Localizing Entrepreneurship Education-conv

By Evren Tok and Asma AlFadala

Should entrepreneurship be guided by morals or by turning a profit? This book explores this question and highlights the necessity for an immediate response to create a balance between the traditional and modern fast-moving economies, using the State of Qatar as an example.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press
• Release date: Mar 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9789927151798

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SECTION I

DIMENSIONS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION

Chapter 1

Localizing Entrepreneurship Education (EE): An Introduction

M. Evren Tok, Asmaa Al Fadala and Bayan Khaled

This book attempts to illustrate the reasons why entrepreneurship requires to be guided by morals rather than making profits. Various chapters highlight the necessity for immediate response to create a balance between the traditional and modern fast-moving economies like Qatar. Establishing the moral direction for entrepreneurship aids in establishing the link between capitalism and social cohesion, markets and culture, tradition and modernization, and localization and globalization. This book enlightens how this balance can be achieved and how Qatar’s economy was able to transition to a diversified knowledge-based economy while holding onto its strengths and values.

This book is meant to enhance our knowledge of entrepreneurship in the local context. It exhibits the relationship between the morals of the society, experiences and behavior of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship education (EE). It looks at the impacts of cultural values, norms, and traits that need more reflection and thinking. The increasing interest in entrepreneurship can be utilized as an accelerator for economic education and diversification efforts. Different chapters in the book point to the growing interests and the effect of entrepreneurship in local and global societies. Through local case studies, it goes further to highlight the characteristics of the entrepreneurial formations and qualities that work perfectly in the Gulf nations like Qatar.

According to the General Secretariat for Development Planning (2008), addressing the challenges named in the Qatar National Vision (QNV) 2030 was critical in creating a cohesive entrepreneurship ecosystem that is built on the sound ethical and moral values of Qatar. Localizing Entrepreneurship Education provides a platform for partners and stakeholders in the nation to create a sustainable and tailored national entrepreneurship program. The study focuses on the environment of learning institutions and training, establishing the relationship between public and private entrepreneurship, and providing informed thinking about entrepreneurship. The country has already put measures in place through awards, degrees, loans, incubators, consultation, funds, and programs. The study further looks at the provisions that Qatar has made to identify the gaps that existed and improved entrepreneurship opportunities in Qatar.

Entrepreneurship education was introduced to mainstream literature more than 10 years ago and went a long way in capturing the attention of policy makers and stakeholders of private businesses in many nations. Entrepreneurship education began with the UNESCO conference that was held in 1998. Since then it has been a strong pillar of the economic development strategies of many countries (Green et al., 2014). One of the setbacks of the existing literature is that it fails to represent the worldwide definition of what entrepreneurship education is all about. The scope of this kind of education differs significantly according to the territory, needs and population of various jurisdictions.

This book studies localized entrepreneurship education in an organized manner. It is transformative and informative because of the localized version of EE, meaning it is a useful resource to various stakeholders who are yearning to learn entrepreneurship as a subject and engage in teaching entrepreneurship in an interdisciplinary fashion. The effect of culture on entrepreneurship has not been studied for a long time but this book explored the attitudes, perception, and skills and their effects on EE (Liñán et al, 2015; Chell & Karataş-Özkan, 2014).

Furthermore, the book also exhibits how entrepreneurship is often underestimated when it comes to conducting business in a given society. It looks at how the economic behavior is embedded in different cultural structures, scripts, codes, and social institutions. Entrepreneurship, as a subject, is viewed as one of the vital economic factors in a nation that is influenced by the cultural traits of the underlying societies. This book thus helps in enhancing the available pedagogies and existing ways of executing entrepreneurship education by looking at the different types of entrepreneurship education in Qatar that is shaped by its extraordinary traditions and culture.

It is evident that entrepreneurship motivates people to look for opportunities beyond what they can control. Management thus has a daunting task in ensuring that it motivates and influences its subject through processes and cultural systems. Leaders have to possess visionary skills that will help them partner with teams in the development and identification of opportunities that will give them a competitive advantage.

Moral issues are common in entrepreneurial situations. Entrepreneurs are often driven by the desire to make profit and this has resulted in many of them betraying normative entrepreneurship ethics. Most of them usually perform dismally in the area of ethical challenges (Gangi, 2017). Moreover, many entrepreneurs never observe the issue of ethics when doing business. To many of them, it is usually an issue of maximizing profits. These conflicts often result in poor moral judgment and wrong decision-making because they do not allow self-regulation (Byrant, 2009). When an entrepreneur observes the right moral reasoning, he makes the right decision based on the background knowledge of moral and ethical business principles. Subsequently, the lack of moral awareness is the reason why many entrepreneurs do not take into consideration moral aspects during the decision-making process. Moral awareness is thus critical as it acts as the foundation of ethical decision-making and moral reasoning.

Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the economic growth of a nation. It creates employment opportunities and encourages technological innovation that stimulates development. Therefore, it means that entrepreneurs often serve as the agents of change. Since it is associated with the establishment of new markets, products and businesses, the people involved are able to experiment new techniques and products (Periz-Otiz & Merigó-Lindahl, 2015). The Qatari government has been able to take the issue of entrepreneurship advancement seriously and this has led to the diversification of the economy. Education programs and entrepreneurship trainings have been initiated and helped in establishing entrepreneurship progress while nurturing novelty. The implementation is based on preparing entrepreneurs with the right skills that empower them to establish their own companies. Despite the booming entrepreneurship sector in Qatar, there has been little research on this subject.

This book, therefore, seeks to build on the previous research by looking into training experience and EE in Qatar. This analysis helps identify the Qatari experience while, at the same time, provides a snippet into its strengths and benefits. This research is valuable as it seeks to create an understanding of EE in the context of Qatar.

In addition to the economic base, entrepreneurship is defined as a social process that is built on different realms of non-economics. For instance, the common view is that entrepreneurship is built on the behaviors of individuals. There is however a great deal of complexity in terms of the nature of entrepreneurial adventures. Is it just a solo adventure or there is more? The process of entrepreneurship involves the cognitive dimensions that actualize ideas into actions. The initiatives are usually followed by the preparatory stages that are often mentally challenging. The individuals are usually at the center of the process in both cases regardless of how the process plays out and connect with the other components involved in the entrepreneurial journey. Ultimately, the transformative power of entrepreneurship is often presented in its collective nature.

The need to study localized understandings of EE in Qatar has a strong relationship with the country’s vision 2030 and development plans. According to QNV 2030, the nation is supposed to be an advanced nation by then that is capable of sustaining and charting its economic development. This is meant to secure the current generation, the near future generation and the far future generations (QNV 2008: 2). The tension between modernization and holding on to traditions is one major challenge that the country is facing in its quest. The economic, environmental, social, and human pillars are already in place to secure the benefits of these forms of embeddedness. Establishing the moral basis of entrepreneurship in this modern era could help in unraveling opportunities between localization and globalization. Other factors include markers and culture, tradition and modernization, and capitalism and religion.

Cultural norms, institutional memories, and shared societal values play varying roles in shaping economic behavior. Entrepreneurs need to be informed of the alternatives in societal frameworks. This is critical in preserving their attachment to societal ties and launching more creative and inventive undertakings. Entrepreneurs will benefit from decision making mindsets therefore confirming societal embeddedness by linking monetary income with social justice.

Communities, social forces, cultural traits and various other non-economic factors influence the economic sphere. They are essential as factors that lead value conversion. Local communities are tasked with offering material space, social life and economic assets. Localizing EE is therefore a fruitful lens to understand how these resources are allocated in different contexts through a variety of different distillations of economic, social and cultural institutions.

Overall, this book is expected to contribute to the existing educational and practical aspects of EE by promoting the advancement of young leaders by: cultivating a value driven transformative and responsible financial, investment and economic scene nationally, regionally and globally; undertaking future research on the relationship between ethics and formation of entrepreneurial attitudes; and finally, fostering motivation, creativity and leadership competencies to better identify and capitalize on global opportunities.

We hope that through this study, the Qatari context will benefit by identifying global opportunities in terms of the role entrepreneurship could play in the global economic system. At the same time, globally known ideas and institutions will have a chance to identify the potential and opportunities culminating from the Qatari context.

Chapter Descriptions

The book is divided into four separate sections.

Section One tackles big questions. This section aims at identifying the attributes of contextualizing EE.

Chapter 1 starts with an overview of existing studies in the literature which offer varying interpretations of contextualization. This chapter builds the overall framework of the book by arguing that contextualizing EE entails a number of attributes such as receptivity to learn from global experiences, undertaking national strategies and policies, and finally, being sensitive to dominant value systems in society.

Chapter 2 by Leslie Pal and Marlene Fisher studies how global approaches and national agendas relate to EE. Thinking EE at a global level, identifying best practices and showcasing the potential mechanisms of learning and policy transfer are studied in this chapter.

