Informal women entrepreneurship amidst institutional voids through the lens of institutional logics

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study why and how informal women entrepreneurship unfolds in economies that are riddled with gendered and concurrent institutional voids. It consists of three distinct research papers. The first paper integrates the institutional voids perspective with the institutional logics approach to conceptualize how informal women entrepreneurs may strategize when facing both enabling and constraining conditions arising from gendered and concurrent institutional voids, and across different institutional orders. By bridging the discourses on institutional orders, institutional voids and institutional logics, it strengthens the conceptual sensitivity of the developed framework, extends prior work on complexity of institutional environment that influences women entrepreneurs in the informal sector and their response strategies, and presents a research agenda for advancement of knowledge to other socio-spatial and cultural contexts. The second paper qualitatively explores the conflicting influences of the institutional order of family on the motivations to pursue informal entrepreneurship and on the response strategies informal women entrepreneurs devise to resolve the conflicting and contending logics. It focuses on the impact of enabling, orienting or constraining family logics on decision making; hence rendering visible the reflective and pre-reflective agency of informal women entrepreneurs. This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the engagement of micro-process such as strategy formulation with existing meso and macro-institutional structures. It expands the theory of vi institutional logics prespective by taking into account the unexplored environmental dimension of gendered and concurrent institutional voids. The third paper explores the role of digital space in enabling informal women entrepreneurship in developing economies, characterized by gendered and concurrent institutional voids. It discovers the unique mechanisms of interaction between societal and digital logics which result in transposing and diffusing entrepreneurial practices across societal and digital contexts. This study advances the understanding of the role of digitisation as a contemporary, and emerging institutional logic. It also addresses institutional complexity in developing economies in stimulating digital entrepreneurship opportunities for women entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Mine Karatas-Ozkan: orcid.org/0000-0002-9199-4156

ORCID for Vadim Grinevich: orcid.org/0000-0002-3207-3680

Catalogue record

Export record