Date of Award
Spring 2025
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Moore School of Business
First Advisor
Christopher B. Yenkey
Abstract
This dissertation presents a study of the effects of social mechanisms on entrepreneurship as an occupational choice. Essay 1 studies the effects of social status perceptions and corruption concerns on the entrepreneurial intent of students at elite universities in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Grounded ethnographic interviews suggest that this understudied group can be reticent to choose entrepreneurship because of two social mechanisms that devalue this occupational choice: lower perceived status arising from entrepreneurship’s association with necessity and failure to secure a traditional white-collar office job and corruption concerns arising from expectations that owners rather than employees may be expected to deal with unethical bribe solicitations when they arise. I test these social mechanisms using a two-part field study (N=1,737) of a survey followed by a behavioral game experiment. Results support predictions that status perceptions and corruption concerns predict entrepreneurial intent, with strongest effects for those that perceive they will have a greater degree of choice between entrepreneurship and other wage employment options. Using the same dataset from Essay 1, Essay 2 extends the work of Essay 1 by studying the effect of social status perceptions and corruption concerns on decisions to start another venture following business failures. I posit that the prospect of increased social status weakens the negative effect of business failure such that those who perceive the status of entrepreneurs to be higher are more likely to start another business after a venture failure. In contrast, I posit that corruption concerns strengthen the negative effect of business failure on subsequent decisions to start another venture as dealing with bribery can become an additional drain on the psychological resources needed to persist. Results support the prediction that corruption concerns moderate the negative effect of business failure on subsequent decisions to start another venture; however, I find no evidence of a significant moderating effect of status perceptions. Finally, Essay 3 utilizes a multilevel dataset consisting of data on 755,859 individuals from 103 countries to study the relationship between social status perceptions and entrepreneurship across national contexts. Individual level data comes from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor adult population survey, which is combined with country level data from World Bank’s Development Indicators, the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators, and the International Labour Organization Statistics database. Results show that social status perceptions of entrepreneurship have a significant association with the employer form of entrepreneurship (1+ other employees) but not with own account entrepeneurship (0 other employees). Results also show that the association is more significant in countries with higher rates of own account employment, which implies that interventions designed to spur entrepreneurial activity in these countries should consider social status perceptions in addition to the more common feasibility interventions designed to address constraints around financial and human capital. Together, my dissertation advances our understanding of the influence of social factors beyond the feasibility factors identified by prior research. Furthermore, it is one of the first studies to focus on the university educated in sub-Saharan Africa, a high-potential yet understudied population with higher capabilities of starting ventures that can scale and create jobs for others. Findings from this dissertation suggest that researchers and practitioners interested in supporting entrepreneurship in developing countries should pay closer attention to social dynamics in these contexts that can influence entrepreneurship as an occupational choice.
Rights
© 2025, Nathaniel Ryan Hill
Recommended Citation
Hill, N. R.(2025). Entrepreneurship as a Socially Devalued Occupational Choice. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/8335