Entrepreneurs facing the transition from informal to formal in the African context: exploring a female perspective

Abstract

This article addresses a major challenge in management research in Africa, namely the consideration of the African context in the scientific knowledge produced. The analysis of the literature on the transition of entrepreneurs from the informal sector to the formal sector reveals a lack of theoretical contextualization and limited attention to gender. At the empirical level, there is a practical mismatch between existing theoretical approaches and the specific context of informal women entrepreneurs seeking to transition to the formal sector in African settings. These gaps are the reasons that motivated us to conduct this study, which aims to explore this transitional process to fill them. The grounded theory methodology allowed for the construction and analysis of a corpus of experience narratives from 19 units of analysis, transcribed as the interviews progressed. The results facilitated the development of a theoretical framework that distinguishes four types of transition, namely the transition for the pursuit of well-being, for the concern of integration, for recognition, and for conformity, and for each of these four transitions, the involvement of the actors, particularly the female entrepreneur and her environment, proves to be necessary.

JEL classification : D63, L26, O17

Paper type : empirical research