Zayadin_2017.pdf (1.92 MB)
Understanding the Entrepreneurs Context: A Phenomenographic Approach
thesis
posted on 2023-08-30, 16:10 authored by Rana ZayadinThis study investigates the variation in entrepreneurs’ own understanding and experience of
their context. Previous research has focused either on the entrepreneur in terms of behaviour
and characteristics towards opportunities or on the context and the factors that influence the
entrepreneurial activity nationally, regionally or within a specific industry. These studies had a
limited focus on the entrepreneur own understanding and how they reason their contextual
factors based on their experience. This limitation is mainly due to the methodological
approaches used in these studies. To address this limitation, I will be using phenomenography
to explore the variation in entrepreneurs’ own understanding and experience of context in
Jordan. Jordan is a developing country situated in midst of political instability. To capture the
variation in the lived experience from the entrepreneurs’ perspective, I will be asking “how do
entrepreneurs understand their local context; How they experience the context of regional
instability? and how context is presented in training?”. Underpinning the individual decision is a
personal experience that needs to be captured and to understand the reasoning with which it is
applied (Jones and Casulli 2014). Previous discussions of context have tended to be limited to
the description of its spatial, temporal, geographic and cultural elements, and this has affected
the development of theory about context and limited our understanding of context (Sarasvathay
and Venkataraman, 2011; Welter, 2011; Zahra and Wright, 2011; Zahra 2007). Therefore, this
research will focus on the individual level understandings and experience of context during time
of regional instability; and the role of training in shaping these experiences using
phenomenography as a methodology.
The result of this research will introduce “framework of entrepreneurs’ context”. The framework
will present the entrepreneurs’ understanding and experiences in contextualising their activity
and the role of entrepreneurial training in shaping their understanding. As a result, context
carries different meanings within entrepreneurial activity, and thus the variability in, and
idiosyncratic nature of, the entrepreneurs’ context is captured.
History
Institution
Anglia Ruskin UniversityFile version
- Accepted version
Language
- eng
Thesis name
- PhD
Thesis type
- Doctoral