Entrepreneurship: A Contextual Perspective. Discourses and Praxis of Entrepreneurial Activities within the Institutional Context of Ghana

Abstract: This study is motivated by the understanding that entrepreneurship varies from one context to another as there are distinctive factors that influence the development and organization of entrepreneurial activities in any particular national context. Using qualitative methodology the study aims at developing a conceptual and empirical framework for the study and understanding of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship as an organizing and social process. From institutional and social networking perspective, the study describes and analyses how the societally embedded socio-cultural values and beliefs impact on the development and organizing of entrepreneurial activities within the broader historical, economic and institutional context of Ghana. While re-reading and thereby challenging some of the mainstream arguments underlying the conventional wisdom of entrepreneurship that Iay emphasis on psychological attributes of the entrepreneur, the study argues that the nature and quality of the environment in which the entrepreneurial process is initiated and organized becomes very crucial to the successful development and survival of any entrepreneurial activities. The empirical findings lend a strong illustrative support to the proposition that the development and organizing of entrepreneurial activities in any national context is an interplay between the individual characteristics and the nature of the organizing context. For example, in a developing country, Iike Ghana, colonialism and political instability, mismanagement of the economic, paucity of the macro-infrastructures an misguided and inconsistent government policy directives have contributed to the non-development of effective indigenous entrepreneurial activities. And in a society with strong family orientation, social networks (connections) - patron-client relationship and reciprocity as a mechanism for collective survival are used essentially as a countervailing mechanism for circumventing any institutional inadequacies. Thus, the study proposes the integration of both pychoanalytical and contextual perspectives in the study and development of entrepreneurial activities. Finally, the study not only calls for the "retuning" of the dysfunctional aspects of the environment with regards to the mainstream socio-cultural values, basic institutions and the various administrative setups that still bear the hallmarks of the colonial structures but also argues for the "re-embeddednes" of the mainstream concepts of entrepreneurship into the specificity of the socio-economic and cultural context of an emerging economy like that of Ghana for an effective development and promotion of entrepreneurial activities.