Chapter 3 by Cristina D’Alessandro engages with international and global perspectives on building strategies for contextualizing entrepreneurship education. The chapter outlines key parameters and variables that affect sustainability of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Chapter 4 by Asmaa Al Fadala and Tasneem Amatullah interrogates the role of leadership training and agility in raising entrepreneurs. Authors argue that entrepreneurs need an agile mindset that will contribute to meaningful progress in their unique entrepreneurial contexts by employing evidence-based strategies. Particularly, adopting agile mindsets will enable entrepreneurs to adjust, learn, and iterate throughout the process until the desired goal is achieved.

Section Two of the study delves into the nexus of Education, Law and Policy. The chapters included in this section jointly underscore the importance of legal, environmental, educational and motivational elements that lead to contextually relevant EE models.

Chapter 5 by Hany Besada shares examples of how EE could be indigenized through South-South Cooperation mechanisms. Besada provides cases of how entrepreneurial culture could be developed through indigenization.

Chapter 6 by Maha Mubarak and Remah Gharib sheds light on arts and crafts education. Mubarak and Gharib investigate the status of art education in schools in Qatar and test whether art education has been providing useful knowledge for future entrepreneurs.

Chapter 8 by Adenike Akinsemolu focuses on green entrepreneurship. Green entrepreneurship plays a pivotal role in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the major roles identified in this study are job creation, reduction of poverty, sustainable utilization of resources, and improved training and skills. Akinsemolu provides recommendations to solve these challenges and make green entrepreneurship a worthwhile venture in Africa and the Middle East.

Chapter 9 by Rabia Naguib focuses on gender-based perspectives to entrepreneurship. The chapter imbues gender and ethics based perspectives, argues that ethical and gendered perspectives are much needed in entrepreneurship education, and offers relevant and critical avenues of research in the context of Qatar.

Section Three of the study is devoted to the relationship between Islam and entrepreneurship. Given the role and defining features of religion in the economic sphere of societies in the Muslim world, values that are inflicted with religion need to be integrated.

Chapter 10 by Tariqullah Khan introduces the concept of circular economy and its relevance from an Islamic perspective. The author makes exciting connections to QNV 2030 and SDGs by showcasing the holistic nature of circular economy and its conduciveness to Islamic economy and finance in contemporary times.

Chapter 11 by Dalal Aassouli scrutinizes the critical role of financial literacy in the economic and sustainable success of entrepreneurs and defines a framework of Islamic financial literacy to promote ethics and sustainable development.

Chapter 12 by Tasneem Amatullah offers a gender-based perspective. Amatullah focuses specifically on female entrepreneurship from an Islamic standpoint. Given various disadvantages faced by women, Amatullah interrogates the role of Islam in creating opportunities that are often not easily diagnosed from conventional perspectives to entrepreneurship and employment creation.

Section Four of the book presents various case studies from Qatar.

Chapter 13 by Mohammed Abed Shirzai delves into the issues related to the competitiveness of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Qatar. Shirzai assesses the institutional and organizational nature of the ecosystem and presents key insights on entrepreneurship education.

Chapter 14 by Nayef Ibrahim introduces Ibtechar, which is the first Qatari start-up providing innovative solutions to education. Ibrahim shares the experience of Ibtechar in influencing entrepreneurial aspirations and attitudes of especially young Qataris.

Chapter 15 by Haya Al Ghanim introduces the case of Oola Sportswear. As the founder and CEO of Oola, Al Ghanim’s experience tackles the lack of Muslim sportswear for women. Al Ghanim’s personal experience represents an example of how religion and entrepreneurial values could generate market opportunities.

Chapter 16 by Asmaa Al Fadala and M. Evren Tok concludes the study.

Chapter 2

Entrepreneurship Education: Global Approaches, National Agendas

Leslie A. Pal & Marlene Fisher

Given the importance of entrepreneurship to innovative economies, governments around the world as well as international development organizations have long supported programs in entrepreneurship education. As Qatar continues to develop its own national programs to support entrepreneurship, a key question is what lessons (positive and negative) can be drawn from existing models? Are there any best and worst practices? Are there any patterns to existing programs in either program design or delivery? This chapter tries to answer these questions through a review of a number of international and national entrepreneurship programs. At the international level, we have selected the following organizations: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, the Asian Productivity Organization, the European Commission, and the United Nations. Among national governments comparable to Qatar (in size, level of economic development, or as aspirational models because of their reputed success in the field): Singapore, Malaysia, Estonia, Hong Kong, and Brunei. The first two sections of this chapter are primarily descriptive, providing summaries of the key entrepreneurship education programs we uncovered. The third section provides a synopsis and overview of the main characteristics of efforts in the field. The conclusion then assesses lessons for Qatar as it crafts its own policy and program initiatives.

