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Entrepreneurial failure in agribusiness: evidence from an emerging economy

Article in Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development · March 2020

DOI: 10.1108/JSBED-04-2019-0131

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Entrepreneurial failure in Entrepre-

neurial failure
agribusiness: evidence from an in agribusiness

emerging economy
Henry Adobor 237
Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, School of Business,
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut, USA Received 21 April 2019
Revised 28 October 2019
Accepted 10 February 2020
Abstract
Purpose – This article extends the literature on agricultural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial failure in
Ghana, a country in sub-Saharan Africa by exploring failure in a cohort of firms. As engines of economic
growth, the performance of micro, small, and medium-sized firms is important. Agro-based enterprises, in
particular, are vital because entrepreneurial failure in agribusiness affects food security, and is disruptive to
social and economic stability.
Design/methodology/approach – Using qualitative data from interviews, we identified reasons for the
failure of a group of entrepreneurs associated with a novel agribusiness activity in an otherwise economically
attractive market in an emerging economy. The data for the study came from 69 respondents who started and
exited aquaculture, a form of agribusiness within a period.
Findings – The results of this study show that there can be negative effects of social structure on
entrepreneurial behavior and outcomes. The strong social ties that emerged among the farmer-entrepreneurs
led to excessive peer-to-peer copying and knowledge sharing, leading to premature closure of the search for
nonredundant ideas. One consequence of that was the narrowing of the pool of available knowledge, which if
broadened, may have improved the chances of success of these businesses. Also, the results demonstrate that a
lack of institutional support in the form of training in the appropriate management of a new technology
adversely affected the farmer-entrepreneurs and their businesses. It is important for governments that
introduce a new economic activity to provide the scaffolding, including an understanding of the value chain, to
enhance the chances of the economic success of ventures. Entrepreneurs for their part need to broaden their
search for new ideas outside their peer groups to increase their chances of accessing non-redundant knowledge.
Research limitations/implications – The sample size is small, limiting the generalization of findings and
the recollection of events may fade with the passage of time, especially since most of the farmers did not keep
written records.
Practical implications – First, entrepreneurship and economic development, long held as a panacea for
moving developing countries out of poverty, may require consistent government support. Second,
entrepreneurs venturing into business need to understand the particular challenges associated with a novel
activity. Finally, entrepreneurs need to recognize that interconnectedness should not necessarily lead to the
convergence of ideas and behavior.
Originality/value – The study extends and contextualizes the literature on agricultural entrepreneurship and
entrepreneurial failure. Besides, the study focuses on entrepreneurial failure in Sub-Saharan Africa, an under-
researched setting.
Keywords Sub-Saharan Africa, Agribusiness, Agricultural entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial failure
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
New business creation promotes economic growth in both developed and emerging
economies (Amezcua et al., 2013). Entrepreneurship holds promise as an engine of economic
growth especially in sub-Saharan Africa (Anosike, 2018). In the case of agribusinesses in
developing countries, entrepreneurship may assure food security as well. For example,
Kassam (2014) notes that fish farming can contribute to food security, poverty alleviation,
and nutrition in developing countries if managed well. Agricultural entrepreneurial activities Journal of Small Business and
Enterprise Development
have a positive impact especially on rural economies and communities (Barbieri, 2013). Vol. 27 No. 2, 2020
pp. 237-258
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1462-6004
The author thanks two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. DOI 10.1108/JSBED-04-2019-0131
JSBED Despite the promise, the evidence shows new businesses, in general, have low survival rates
27,2 (Romanelli, 1989; Ba
u et al., 2017). New business creation is always risky (Woolley, 2017). In
emerging and transitional economies with resource scarcity, however, this risk may be
magnified (Peng and Luo, 2000). In Ghana as with most emerging economies, micro, small,
and medium-sized enterprises may be the most vulnerable (Reeg, 2013).
The majority of firms in developing countries are small-and-medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) (Wilson, 2018). Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises are the engines of
238 economic growth in emerging economies. For example, it is estimated that 70 percent of
Ghana’s GDP and 92 percent of all businesses fall into the SME category (Ahiawodzi and
Adade, 2012). Small- and medium-sized enterprises foster innovation, add value to primary
products, generate wealth, reduce poverty, provide jobs, and food security (Agyapong, 2010).
The survival of SMEs, therefore, is of strategic importance. Despite their important role,
SMEs face several challenges. Among others, SMEs lack adequate human capital, access to
technical and technological assistance, face an unfavorable institutional environment, and
lack business development support to mention but a few (Asante et al., 2018).
Given their importance but high failure rates, a clear understanding of the dynamics of
new business creation, and particularly failure is necessary. As Cope (2011: p. 620) notes,
“failure represents a learning experience and therefore an important concept to understand in
entrepreneurship.” Recent research has begun to focus on failure as an important topic in
entrepreneurship (e.g. Khelil, 2016; Byrne and Shepherd, 2017; Mueller and Shepherd, 2017). It
is not easy to define what constitutes failure (Jenkins and McKelvie, 2016). In this research, we
adopt Ucbasaran et al.’s (2013) definition of entrepreneurial failure. The authors define failure
