Title: Effectuation, business group affiliation and R&D adoption of new ventures in Africa

Authors: George Acheampong

Addresses: Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Ghana Business School, Ghana; College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract: This study explores how new ventures in Africa use effectuation and business group affiliation as well as their interaction to survive the uncertain African business environment. We test our hypotheses with cross-country survey data from several African countries from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The data is analysed using OLS regression and the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. The study finds that effectual entrepreneurial strategy improves R&D adoption through the utilisation of firm means and adopting affordable loss as risk mitigation strategy. The study also provides support for claim that the contingency component of effectuation strategy has a negative effect on R&D adoption. However, this relationship is dampened when a new venture also adopts business group affiliation as a strategy in dealing with institutional voids.

Keywords: effectuation; R&D; business group affiliation; entrepreneurship; small business; Africa.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2023.130270

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2023 Vol.20 No.2, pp.163 - 182

Received: 14 Oct 2021
Received in revised form: 24 May 2022
Accepted: 03 Jul 2022
Published online: 14 Apr 2023 *

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