Piers Thompson

Purpose: This special issue (SI) puts into sharp focus prevailing conceptions of, and approaches to, research on African entrepreneurship and innovation. It signals a perceptual shift in research dominated by near-universal Western theories that are often singled out for their insensitivity to context. Accordingly, this SI draws upon a range of contextualised theoretical perspectives to illuminate Africa's entrepreneurial and innovation contexts, experiences and practices. It marks a milestone in research that has historically undervalued African entrepreneurship and innovation by pioneering scholarship that spotlights the issue of coloniality of knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing upon a realist perspective, this SI attracted 69 submissions over a seven-month period from May to December 2025. To identify relevant articles, manuscripts submitted to the SI went through a rigorous double-blind review involving the editorial team and a dedicated pool of reviewers. The entire process culminated in the 16 quality articles included in this SI, focusing on African entrepreneurship and innovation. The articles are grouped under four core areas: resilience, institutions, informality and transformation, and they draw on multiple modes of design, methodology and approach. Findings: The theoretical arguments that the SI presents describe powerful, self-organised institutions, entrepreneurial and innovative tendencies unconstrained by limited resources and resilient manoeuvres despite numerous business challenges characterising Africa's entrepreneurial contexts. Originality/value: Articles in this SI adopt a contextualised approach to highlight the distinctiveness of African entrepreneurship, resilience, informality, innovation and its institutions. They describe how a confluence of cultural factors, societal norms and values embedded in many business and social institutions across the African continent dictates African entrepreneurship, characterised by informality, resilience and innovation. By highlighting this deep infusion of localised systems into social and business settings in Africa, these articles underscore the need to reconsider the use of universal theoretical paradigms that scholars tend to force-fit to study such complex contexts, without acknowledging these contexts or the distinct behaviours they induce.

Purpose: Despite research acknowledging the importance of culture in entrepreneurship, less attention has been given to its impact on the growth aspirations of Married Women Entrepreneurs (MWEs) in developing country contexts. Unlike prior studies that draw on more narrowly defined measures of business growth, it is suggested that most MWEs will have business growth ambitions, but marriage will combine with cultural and religious factors to change the nature of such ambitions. An extension of the 5Ms framework, incorporating insights from New Institutional Theory, is used to consider how informal institutions, especially cultural and marital norms, influence growth ambitions, contextualising them in a non-Western setting – Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach: Survey data from 280 MWEs from Kaduna state were collected through online and manual methods of distribution. Regression analysis examined the links between culture, as manifested through gender roles and religious influences, and a variety of potential measures of business growth ambitions. Findings: MWEs wish to grow their businesses by acquiring management skills and deploying more effective strategies, but are restricted by gender roles and religion. Many MWEs require their husbands' approval to launch and grow their business and are unaware of government support available. Support is more commonly sought from religious institutions. Social implications: Government support could be more effective if facilitated through religious organisations, as these are often trusted and accessible platforms. Culture, while sometimes restraining the business growth ambitions of MWEs, can also offer solutions through culturally aligned, faith-based initiatives that support and encourage entrepreneurial growth ambitions. Originality/value: The separate attention to marriage allows a more nuanced understanding of how culture may alter the nature of MWEs' growth aspirations in a patriarchal and religiously divided society.

There is currently renewed policy focus on ‘levelling-up’ economic performance across Great Britain’s regions and nations. Heterogeneous historical regional economic experiences lead to questions over the need for policy differences and trade-offs, and roles of regional, versus national level, policies in the longer term. This paper examines, using panel fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), combinations of education and human capital, entrepreneurship, and economic activity conditions driving economic development differences across local authorities in Great Britain. Analysis identifies three and six condition-based pathways for the presence and absence of high local economic development (LED), respectively, absence pathways having a particular geographical focus. This identifies different sets of regions, where disadvantage is ‘deep-rooted’ (and non-traditional policymaking is needed), advantage is long-established, or where policy is most likely to make a positive difference. It also identifies a need to tailor policy according to the pathway(s), rather than assuming homogeneous approaches are appropriate. Finally, exemplar regions offer case studies of how future policy can assist movement from absence to presence of high LED.

