Entrepreneurship of micro, small and medium enterprises in Benin: What role does diy play in identifying the entrepreneurial opportunities of leaders and their orientation towards learning?

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the influences of diy on the entrepreneurship of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Benin through the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities for leaders in order to regulate their orientation towards learning. In this perspective, we considered it imperative to adopt a quantitative methodological approach which made it possible to validate the measuring instruments constructed and to test research hypotheses using a questionnaire drawn up with 250 managers of 80 MSMEs whose data were inserted in IBM SPSS-Amos 26.0 software to highlight processed empirical results. The interpretation of these results indicated that surveyed MSMEs identifying more entrepreneurial opportunities are more likely to have opportunities for entrepreneurial choices and subsequently pursue innovation, adventure or strategic renewal projects. Therefore, considering the same level of tinkering, a higher level of learning orientation could help selected MSMEs to identify more opportunities through tinkering by creating a more effective learning climate that encourages production, learning, accumulation and cross-organizational sharing of experiential knowledge derived from diy to a greater extent. Leaders of surveyed MSMEs could leverage their diy activities to identify new opportunities and to create entrepreneurial initiatives. Future studies could extend this research by considering both resource and opportunity mechanisms with their interactive effect to fully understand the relationship between diy and corporate entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Corporate entrepreneurship, do-it-yourself, opportunity identification, learning orientation, MSME.

JEL classification: L1 ; L25 ; L26 ; M13 ; O32

Paper type: Empirical research