International Organizations

OECD

The OECD has a core mandate for economic growth, both among its 36 members, and for the global economy. LEED (Local Economic and Employment Development) is a key program of the OECD Jobs Strategy. That mandate consequently touches on employment issues (e.g., the OECD Jobs Strategy). A key program under that header is LEED (Local Economic and Employment Development). LEED was created in 2004, and is unusually broad in the scope of its partners: national governments (both OECD and non-OECD), local governments, employment agencies, businesses, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The OECD’s work on entrepreneurship falls mainly, though not exclusively, under LEED. This work includes:

1. Statistics on entrepreneurship: Most notably the Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2018 series and the OECD-Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme (EIP).

2. Inclusivity and barriers to entrepreneurship: Primarily through a joint project with the European Commission on Inclusive Entrepreneurship in Europe. Some focus has been placed on social entrepreneurship, as well as the development of a diagnostic Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool with an online scoring system (https://www.betterentrepreneurship.eu/ ). It is designed for policy makers who wish to strengthen their support for youth, women, migrants, and the unemployed in business creation and self-employment. Various publications address these target groups (OECD, 2016a, 2013).

3. Small and medium enterprise (SME): The link between small businesses and entrepreneurship was acknowledged as early as 2000, with the creation of the OECD Bologna Process on SME and Entrepreneurship Policies and the 2000 Bologna Charter on SME Policies (https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/bolognaprocess.htm ).

4. Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (https://www.oecd.org/cfe/ ): This serves as a hub for research and events.

5. Country policy reviews: Three have been conducted to date to assess policies supporting youth entrepreneurs in Italy, Spain and Lithuania (see below for details) (OECD, 2016b, c, 2015).

6. Conferences and workshops: For example, in September 2018 on Transnational Entrepreneurship (https://www.oecd.org/fr/cfe/pme/workshop-on-transnational-entrepreneurship.htm ).

The OECD has not focused extensively on entrepreneurship education, with the notable exception of HEInnovate and its program for encouraging entrepreneurship within higher educational institutions (see below). The program is not focused on entrepreneurship pedagogy, but rather on the capacity of higher educational institutions to support innovation and entrepreneurship among their staff and students, a part of which involves entrepreneurial teaching. There is a self-diagnosis tool that institutions and individuals can use.

The OECD (under LEED) has conducted reviews of youth entrepreneurship education policies in Italy, Spain, and Lithuania (OECD, 2016b, c, 2015). The results showed Italy and Lithuania trailing, and Spain ahead with a Strategy for Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment. In all three cases, the OECD recommended that the countries access EU funding for youth entrepreneurship education.

Another source of country studies through the OECD is HEInnovate (Encouraging Entrepreneurship through Higher Education). As noted earlier, this is less about developing specific training programs than it is about encouraging innovation (and consequently some entrepreneurship education) among higher education institutions. The four country studies that have been produced to date are: Ireland, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands (OECD/EU, 2018, 2017c, a, b).

The details of the country studies are less important than the utility of the HEInnovate framework for conducting the assessment. The framework consists of eight factors, not all of which are directly relevant to the Qatar situation, but which nonetheless provide some benchmarking for effective entrepreneurial education. The framework is geared towards higher education institutions (HEIs) but have more generic applicability. The eight elements are (HEInnovate 201):

1. Leadership and governance: Commitment in the HEI to entrepreneurship education.

2. Organizational capacity: Funding and sustainable resources.

3. Entrepreneurial teaching and learning: This is one of the most important elements, since it zeroes in on the educational and learning modalities (teaching methods, target groups, evaluation strategies, mentoring, knowledge exchange with industry, links to external initiatives, etc.).

4. Preparing and supporting entrepreneurs.

5. Digital transformation and capability.

6. Knowledge exchange and collaboration.

7. Internationalization.

8. Measuring impact.

World Bank

Like the OECD, the World Bank has a mandate for economic growth, but connected to poverty reduction. Its country focus is consequently among the emerging economies, and while there is some overlap with the OECD (particularly the OECD’s work beyond its 36 members), the World Bank concentrates on different regions (principally Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia). The World Bank’s approach to entrepreneurship has been anchored in its view that innovation is key to economic growth, and entrepreneurship in turn is critically connected to innovation. In 2014, the Bank conducted an internal evaluation of its portfolio of programs dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship, calculating it had invested $18.7 billion in 2000-2013 (IEG (Independent Evaluation Group), 2014).

