Swedish tribalism and Tanzanian agency : preconditions for trust and cooperation in a small-business context

Abstract: Small-business cooperation has increasingly been recognized as important for economic development, not only in Sweden but also in developing countries like Tanzania. This dissertation deals with preconditions for horizontal small-business cooperation, taking a point of departure in the literature on trust. The context dependence of these issues is acknowledged by identifying influential rules of the game in two different settings.The dissertation is based on two separate studies of a longitudinal character, one in Sweden and one in Tanzania. Male and female small-business owners were interviewed and observed during meetings and seminars. A detailed account of cooperative endeavors in each of the two countries is first presented and based on that a comparative analysis is conducted. Not only differences, but also interesting similarities, between the Swedish and the Tanzanian context are identified. Constraints resembling tribal conflict were not exclusive to Tanzania and individual efforts (agency) in Tanzania enabled trust and cooperation despite severe institutional constraints. Based on the studies, a conceptual framework and a metaphor of preconditions for trust and cooperation are developed. Finally, implications with regard to how smallbusiness cooperation could be supported are discussed.