Purpose: Previous studies have shown how the nature of businesses and the strategies pursued by their owners are affected by the personality traits of their owners. These personality traits can be formed in the early stages of life due to experiences and the surrounding context, where religion is a particularly important aspect of this context. This study aims to explore how religion affects entrepreneurial activities through the personality traits created.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses interviews with 43 Muslim entrepreneurs in Scotland to examine the role played by religion. This ensures that the national institutional context is kept consistent but also allows an in-depth examination of relationships, which are likely to be interlinked and recursive.Findings: The traits created influence the nature of the entrepreneurial activities undertaken with the potential to harm and support the entrepreneurial endeavours. It is the combination of personality traits that are formed which have the greatest effect. As such, it is found that Muslim entrepreneurs display less openness and creativity associated with new ideas, but this does not reflect risk aversion rather hard work in itself is valued, and patience combined with an external locus of control mean entrepreneurial behaviours are not altered to boost poorly performing business activities.Originality/value: For Muslim entrepreneurs in Scotland, their traits explain why growth may not be a foremost consideration of these entrepreneurs rather they may value hard work and meeting the ideals of formal and informal institutions associated with religion. For those seeking to support minority groups through the promotion of entrepreneurship, either they must seek to overcome these ingrained traits or alter support to complement the different objectives held by Muslim entrepreneurs.

Although considerable efforts have been made in many countries to raise the financial literacy of those from disadvantaged backgrounds, it is unclear whether these are having an effect. This is particularly the case for those of ethnic minority background, who may suffer from other disadvantages. This study examines the financial literacy of students from two universities in the East Midlands region of the UK. It considers the role played by ethnic background. It is found that significant differences in financial literacy remain between the White majority and particular ethnic groups. In part, this appears to reflect their perceptions of the types of decision they see financial literacy relating to. Some ethnic groups saw financial literacy as being of more relevance for larger, less frequent financial decisions, but saw less connection, and relevance, to the day to day choices they had to make. Ethnicity also potentially has an indirect effect, as informal sources of advice, and those that promote a financial market perspective, tend to be valued more highly. The implications are worrying given that the respondents are the more highly educated independent young members of the population. Current attempts to assist the development of financial literacy therefore appear to be failing those from some ethnic minority groups. This will leave them at a continuing disadvantage, unless interventions can highlight the day to day importance and value of financial literacy.

Purpose: Williams and Williams (2012, 2017) find multiple entrepreneurial motivations are experienced by entrepreneurs in deprived areas at different points in time. Drawing on this prior work this study aims to explore how and why the shifted motivations evolve, as well as, what factors cause this change in deprived areas. The work draws upon temporal motivational theory (TMT) that considers the influence of individuals' needs in determining their time-sensitive motivation. Design/methodology/approach: Six semi-structured interviews with actual entrepreneurs are used to collect qualitative data from deprived areas of Nottingham, which is one of the most deprived cities in the UK. The study employs Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to consider each entrepreneurial endeavour as a unique journey to investigate the shifting of motivations. Findings: A polarization is found in terms of how entrepreneurial motivations evolve in deprived areas. In considering the first task-specific entrepreneurial motivation, time plays a role either in accumulating job dissatisfaction and increasing confidence led by accumulated experience, or in creating random chances that enable individuals to realize that they are able to use existing skills and experiences to start a business. Regarding the second task-specific entrepreneurial motivation when the business becomes more established, it is usually stimulated by increased confidence based on perceived progress. The use of self-help methods and downward comparison found in this study should be noted as they help to re-consider individuals' needs in deprived areas. Originality/value: This study produces a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of the time effect on shifted motivation at different entrepreneurial phases in a deprived context, which contributes to enrich theoretical knowledge and raise policymakers' awareness of entrepreneurial motivations from these marginalized groups.