From social capital to social business: a principal-agent approach. Does gender matter in African enterprise?

This paper will consider to what extent gender plays a role in creating social businesses within the context of developing countries, specifically Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. Using a Principal-Agent framework, the project will examine the challenges faced by female
entrepreneurs in exploiting different types of social: capital. The Principal-Agent framework highlights the following issues: monitoring and verification of performance; whether a behavioural approach to performance or an output (or targeted) approach is preferable; the problem of asymmetric information; and goal conflict. Based on a discussion of the role of
different types of social capital such as personal, instrumental, and symbolic, the project will analyse the key challenges faced especially by female entrepreneurs. In terms of social capital, a strong factor at work is the extent to which, compared with males, female entrepreneurs may be hindered in overcoming these Principal-Agent problems, due to their over-reliance on informal networks rather than formal networks; and their excessive use of social networks that may be classified as weak-ties rather than strong-ties.