Understanding the individual in personal initiative action-based entrepreneurial interventions: a realist evaluation

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is an important driving force for economic development in emerging economies traditionally driven by ineffective top-down approaches. More recently, a bottom-up individual-level approach has offered a more sustainable way to stimulate African entrepreneurial growth. A psychological approach was introduced into action-based interventions by incorporating Personal Initiative (PI) in interventions, training entrepreneurs to become more entrepreneurially active to nurture the entrepreneurial mindset. The approach positively impacted entrepreneurial performance, producing increased business profits, employment, and business growth over time. How exactly these interventions work in a learning environment, for whom, and in what way remained unclear. Therefore, a deduced programme theory was constructed and empirically evaluated to understand these interventions better. A multiple case study strategy cast in a realist evaluation design was used to investigate two interventions consisting of female entrepreneurs to produce qualitative data that were analysed inductively to make sense of change and the learning in these interventions. The findings produced valuable insights visually presented in analytical frameworks that show adjustments to the Personal Initiative (PI) deduced programme theory. On an individual level, it showed how unique attitudes guides action-formation, situational, and transformational mechanisms that support patterns of outcome in context to ascertain what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how. The findings also extended the Action Regulation Theory (ART) by showing, with an analytical framework, how Individual attitudes play an active role in information seeking to impact the action sequence. From the results, five propositions were developed to be tested in future studies to continue the discussion about entrepreneurs and their learning behaviours to increase entrepreneurial action that nurtures the entrepreneurial mindset