Title: Institutional entrepreneurship in the Ethiopian coffee industry

Authors: Timothy Curtis; Raffi Nalbandian

Addresses: Department of Social Work and Communities, School of Health, The University of Northampton, Northampton, UK ' Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Northampton Business School, The University of Northampton, Northampton, UK

Abstract: This paper explores the underlying public entrepreneurship in the coffee industry in Ethiopia. It investigates the concept of political innovation in a public sector entrepreneurship agenda, in the context of work exploring the employment of entrepreneurship by the state as a economic and social development strategy in post-socialist countries such as China (Curtis, 2011) and Poland (Curtis et al., 2010). The case study confirms other research on post-socialist economies but indicates the risks of participation in commodity markets, rather than shaping long-term markets (Mazzucato, 2011), and being subjected to the turmoil of unregulated markets, rather than mastering of them.

Keywords: public entrepreneurship; institutional entrepreneurship; Ethiopia; coffee industry; post-socialist economies; public sector; political innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEI.2012.047631

International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2012 Vol.1 No.3, pp.281 - 294

Published online: 29 Nov 2014 *

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