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Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty

I conducted a qualitative, inductive field study of nine founders alleviating period poverty. Iterating between data collected and analysed and literature, I adjusted my research question based on the data themes identified, enabling me to answer how and why prosocial founders vary in their scaling...

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Main Author: Bhogal, Nishana
Other Authors: Hamann, Ralph
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Graduate School of Business (GSB) 2023
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access_status_str Open Access
author Bhogal, Nishana
author2 Hamann, Ralph
author_browse Bhogal, Nishana
Hamann, Ralph
author_facet Hamann, Ralph
Bhogal, Nishana
author_sort Bhogal, Nishana
collection Thesis
description I conducted a qualitative, inductive field study of nine founders alleviating period poverty. Iterating between data collected and analysed and literature, I adjusted my research question based on the data themes identified, enabling me to answer how and why prosocial founders vary in their scaling approaches in the context of extreme poverty. I conducted the study in South Africa, a nation characterised by high levels of inequality and widespread poverty, with women and children often bearing the brunt of these challenges. Although all founders engaged in alleviating period poverty, this study revealed that their responses were distinct, either person- or problem-oriented. Founders responding with the former endeavoured to broadly enhance the beneficiaries' lives, while those with the latter remained narrowly focused on alleviating period poverty. These differences were rooted in the founders' perception of the beneficiaries, which served as a powerful motivator for entrepreneurial action. My main contributions are to the literature on scaling ventures oriented towards addressing social challenges. I contribute by introducing two distinct prosocial founder responses, person- and problem-oriented. Moreover, I develop theory that explains the motivation for these distinct responses. In addition, prior literature emphasises that the founders' degree of embeddedness shapes scaling outcomes. Instead, I demonstrate that founders may engage with embedded actors, external to the founders' ventures, to shape scaling outcomes. In addition, this study contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in impoverished contexts. I demonstrate that prosocial founders engaged in ostensibly similar efforts may play very different roles in engendering social capital that connects actors from impoverished and resource-rich contexts. Through this social capital, beneficiaries accessed additional resources. Creating such social capital is crucial in contexts with high levels of inequality; since it represents initial social capital across different social classes.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:34:17.944Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2023
publishDateRange 2023
publishDateSort 2023
publisher Graduate School of Business (GSB)
publisherStr Graduate School of Business (GSB)
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/36986 Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty Bhogal, Nishana Hamann, Ralph Baker,Ted Powell, Erin Business I conducted a qualitative, inductive field study of nine founders alleviating period poverty. Iterating between data collected and analysed and literature, I adjusted my research question based on the data themes identified, enabling me to answer how and why prosocial founders vary in their scaling approaches in the context of extreme poverty. I conducted the study in South Africa, a nation characterised by high levels of inequality and widespread poverty, with women and children often bearing the brunt of these challenges. Although all founders engaged in alleviating period poverty, this study revealed that their responses were distinct, either person- or problem-oriented. Founders responding with the former endeavoured to broadly enhance the beneficiaries' lives, while those with the latter remained narrowly focused on alleviating period poverty. These differences were rooted in the founders' perception of the beneficiaries, which served as a powerful motivator for entrepreneurial action. My main contributions are to the literature on scaling ventures oriented towards addressing social challenges. I contribute by introducing two distinct prosocial founder responses, person- and problem-oriented. Moreover, I develop theory that explains the motivation for these distinct responses. In addition, prior literature emphasises that the founders' degree of embeddedness shapes scaling outcomes. Instead, I demonstrate that founders may engage with embedded actors, external to the founders' ventures, to shape scaling outcomes. In addition, this study contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in impoverished contexts. I demonstrate that prosocial founders engaged in ostensibly similar efforts may play very different roles in engendering social capital that connects actors from impoverished and resource-rich contexts. Through this social capital, beneficiaries accessed additional resources. Creating such social capital is crucial in contexts with high levels of inequality; since it represents initial social capital across different social classes. 2023-02-23T00:24:48Z 2023-02-23T00:24:48Z 2022 2023-02-20T12:17:54Z Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/36986 eng application/pdf Graduate School of Business (GSB) Faculty of Commerce
spellingShingle Business
Bhogal, Nishana
Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
thesis_degree_str Doctoral
title Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
title_full Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
title_fullStr Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
title_full_unstemmed Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
title_short Towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches: Alleviating period poverty
title_sort towards a grounded theory of how and why founders vary in their scaling approaches alleviating period poverty
topic Business
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/36986
work_keys_str_mv AT bhogalnishana towardsagroundedtheoryofhowandwhyfoundersvaryintheirscalingapproachesalleviatingperiodpoverty