Emancipatory Entrepreneurship in Postcolonial Economies: The Clash of Institutional Systems in the Kejetia Marketplace

Author(s) Information:
Arielle Newman, Whitman School, Syracuse University
Alexander Lewis
Ryan Coles


Journal:
Journal of Business Venturing, 2025


Summary:
This paper theorizes how marginalized entrepreneurs in postcolonial economies achieve emancipation by converting Indigenous capital into actionable forms within Western systems, revealing that successful emancipatory entrepreneurship emerges not through direct resistance but through scaffolded, cross-system strategies enabled by interstitial actors and capital conversion.

In postcolonial economies, marginalized entrepreneurs can overcome exclusion not by fighting the system head-on, but by creatively using their cultural roots and community networks to gain access to formal opportunities—building power step by step with help from trusted allies across both worlds.

Research Questions:
Our primary research question was: How do marginalized entrepreneurs in postcolonial economies emancipate themselves from structural disadvantage? With this, we had several implicit sub-questions, including:

• How do marginalized entrepreneurs navigate the clash between Indigenous and Western institutional logics?
• How is capital (social, cultural, symbolic) mobilized and converted across these systems?
• What roles do interstitial actors—those legitimate in both systems—play in enabling emancipation?
• How does emancipatory entrepreneurship unfold as a process over time, rather than as a single moment?
  

What We Know:
This research matters to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how entrepreneurship can genuinely empower marginalized populations—particularly in postcolonial contexts where disadvantage is embedded in overlapping institutional systems. By showing that emancipation is not simply a matter of individual grit or market access, but a long-term, collective process of navigating and converting resources across Indigenous and Western systems, this study offers a more realistic and contextually grounded theory of change.

Scholars care because the paper challenges conventional approaches to emancipatory entrepreneurship that overlook institutional multiplicity and relative disadvantage, offering new theoretical tools like conversive capital and interstitial actors. Policymakers and development actors care because the findings warn against one-size-fits-all modernization strategies that erase local systems, and instead highlight the value of supporting and recognizing local forms of capital and organization that marginalized entrepreneurs already use to survive and resist exclusion.

In short, this paper provides a blueprint for rethinking how we study, support, and theorize entrepreneurship as a means of structural change in postcolonial contexts.


Novel Findings:
This paper was built off of my dissertation data, collected from 2015-2021. It is 6 years of following an economic development project in Kumasi, Ghana.

This paper offers a novel contribution to emancipatory entrepreneurship research by theorizing how marginalized entrepreneurs in postcolonial economies navigate dual institutional systems—Indigenous and Western bureaucratic—to overcome structural exclusion. Introducing the concepts of conversive capital and interstitial capital, the study explains how entrepreneurs convert locally rooted resources into forms recognized by dominant systems, often with the aid of interstitial actors who hold legitimacy in both worlds. By tracing a four-year struggle in Ghana’s Kejetia marketplace, the paper reveals emancipation not as a single act of resistance, but as a scaffolded, processual journey requiring endurance, coalition-building, and strategic engagement across institutional boundaries. In doing so, the research brings much-needed historical and political depth to entrepreneurship studies and advances a more grounded, context-sensitive theory of structural change.


Implications for Practice:
This research offers new insights into how entrepreneurship can serve as a pathway to inclusion and empowerment for marginalized groups in postcolonial economies. Focusing on a four-year case in Ghana’s Kejetia Marketplace, the study reveals that emancipation is not achieved through isolated entrepreneurial acts but through a long-term, strategic process that unfolds across overlapping institutional systems—Western bureaucratic structures and Indigenous communal systems. We introduce two key concepts: conversive capital, or the ability to translate local forms of capital into forms recognized by dominant systems; and interstitial capital, which holds value in both systems and enables cross-institutional action. The research also highlights the critical role of interstitial actors, individuals who are legitimate in both institutional worlds, in facilitating access and change. These findings deepen our theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship as a tool for structural change, while also offering practical implications for policymakers and development organizations working in institutionally complex settings.


Implications for Policy:
This research highlights the urgent need for policies that recognize the reality of dual institutional systems—where formal bureaucratic rules coexist with informal, community-based systems of value and legitimacy. While this is especially visible in postcolonial economies like Ghana, the study shows that similar dynamics exist in places like the U.S., where African American and other marginalized communities often operate within secondary systems shaped by their own histories, norms, and institutions. Policies that ignore these layered systems risk deepening exclusion. Instead, inclusive development requires supporting hybrid structures, valuing Indigenous and community-rooted forms of capital, and designing interventions that respect how marginalized entrepreneurs navigate and bridge these overlapping worlds—often over long, collective journeys toward structural change.


Implications for Society:
This research challenges us to rethink what counts as legitimate entrepreneurship and who gets to participate in economic life. Across the globe—including in postcolonial nations and in marginalized communities within the U.S.—many entrepreneurs operate in dual systems: one formal and bureaucratic, the other informal, community-based, and deeply rooted in cultural norms. Policies and institutions that privilege only the formal system risk erasing the contributions and potential of millions of people working at the economic margins. By revealing how marginalized entrepreneurs strategically draw from their own systems of value to gain inclusion, this study underscores the need for more flexible, pluralistic approaches to economic development—ones that honor different ways of organizing, building trust, and creating opportunity. Ultimately, a more just and inclusive society begins with recognizing and supporting the diverse institutional foundations from which people build their lives.


Implications for Research: 
This study opens new directions for future research by foregrounding the role of dual institutional systems in shaping the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship. Rather than treating marginalized entrepreneurs as operating within a single institutional field, it invites scholars to explore how actors navigate, convert, and contest power across multiple, historically layered systems. The introduction of conversive capital and interstitial capital offers new theoretical tools for understanding how entrepreneurs translate local legitimacy into broader access, particularly in structurally complex or postcolonial environments. The paper also advances process theory by illustrating how emancipation unfolds over time through scaffolded, collective efforts—not as a discrete event, but as a dynamic, recursive journey. These insights are not limited to African contexts; they call for renewed attention to secondary systems in other settings, such as communities of color in the Global North, where informal institutions also shape entrepreneurial agency. Future research might examine how these dynamics play out in urban informal economies, diasporic entrepreneurship, or Indigenous resistance movements, and how shifts in institutional dominance reshape the pathways to inclusion.


Full Citation:
Newman, A., Lewis, A., & Coles, R. (2025). Emancipatory Entrepreneurship in Postcolonial Economies: The Clash of Institutional Systems in the Kejetia Marketplace. Journal of Business Venturing.


Abstract:
This study explores emancipatory entrepreneurship in postcolonial economies where Western bureaucratic and Indigenous traditional systems simultaneously influence entrepreneurial activities. In Kumasi Ghana, the reconstruction of the Kejetia Marketplace was funded by foreign investment and required formal business registration, effectively excluding informal entrepreneurs. Using process tracing, we analyze how informal entrepreneurs leveraged various forms of Indigenous capital and engaged interstitial actors to convert it into actionable capital within the Western system. This process enabled them to overcome their initial exclusion as they built a series of emancipatory structures, culminating in the elimination of the constraint of formalization in the New Kejetia and opening new opportunities for inclusion. Our findings reveal the significance of Indigenous systems in navigating bureaucratic constraints, contributing to the emancipatory entrepreneurship literature by showing how postcolonial contexts both motivate and shape the emancipatory efforts of marginalized entrepreneurs.