Entrepreneurship In The Informal Sector

How many businesses start-ups conduct some or all of their trade ‘off-the-books’? And how many enterprises continue to do some of their work off-the-books once they are more established? What should be done about them? Should governments adopt ever more punitive measures to eradicate them? Or should we recognise this hidden enterprise culture and attempt to harness it? If so, how can this be done? What measures can be taken to ensure that businesses start-up in a proper manner? And what can be done to help those enterprises and entrepreneurs currently working off-the-books to legitimise their businesses? The aim of this book is to advance a new way of answering these questions. Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, informal sector entrepreneurship is explained as resulting from the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of a society’s formal institutions and the norms, values and beliefs that comprise a society’s informal institutions. The argument is that if the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs (i.e., their individual morality) were wholly aligned with the codified laws and regulations (i.e., state morality), there would be no informal sector entrepreneurship. However, because the individual morality of entrepreneurs differs from state morality, such as due to their lack of trust in government and the rule of law, the result is the prevalence of informal sector entrepreneurship. The greater the degree of institutional asymmetry, the higher is the propensity to engage in informal sector entrepreneurship. This book provides evidence to show that this is the case both at the individual- and country-level and then discusses how this can be overcome. .

Although entrepreneurship in the informal economy occurs outside state regulatory systems, informal commercial activities account for an estimated 30% of economic activity around the world. Informal entrepreneurship goes unmonitored despite the fact that it significantly contributes to poverty reduction and economic development. As a result, the informal sector is open to unethical practices including corruption, worker exploitation, and natural environment abuse to name just a few. In the media, debates have formed around whether informal entrepreneurship should be assisted or legitimized. Hence, a deep understanding of the phenomenon is vitally important. This book is the first on the market to offer models and approaches to informal entrepreneurship as well as to its prospects for economic development. Offering an in-depth examination of informal entrepreneurship in many different countries, it reveals the motivations for engaging in entrepreneurship in the informal economy, characteristics of informal entrepreneurship, and informal entrepreneurs' response to ethical issues. This volume illustrates the relationship between formal and informal economies and the conditions for the benefits of informal entrepreneurship to outweigh its disadvantages. And finally, it gives recommendations about when and how the informal economy can be formalized, which sectors should be formalized, and which ones can remain informal. This book offers much-needed guidance for stakeholders involved in economic development programs and scholars and entrepreneurs interested in the field of informal entrepreneurship as it is developing around the globe.

This book contributes to the ongoing discussion around entrepreneurship in Africa and how it can be made more sustainable. The chapters included highlight the need to consider the grey area between private and public sector dichotomy, which has been the focus of previous research efforts. The contributors to this book offer an intersectional view of entrepreneurship and widen the lens of inquiry to include informal sectors in discussions pertaining to innovation in business. The individual chapters consider economic and sociocultural contexts, the role of gender, the effect of militancy on entrepreneurship and informal small and medium enterprises. By doing so, this book argues that the neglect accorded to the informal and self-employment sectors may have hampered African business development in various ways. This book is a significant new contribution to studying informality in relation to business and entrepreneurship. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of business, economics, politics, sociology, public policy, and development studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of African Business.

During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP. The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies

This report presents the results of a SAMP survey of informal entrepreneurs connected to cross-border trade between Johannesburg and Maputou during 2014. The study sought to enhance the evidence base on the links between migration and informal entrepreneur-ship in Southern African cities and to examine the implications for municipal, national and regional policy.

While increasing attention is being paid to the drivers and forms of entrepreneurship in informal economies, much less of this policy and research focus is directed at understanding the links between mobility and informality. This report examines the current state of knowledge about this relationship with particular reference to three countries (Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe) and four cities (Cape Town, Harare, Johannesburg and Maputo), identifying major themes, knowledge gaps, research questions and policy implications.

This book will be an excellent primer for policy makers wishing to understand the nature and contradictory significance of the underground economy and needing to design suitably subtle policy responses to it. Roger Lee, Growth and Change The Hidden Enterprise Culture is a top pick for any economist or academician interested in this field, as well as for any underground entrepreneur who wants to make their enterprise lawful with the fewest possible legal complications. Midwest Book Review Strongly recommended for policy makers and students of business. Global Business Review Portraying how entrepreneurs often start out conducting some or all of their trade on an off-the-books basis and how many continue to do so once they become established, this book provides the first detailed account of the vast and ubiquitous hidden enterprise culture existing in the interstices of western economies. Until now, the role of the underground economy in enterprise creation, entrepreneurship and small business development has been largely ignored despite its widespread prevalence and importance. In contrast to much of the previous literature that views the underground economy as low-paid, exploitative sweatshop work that should be deterred, this book takes a fresh, more positive perspective that considers the underground economy as a hidden enterprise culture. Colin C. Williams prescribes the means by which western governments can best harness this hidden culture of enterprise. He outlines detailed policy initiatives that seek to assist business ventures in setting up on a formal footing, and aim to encourage underground enterprises and entrepreneurs to make the transition into the realm of legitimacy. This book provides a lucid guide as to how the hidden culture of enterprise can be brought into the open. As such, it will prove invaluable to a wide-ranging audience including scholars and students of business studies, entrepreneurship, management, economics and regional science.

Informal economic activity, defined as exchanges made by individuals and organizations in extra-legal or non-bureaucratic contexts, represents a significant and growing share of global economic activity. The informal economy brings to mind images of street vendors in markets and bazaars throughout the developing world; indeed, informal economic activity ranges from 25-75% of economic activity, depending on the country under study. Informal activity also includes "under the table," or "off the books" business in the developed world, such as informal labor arrangements in child care, construction, or home cleaning in the United States or Western Europe. What many fail to realize, however, is the increasing presence of informal economic activity in the developed world’s largest corporations and most innovative entrepreneurial ventures, such as technology development work in Silicon Valley, open source software agreements, or employment arrangements between "technology stars" and firms. Management, Society, and the Informal Economy brings to light the role of the informal economy in the 21st century. The book does more than illuminate, however – it also calls for increased focus on the informal economy by management scholars. Each chapter contains a call to action, as well as practical and methodological advice for scholarship on the topic. Management, Society, and the Informal Economy contains a multi-faceted set of arguments, descriptions, and illustrations designed to convince management scholars that they should attend to the informal economy and view it as a serious and rigorous context for theorizing, empirical research, and even practical advocacy.