Islam, entrepreneurship, and embeddedness

• Author: Joseph Jon Kaminski,M. Evren Tok
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21970
• Published date: 01 September 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Islam, entrepreneurship, and embeddedness

M. Evren Tok

1

| Joseph Jon Kaminski

2

1

College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa

University, Doha, Qatar

2

International University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo,

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Correspondence

Dr. M. Evren Tok, College of Islamic Studies,

Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Education City,

CIS Building, Office 022, Doha, Qatar.

Email: etok@hbku.edu.qa

This study centers on the premise that entrepreneurship is an embedded process.

Although “the entrepreneur”is inherently an “individual,”entrepreneurship can never be

fully disembedded from the more general social settings within which any business ven-

ture is situated. An Islamic-based economic discursive framework should be cognizant of

the different forms of sociality, spatiality, and community as well as the various norms,

codes, and symbols that define society more generally. The work of Karl Polanyi on

embeddedness is engaged and juxtaposed with Islam’s understanding of the ideal mode of

economic discursive practices. Islamic economic models and Polanyi are both critical of

the corrosive effects of unbridled capitalism and individualism that ultimately lead to reifi-

cation and exploitation. The conclusion recommends more small-Ncase studies by

researchers and entrepreneurial educational materials that emphasize the importance of

networks and local embeddedness.

1|INTRODUCTION

The entrepreneurial process often is primarily analyzed via the lens of

individual behaviors, which are then contrasted with the collectivist

nature of the very same process (Peterson, 1988; Schwartz, 1990;

Shane, Venkataraman, & MacMillan, 1995; Triandis, 1993). However,

is the individual necessarily the primary agent in the entrepreneurial

process? The answer to this question is both yes and no. At one level,

the entrepreneur is most certainly a rudimentary element in the

entrepreneurial process. Diligent individual entrepreneurs often

spend a great deal of time seeking out and creating business opportu-

nities (Stevenson, 1983). Entrepreneurial initiatives involve intense

preparatory stages that are mentally demanding. Often, these prepa-

ratory stages transpire at an individual level prior to the translation of

any ideas into more concrete actions.

Obviously, “the individual”responsible for initiating this course is

at the center of this process. However, as this process evolves, the

individual ultimately connects with other networks of actors that sig-

nificantly contribute to “the process of entrepreneurial stimulation

and learning”(Lamine, 2017, p. 625). It is at this point where the

transformative power of entrepreneurship truly reveals its collective

nature. This article extends upon this more general claim, arguing that

entrepreneurship, especially when conceived of within an Islamic

ontology, is a social process that is embedded in multiple realms out-

side the purview of what is commonly conceived of as the purely

economic sphere.

2|ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS AN

EMBEDDED PROCESS

The social embeddedness view of economic and social behavior

argues that as civilization moves further along its track of develop-

ment and modernization, economic transactions become increasingly

decoupled from family or kinship relations and more attuned with

instrumental rationality (Giddens, 1991). Granovetter (1985) argues

that this view “sees the economy as an increasingly separate, differ-

entiated sphere in modern society, with economic transactions

defined no longer by the social or kinship obligations of those trans-

acting but by rational calculations of individual gain”(p. 482). How-

ever, Granovetter himself still sees social context as an important

determinate of economic behavior. He concluded that “actors do not

behave or decide as atoms outside a social context, nor do they

adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular inter-

section of social categories that they happen to occupy”(1985,

p. 487). His neosubstantivist approach sought to find a middle ground

between what he considered oversocialized and undersocialized

approaches to economic behavior. Granovetter’s (1995) later research

on ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia empirically dem-

onstrated the importance of kinship networks in ensuring the success

of Chinese-run businesses despite being minorities in the countries

they were situated within. Ultimately, his work showed that rational

economic exchanges were still influenced by prior social ties. The col-

lective nature of economic transactions and entrepreneurship more

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21970

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2019;61:697–705. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 697