Semester Award Granted

Summer 2025

Submission Date

July 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Siri Terjesen

Abstract

Government policy has long been used as a lever to stimulate entrepreneurship, yet its outcomes vary widely across contexts, prompting renewed interest in how such policies shape entrepreneurial activity. This dissertation investigates the multifaceted relationship between government policy and entrepreneurship using a two-essay framework that draws on extant literature and qualitative field data. It examines how policies not only create structural conditions but also activate symbolic mechanisms that influence individual behavior and occupational choices.

The first essay conducts a systematic review of 166 articles published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals between 1993 and 2024. It maps theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and policy effects across global settings, organizing the literature around a novel taxonomy of government policy activism and levels of entrepreneurial activity. The analysis reveals a bifurcated scholarly landscape— one advocating for activist policy interventions and another emphasizing minimal state involvement—highlighting a lack of integration across perspectives. Findings show that government policies can simultaneously enable and constrain entrepreneurship, depending on institutional environments and policy design. The essay advances a research agenda that calls for greater attention to micro-level mechanisms, policy heterogeneity, and outcomes in developing contexts.

The second essay explores how individuals interpret enabling policy environments through identity work. Drawing on 48 interviews with diasporic returnees, government officials, and traditional leaders in Ghana, the study theorizes how symbolic policy interventions such as the “Year of Return” and “Beyond the Return” trigger a four-phase identity shift—activation, commitment, anchoring, and confirmation. This process gives rise to three distinct identity pathways—leadership, survivalist, and assimilationist—each of which correlates with a different occupational outcome: opportunity entrepreneurship, necessity entrepreneurship, or formal employment. The essay contributes to external enabler theory by introducing identity work as a micro-mechanism explaining heterogeneous behavioral responses to the same policy context.

Together, these essays offer a multi-level understanding of how government policy influences entrepreneurship by linking institutional structures with interpretive processes. They contribute to theory on policy effectiveness, identity construction, and entrepreneurial behavior, with implications for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to design inclusive and context-sensitive entrepreneurship policies.

Download

Share

COinS