Support has been primarily financial, and primarily through the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). IFC projects focused almost exclusively on the firm level through investments in start-ups and existing companies, focusing on China and India (about 60% of projects). MIGA provides political risk guarantees to companies, striving to support an enabling environment, and funding for innovation and entrepreneurship has been channeled to public and private R&D, and capacity building through some training and education projects.

However, given the Bank’s focus on emerging (and often the poorest) economies, educational strategies were directed first, to basic education (e.g., the 1999 Education Strategy), and later, to broadly based vocational education (e.g., the 2000 Educational Strategy entitled Learning for All). The IEG report noted: the focus in the current education strategy remained squarely on basic and secondary education and omitted any detailed discussion of how the Bank can support the building of STI [Science, Technology and Innovation] capacity in client countries (IEG (Independent Evaluation Group) 2014, p. 32-33). About 65% of the 119 projects identified in this period were aimed at strengthening entrepreneurial capabilities for SMEs and agricultural producers.

Since the 2014 IEG report, the Bank’s work on entrepreneurship has expanded to address issues of inclusion, particularly gender. The IFC, for example, has launched the following programs:

1. Gender Intelligence for Banks: Providing gender intelligence training in financial institutions to better serve the women’s market (Hamm et al., 2017).

2. Women’s Entrepreneurship Training: These programs build on the IFC’s Business Edge training product, and try to remedy shortfalls in existing training programs by including coaching, mentoring, blended learning platforms and post-training support mechanisms (Valerio, Parton, & Robb, 2014).

3. Women Entrepreneurship Opportunity Facility: $600 million to improve access to capital for about 100,000 women entrepreneurs.

Programming aimed at women entrepreneurs was enhanced in 2018 with the launch of the Women’s Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative or We-Fi, which hopes to raise $1 billion for various projects (as of October 2018 it has raised $340 million from 14 countries, with the rest coming from the private sector).

Asian Productivity Organization (APO)

The Asian Productivity Organization (APO) is a regional intergovernmental organization made up of 20 Asian nations and aims to facilitate economic growth and productivity to achieve sustainable socioeconomic development (Asian Productivity Organization n.d.). APO works with National Productivity Organizations to strengthen and promote SMEs and entrepreneurship.

APO offers self-learning e-courses for entrepreneurs in member countries to build skills, knowledge and capacities. Each course specifically targets a different population by tailoring the course material to, for example, rural or women entrepreneurs. Participants who complete an e-course receive an APO e-certificate. Each course is organized around 10 or 11 e-modules and provides additional study materials for participants, intermittent quizzes for self-assessment, assignments and a final examination to qualify for the APO e-certificate (Asian Productivity Organization, 2017, p. 4).

As an example, participants completing the self-learning e-course on Rural Entrepreneurship Development complete the following modules:

Module 1: Introduction to entrepreneurship development

Module 2: Developing entrepreneurial ideas into actionable plans

Module 3: Project-implementation by rural enterprises

Module 4: Agribusiness and rural enterprise promotion and marketing

Module 5: Agricultural start-ups for rural entrepreneurs

Module 6: Conducive environment for incubating young enterprises

Module 7: Role of business development service providers (BDSPs)

Module 8: Financial modeling for sustainable rural enterprises

Module 9: Role of entrepreneurs in shared interest and philanthropic development

Module 10: Final examination

European Commission

Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan

The European Union has been striving to revitalize the entrepreneurial spirit since the 2008 financial crisis. In 2013, the European Commission (EC) released its Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan which acts as a blueprint for decisive joint action to unleash Europe’s entrepreneurial potential, to remove existing obstacles and to revolutionize the culture of entrepreneurship in Europe (European Commission, 2013, p. 5). The Action Plan is organized around three pillars: (i) entrepreneurial education and training to support growth and business creation, (ii) removing existing administrative barriers and supporting entrepreneurs in crucial phases of the business lifecycle, and (iii) reigniting the culture of entrepreneurship in Europe and nurturing the new generation of entrepreneurs.

Pillar one, entrepreneurial education and training, focuses on increasing the prevalence and quality of entrepreneurial learning within national education systems and on fostering entrepreneurship in higher education institutions. The Action Plan calls on member states to: (i) Ensure that the key competence entrepreneurship is embedded into curricula across primary, secondary, vocational, higher and adult education before the end of 2015, (ii) Offer the opportunity to young people to have at least one practical entrepreneurial experience before leaving compulsory education, (iii) Boost entrepreneurial training for young people and adults in education by means of Structural Funds resources in line with national job plans, and to (iv) "Promote entrepreneurial learning modules for young people participating