Understanding local entrepreneurship and small enterprises in the tourism–development nexus: The case of western Uganda

ABSTRACT

Most studies of the tourism–development nexus in developing countries tend to focus on short-term and monetary tourism effects, while understating non-monetary and longer-term effects of tourism on local and regional development. Although less tangible and weakly understood, non-monetary and/or long-term tourism effects can both reinforce and undermine short-term and monetary tourism effects. This article analyses how tourism stimulates local entrepreneurship and small enterprise development, and to what extent these small enterprises fuel non-monetary aspects of regional development. Evidence from career pathways of different types of local entrepreneurs in western Uganda suggests that tourism can enlarge peoples’ capabilities, awareness and assets to control their own well-being. This study indicates that tourism can act as a catalyst for small enterprise development in the local economy without inducing major skills’ leakages.

KEYWORDS:

• Local entrepreneurship
• small enterprises
• tourism
• regional development
• western Uganda

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Tourism-related factors comprise the type of tourism development of the site, the entrepreneurial capacity of local entrepreneurs to meet the tourism demand directly or indirectly by supplying other tourism businesses, and the historical development of tourism on different scales. Non-tourism-related factors embed the stage of local economic development, the structure of the local economy and the presence of entrepreneurial skills, which influence the business environment and hence small enterprise participation (Wall & Mathieson, 2006).

2 The conceptual model ‘follows the tourism dollar through the tourism value chain’ in three pathways by which tourism benefits and costs can be transmitted to a specific target group – that is, the poor – via direct, indirect and dynamic effects (Mitchell, 2012; Mitchell et al., 2015). Dynamic effects include long-term changes in the local economy and patterns of growth, such as increasing entrepreneurial motivations and skills development, or the erosion of natural assets due to tourism (Mitchell & Ashley, 2010; Mitchell, 2012; Mitchell et al., 2015). The details of this model are discussed in several recent articles, and will hence not be explained in this article. For further details, we refer to the primary source of the model (Mitchell & Ashley, 2010).

3 Tourism activities around KNP are organised in different settings, shaped by cultural, socio-economic, physical and political characteristics (Adiyia et al., 2014). Because small business performance is partly shaped by its business environment (Figure 1), KNP is an interesting case to understand different types of interactions between the external sphere and small business performance.

4 Future research could track entrepreneurs through different points in time to evaluate the ratio of skill leakages, and assess the impact of entrepreneurs that left the destination on the social structures of the area.

5 Purposive sampling is based on the assumption that certain categories of individuals may have a unique or important perspective on the phenomenon in question (Robinson, 2014).

6 Any typology of individuals that is based on a limited set of criteria is not able to encompass the complexity of the organisation and decision-making of those individuals (Thomas et al., 2011). The different categories in this study are used as a descriptive tool to better understand entrepreneurial dynamics using different perspectives. Accordingly, the authors are able to determine essential aspects and recognise variations of the experience as a kind of triangulation (Polkinghorne, 2005:140). The authors chose ‘primary activity’ as a measure to discriminate entrepreneurs to examine local entrepreneurship beyond the narrowly defined tourism sector.

7 An individual can be simultaneously at different stages. For example, category E entrepreneurs are employed in tourism, while having a small business beyond tourism. In addition, career paths of entrepreneurs can be non-linear, implying that individuals in the employment or entrepreneurial stage can still follow different types of educational courses to strengthen their knowledge and enhance their human capital base. Therefore, movements between stages can be reversible and/or temporary.