Evaluating the motives of informal entrepreneurs: some lessons from Ukraine

To understand entrepreneurs' motivations, it has become increasingly common to distinguish between those driven by necessity (or pushed) and those driven by opportunity (or pulled) into entrepreneurship. Until now, entrepreneurs operating wholly or partially in the informal economy have been widely assumed to be necessity-driven, pushed into this enterprise as a survival strategy in the absence of alternatives. To evaluate whether this is indeed the case, this paper reports one of the first surveys of informal entrepreneurs' motives. Reporting face-to-face interviews conducted in Ukraine during 2005–06 with 298 informal entrepreneurs, the finding is although most identified themselves as necessity entrepreneurs when initially asked whether they were either pushed or pulled, subsequent questions reveal in the vast majority of cases, there were not only both push and pull factors driving their original decision to start-up informal enterprises, but also a clear shift among these entrepreneurs as their business became established away from necessity-oriented motivations and toward more opportunity-oriented motivations. The outcome is a call for a transcendence of a static either/or approach and the adoption of a dynamic both/and approach that recognizes the coexistence of necessity- and opportunity-drivers as well as the fluidity of entrepreneurs' motivations.

Are indigenous approaches to achieving influence in business organizations distinctive? A comparative study of guanxi, wasta, jeitinho, svyazi and pulling strings

Managers in five nations rated scenarios exemplifying indigenous forms of informal influence whose cultural origins were concealed. Locally generated scenarios illustrated episodes of guanxi, wasta, jeitinho, svyazi and pulling strings. Local scenarios were judged representative of local influence processes but so too were some scenarios derived from other contexts. Furthermore, many scenarios were rated as more typical in non-local contexts. While these influence processes are found to be widely disseminated, they occur more frequently in contexts characterized by high self-enhancement values, low self-transcendence values and high endorsement of business corruptibility. Implications for a fuller understanding of local business practices are discussed. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.