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Poverty and the varieties of entrepreneurship in the pursuit of prosperity

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jonathan Kimmitt, Dr Robert Newbery

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).


Abstract

In this paper, we revisit the entrepreneurship and poverty relationship under a eudaimonic perspective that brings together conversion factors, and future prosperity expectations. Based on an fsQCA of changes in life circumstances of 166 farm households in rural Kenya, we explore how different combinations of conversion factors enable distinct forms of entrepreneuring in the pursuit of prosperity. Results show that strong entrepreneurship-enabled future prosperity expectations result from three combinations of enabling conversion factors shaping up three varieties of entrepreneurial endeavors: family-frugal, individual-market, and family-inwards, which show a much more diverse and counterintuitive reality. Our research contributes to literature by revealing and theorizing on a split picture portraying the many ways in which farmers, acting as everyday entrepreneurs, exploit real opportunities in seemingly identical impoverished communities. It also reveals a central disconnect between entrepreneurship, life-satisfaction and financial improvements when assessed against expectations of future prosperity. In doing so, this paper responds to calls for a better understanding of the processes whereby entrepreneurship can distinctively improve current and future life circumstances, and the many ways in which this may happen.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Kimmitt J, Muñoz P, Newbery R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Business Venturing

Year: 2020

Volume: 35

Issue: 4

Print publication date: 01/07/2020

Online publication date: 14/06/2019

Acceptance date: 31/05/2019

Date deposited: 03/06/2019

ISSN (print): 0883-9026

ISSN (electronic): 1873-2003

Publisher: Elsevier

URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.05.003

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.05.003


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