish Puranam Jul 2020

The Resilience Of Family Controlled Business Groups: Survival Of The Unfit, Nirmalya Kumar, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The COVID crisis has demonstrated that family controlled business groups, usually criticized as being inefficient and diverse, have higher survival rates for precisely these reasons.


Does Intergeneration Succession Influence Stock Prices Of Family Businesses?, Kunlun Zou, Rong Wu, Pu Chen May 2020

Does Intergeneration Succession Influence Stock Prices Of Family Businesses?, Kunlun Zou, Rong Wu, Pu Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

China’s A-shares family listed companies are facing a period of high intergenerational succession. This has attracted the attention and research of many scholars. The existing studies mainly focus on the motives, methods, and influencing factors of family business’ intergenerational succession, and there are few studies involving the reaction of the capital markets. This article takes 45 listed family businesses as samples and uses the synthetic control method to examine the impact and the degree of influence that intergenerational succession has on stock price movements. Thereafter, a difference-in-differences estimation is conducted to test for robustness. At the conclusion of our research, …


A Dynamic Account Of Self-Efficacy In Entrepreneurship, Michael M. Gielnik, Ronald Bledow, Miriam S. Stark May 2020

A Dynamic Account Of Self-Efficacy In Entrepreneurship, Michael M. Gielnik, Ronald Bledow, Miriam S. Stark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present a dynamic account of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship that integrates social–cognitive and control theory. According to our dynamic account, variability in self-efficacy energizes action because it involves self-motivation and discrepancy perception as competing motivational processes. We argue that variability and the average level in self-efficacy nascent entrepreneurs display over time support the enactment of entrepreneurial intentions and predict business ownership. The proposed positive effect of variability further implies an inverted u-shaped relationship between self-efficacy at a single point in time and business ownership. To test these hypotheses, we repeatedly assessed entrepreneurial self-efficacy of nascent African entrepreneurs during a 12-week …


How Inheritance Law Affects Family Firm Performance: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Yong Kyu Gam, Min Jung Kang, Junho Park, Hojong Shin Feb 2020

How Inheritance Law Affects Family Firm Performance: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Yong Kyu Gam, Min Jung Kang, Junho Park, Hojong Shin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We argue that changes in the inheritance system affect incentives leading to sibling rivalry among descendants and therefore have a material impact on family firm performance. Using South Korea's 1991 inheritance law reform that stipulates the equal distribution of a deceased person's property to descendants, we find that the performance and operating growth rate in family firms show significant enhancement compared with those of nonfamily firms. Moreover, the positive effects are greater for family firms that undergo a business succession with multiple sons and married daughters. Overall, our results suggest that changing to equal bequests of inheritance has a positive …


The Invisible Hand Of Evolutionary Psychology: The Importance Of Kinship In First-Generation Family Firms, Xiaodong Yu, Laura Stanley, Yuping Li, Kimberly A. Eddleston, Franz W. Kellermanns Jan 2020

The Invisible Hand Of Evolutionary Psychology: The Importance Of Kinship In First-Generation Family Firms, Xiaodong Yu, Laura Stanley, Yuping Li, Kimberly A. Eddleston, Franz W. Kellermanns

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

While previous studies focus on differences between family and nonfamily firms regarding CEO selection and executive compensation, this study investigates differences among family firms with different types of kinship ties. We find that, compared with family firms with close kinship ties, those with distant kinship ties are more likely to appoint a nonfamily CEO and to pay nonfamily executives lower salaries. This relationship is moderated by firm performance and family ownership. Based on evolutionary psychology, we propose that family firms with close versus distant kinships have different motivation levels to preserve socioemotional wealth.


An Analysis Of Open Innovation Determinants: The Case Study Of Singapore Based Family Owned Enterprises, Annie Koh, Esther Kong, Giuseppe Timperio Dec 2019

An Analysis Of Open Innovation Determinants: The Case Study Of Singapore Based Family Owned Enterprises, Annie Koh, Esther Kong, Giuseppe Timperio

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Family businesses play an important role in the growth of global economy, and while they are arguably perceived as a conservative form of organization with high risk aversion and reluctance to change, counterintuitive empirical evidence show that they are most effective in ideation and commercialization of innovation projects. In the current business environment of rapid change in work patterns, fast adoption of enabling technologies for seamless collaborations across industry and geography, along with intense competition and high uncertainty, enterprises have no choice but to maximize returns on innovation investments. Therefore, they are increasingly dependent on an ecosystem-based approach to innovation …


Crowdfunding: Sharing The Entrepreneurial Journey, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang, Amitava Chattopadhyay Jul 2019

Crowdfunding: Sharing The Entrepreneurial Journey, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang, Amitava Chattopadhyay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.


How Does Energy Matter? Rural Electrification, Entrepreneurship, And Community Development In Kenya, Antoine Vernet, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Vivian George, Gerard George, Abubakar S. Bahaj Mar 2019

How Does Energy Matter? Rural Electrification, Entrepreneurship, And Community Development In Kenya, Antoine Vernet, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Vivian George, Gerard George, Abubakar S. Bahaj

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the impact of rural electrification on individuals and businesses within a community in order to test a resource-based theory of entrepreneurship. We show that access to electricity increases average households’ income and entrepreneurial activities. The impact of electricity on entrepreneurial activity has wide-ranging implications for development policy in countries where access to electricity is sparse. Results show a significant difference in entrepreneurial opportunities with respect to firm formation, with the electrified site reporting more new micro-enterprises than the control site after implementation. Electrification affects both households’ income, individuals’ perceptions of their social position, and opportunities for business development. …