Engaging context in studying entrepreneurship :an exploratory field study on situated practices of entrepreneurs in the Middle East -

Abstract

The entrepreneurship research over the last few decades has firmly established that opportunity recognition is correlated with the traits of entrepreneurial individual-team. However, the correlation often explains at best up to one-quarter to one-third of variance in success. More recently, this has led scholars to call for research that pays greater attention to processes and contextual forces shaping entrepreneurship, focusing on the actions of entrepreneurs and practices of entrepreneurship in situ. This type of research in the Middle Eastern region is even more pressing given the dearth of studies on the topic in general and on these specific aspects of entrepreneurship in particular. This research project addresses the latter gap by studying the actions of five fairly successful entrepreneurs and the practices of entrepreneurship they engaged in to tackle the challenges their firms faced as they grew their firms. On the one hand, the research focused on the role of four different contextual elements: social, spatial, institutional and business. On the other hand, the research addressed the key dimensions of effectuation during entrepreneurship: starting with means; affordable loss; forming partnerships; exploiting contingencies; and exercising future orientation. First and foremost, the findings of this research demonstrate that indeed context plays a key role in shaping the entrepreneurial actions. However, more importantly the research shows that certain contextual elements (e.g., civil war foreign exchange fluctuations, energy and water cuts) can be highly salient in determining the fate of the entrepreneur’s actions—albeit as a necessary but not sufficient condition. Second, the research has successfully shown that the logic of effectuation provides a productive framework to study the courses of action entrepreneurs have taken overall. In 3 cases, the 5 elements of effectuation appear to be present: starting with means; affordable loss; and exercising future orientation. The notion of partn