DISEÑO EXPERIMENTAL Y ANÁLISIS ESTADÍSTICO

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship connote several meanings and several dichotomies may have been drawn up to capture this. Welter et al., (2017) outlines some of the major dichotomies in the body of entrepreneurship as follows: opportunity versus necessity-based; venture capital-backed versus bootstrapped; formal versus informal; men-owned versus women-owned; Innovator versus replicator; Promoter versus trustee; growth-oriented versus lifestyle; entrepreneur versus small business owner/proprietor. However, they argue that instead of appreciating the uniqueness of the different versions, options and characteristics of entrepreneurship activities and processes as equal and useful parts which make up the whole body, entrepreneurship research have too often taken the form of invidious distinctions implicitly serving a functionalist notion of entrepreneurship that valorises economic outcomes of wealth accumulation and job creation as the supreme and often only goal. For instance, many researchers have relied largely on the entrepreneurship definition of Shane &

55 | P a g e Venkataraman (2002) to shape their view of the phenomenon and anything outside this purview are either not accepted as entrepreneurship or is regarded as mere peripherals. The problem with this viewpoint is that entrepreneurship is then limited to a narrow concept that focuses only on the individual’s engagement with opportunities and too often on the outcomes of such an engagement (Davidson, 2015) without any regard for context.

Another invidious distinction was that presented by Isenberg (2011) which attempts to establish the difference between entrepreneurs are non-entrepreneurs by suggesting that self-employment or business ownership alone is not entrepreneurship and that the distinguishing factors are aspiration and risk. The author went on to define entrepreneurs as one who buys inputs low, transforms them through risk and sell them high. A pertinent question that begs for an answer is how do we determine what aspiration is and which one is entrepreneurial or not? If this question is clearly and conclusively answered, we could also clarify what form of risk is involved in business start-ups if any and why by taking on these risks such individuals are still not considered being entrepreneurs. The answer to these questions could be in the absence of context in conceptualising entrepreneurship. Welter et al., (2017) argues that “What is more useful to the world and to entrepreneurship writ large is some incremental contribution to our understanding of interactions between entrepreneurs and venture such as how impoverished female entrepreneurs starting informal ventures in contexts of deep cultural misogyny can improve their chances of survival and generate some degree of autonomy”.

Zahra (2007) argues that paying more attention to the nature, dynamics, uniqueness and limitations of the context improves rigour, relevance and enriches the future entrepreneurial study. For instance, Welter et al., (2017) contend that when analysing the characteristics of women-owned business it is important to contextualise these in terms of structural and cultural factors that have an impact on the characteristics of women-owned firms and shape their development paths and strategies as well as resources available to them. This study agrees with this much broader conceptualisation of entrepreneurship which emphasises the value and usefulness of understanding the role of context. The current study agrees with Welter (2011) that entrepreneurship could impact on context and that context could impact the nature and extent of entrepreneurship. Therefore, we do not support the notion that successful and innovative Silicon Valley type entrepreneurs are the only ones deserving to be linked with, classified or become the real face of entrepreneurship. We argue that entrepreneurs include everyday individuals who are engaged in business either by necessity

56 | P a g e (for survival) or have created innovations and witnessed growth. Both categories are equally deserving of being referred to as entrepreneurs Welter et al., (2017).

Therefore, this study also focuses on illustrating the contextual complexities engineered by skewed cultural and traditional norms which limit women enterprising capabilities, livelihoods and rights and how these women strive to overcome against perceived insurmountable odds. They strive to exit poverty by necessity through engaging in income generating business. They strive to reclaim their voices within their household, voices which are often drown due to financial dependencies on male household heads. These women strive to prove to all doubting Thomas’s, that indeed, they are a treasure of inestimable entrepreneurial capacities, those of which when they are restrained or locked limits the productivity of the nation whilst compounding the financial strain for the few working males.

It is worth noting that in recent years, researchers have made rapid and substantial progress in conceptualising their work (Baker & Welter, 2018). Zarhra et al., (2014) cautions as they observed that the focus has largely been placed on the role of context in influencing entrepreneurial start-up entry into the market which has limited entrepreneurial research regarding the nature of other forms of entrepreneurial activities and how context influences entrepreneurial processes. Accordingly, this study attempts to focus on how context (Nigerian) influence women entrepreneurs but also seeks to capture the nature of women entrepreneurial activities (what women do with access to resources) and how their local environments influence the entrepreneurial process (how women make decisions to access resources, engage with, benefit from and sustain or grow resources). This line of thought is predicated on the belief that by considering the other forms (not widely discussed) of entrepreneurship, the current study is indeed harvesting unique characteristics relevant to the core of what entrepreneurship is about. Welter et al., (2017) contends that “looking at the “other” is looking at entrepreneurship as there is no one type, the best way or ideal form of entrepreneurship”.