Religious Beliefs and Entrepreneurial Behaviors in Africa: A Case Study of the Informal Sector in Uganda

ABSTRACT

Religion plays a major role in Africa’s polity and its influence on the business landscape of the continent has been acknowledged in literature. This study contributes to the discourse by investigating and explaining how religious beliefs shape entrepreneurial behaviors in Uganda’s informal sector. Using a qualitative methodology, we explored how entrepreneurs in the context use or adopt religious beliefs in their entrepreneurial activities. By spanning a diverse set of entrepreneurial activities in the informal sector − food vendors, fabricators, hawkers, and recyclers among others − we conducted 49 in-depth interviews. Our findings reveal that the entrepreneurs relied on their religious beliefs in defining and coping with a penurious context. Further to this, we explain how religious beliefs galvanize business behaviors and calibrate the entrepreneurial identities of respondents in the context. To facilitate future work, the study highlights how knowledge gaps in the cultural and social setup of the informal economy will produce new insights in entrepreneurship research. It concludes by guiding policymakers and educators to engage and involve faith-based institutions in the entrepreneurship promotion agenda.

KEYWORDS:

• religious beliefs
• entrepreneurial behavior
• informality
• Africa

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes on Contributors

Dr. Rebecca Namatovu is a Senior Lecturer at Makerere University Business School in Uganda. She earned her PhD from the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. Her research interests are in entrepreneurship behaviour amongst minorities and SME growth. She has published her work in academic outlets like Journal of Business Venturing, Academy of Managment Learning and Education, Journal of Development Entrepreneurship and Africa Journal of Management.

Dr. Samuel Dawa is a Senior Lecturer at Makerere University Business School in Uganda. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science. He has researched and published on women, youth and sustainable entrepreneurship.

Dr. Adeyinka Adewale is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the Henley Business School in Reading in the UK. His doctoral research was in the field of business ethics with a special focus on contexts, especially bureaucracies and their impact on employee morality. His most recent research focus has been in the field of entrepreneurship in emerging economies. He has given talks and facilitated seminars on ethics, bureaucracy and digital government at conferences in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Dr. Fiona Mulira is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Makerere University Business School in Uganda. She has spent the last eight years conducting research in the areas of human resources, entrepreneurship, education and sustainable development among marginalized groups (youth, women, persons with disabilities and former child soldiers) in resource constrained environments. Her PhD research was on entrepreneurship learning and economic sustainability of microenterprises operated by women with disabilities in Uganda.

ORCID

Adeyinka Adewale http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7502-2875