The global entrepreneurial behaviour: Empretec and the behavioural change in the Global South

• In Event: 4366 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Markets and Labor in the Global Economy

Abstract

Entrepreneurship policies have gained increasing prominence in economic development agendas in recent decades. Some policies include strategies to promote a type of economic subject that resembles the Schumpeterian entrepreneur. This article explores the historical formation, the global diffusion, and the resilience of behavioral approaches that seek to constitute entrepreneurial competencies and behaviors in the global South. Taking the Empretec as a case study, a program introduced by the United Nations to develop entrepreneurship in emerging economies, this article draws inspiration from the literatures on policy diffusion and cognitive institutional analysis to describe how behavioral approaches to entrepreneurship building came into existence, and were actively diffused throughout the global South. The article argues that the global diffusion of entrepreneurial subjects through behavioral programs involves entities and actors from different spatial-temporal orders. As time passes, behavioral approaches to entrepreneurship face increasing criticisms within academia, but the support from international governance institutions buffers these critiques and continue to legitimate an economic subject in the image created by global North scholars and institutions.

Author

• Aline Coutinho, University of Ottawa