as “the cessation of involvement in a venture because it has not met a minimum threshold for
economic viability as stipulated by the entrepreneur” (p. 175).
This research explores entrepreneurial and business failure in aquaculture, a form of
agribusiness, in an emerging economy in a rural setting in Southeastern Ghana. Researchers
have called for the contextualization of entrepreneurship research (Welter, 2011) as
contextual resources and structures can facilitate or constrain entrepreneurial action
(Woolley, 2017). This study extends existing research on agricultural entrepreneurship in an
emerging economy. Specifically, the research focuses on fish farming, a form of agribusiness
that was a novel activity (Aldrich and Reuf, 2006) to the participants. The context of the study
is the land-based aquaculture industry in Ghana.
Global aquaculture was estimated at 79 million tons, worth US$125 billion in 2010
(Washington and Ababouch, 2011). Aquaculture is an important economic activity because it
relates directly to global food security. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO, 2011), global capture fisheries are unlikely to increase to meet population growth
needs. Currently, aquaculture provides half of the global fish production and this is projected
to increase to two-thirds of global fish production by 2030 (FAO, 2013). An FAO (2011) report
estimated that 55 million people in over 190 countries were engaged in capture fisheries and
aquaculture in 2010. According to this same report, while the global average per capita fish
consumption is expected to increase by 2030, it will decrease from 7.5 kg per year to 5.6 kg
annually by 2030 in Africa where fish serves as the major protein source. This situation could
be averted through increasing aquatic food production in Africa where aquaculture seems to
have great potential. However, there is a lack of the requisite infrastructure needed to support
the rapidly growing aquaculture industries leading to marginal success and high failure rates
(FAO, 2011). This at a time when aquaculture experienced a significant global expansion at
the end of the 20th century, becoming one of the fastest-growing sectors of animal husbandry
and production during that period (Perlman and Juarez-Rubio, 2010). This research makes
several important contributions to entrepreneurship failure literature.
First, the research responds to recent calls for contextualizing entrepreneurship research.
The effect of contextual influences on entrepreneurial behavior and action is pervasive
(Bjørnskov and Foss, 2013), leading scholars to call for further research to account for Entrepre-
contextual variables and their link to theory building and testing (Welter, 2011; Zahra and neurial failure
Wright, 2011). The research focuses on entrepreneurs who were dealing with a novel activity
as opposed to entrepreneurship in established industries. This research explores businesses
in agribusiness
with a truncated history; the businesses struggled but barely survived their adolescence.
Aldrich and Ruef (1994) note that testing our theories of failure in industries with truncated
histories may provide the best opportunities for understanding the founding and disbanding
of businesses. The entrepreneurs in this study focused on novel activity and understanding 239
how that influenced their strategic and entrepreneurial choices and its consequences may
shed light on entrepreneurship in new environments.
Second, this research responds to recent calls for research on agricultural entrepreneurship
(Fitz-Koch et al., 2018). This research extends the emerging research on agricultural
entrepreneurship by focusing on farmer-entrepreneurs involved in fish farming. Agriculture
is among the world’s largest sectors, employing over one billion people and accounting for 3
percent of global GDP (FAO, 2013) making it an important context for exploring
entrepreneurship.
Third, the study extends research linking social structure to knowledge search and
transfer (Hansen, 1999). Economic sociologists (Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1997) have generally
shown that there are positive benefits to social structure. Hansen (1999) found that critical
factors in the linkage between social structure and learning are the nature of knowledge, its
simplicity or complexity, as well as the scarcity or abundance of information. We found that
strong ties hurt learning and the search for non-redundant information by the actors we
studied. We conclude that weaker ties would have been more beneficial for searching for, and
the adoption of new knowledge that the farmer-entrepreneurs so desperately needed.
Fourth, the study extends institutional theories of entrepreneurial behavior. The lack of
sustained institutional support to the entrepreneurs in the study may have left them to create
coping strategies. Government support is important given the importance of institutional
environments on business in developing countries (Peng, 2001). The lack of sustained
extension services to the farmers meant that they had little expert knowledge to guide their
activities, leading ultimately to failure and exit.
Finally, the study explains entrepreneurship failure in a developing country context, a
geographic area with little research on business founding and disbanding. Hoskisson et al.
(2000) note the paucity of research on the emerging economies of Africa and the Middle East.
The authors called for research attention on the factors that promote and restrict the
emergence of new market economies especially in Africa and the Middle East. This research
extends the emerging research on entrepreneurship in Africa (see, e.g., Jones et al., 2018, and
the 2018 special issues on African Entrepreneurship in the Journal of Small Business and
Enterprise Development). The study has important policy implications as policymakers often
hold entrepreneurship out as a panacea for economic development in emerging economies. As
engines of growth, SME failure affects economic development and entrepreneurial failure has
economic, social, and reputational consequences for those involved (Ba
u et al., 2017).

Aquaculture as a field of entrepreneurship

Aquaculture as a field of entrepreneurship, and agribusiness, in general, are understudied
(Evers, 2010). The emerging research on aquaculture has focused on the factors affecting
organizational success and firm survival (Purves et al., 2015). The research shows that a lack
of capital (Altman and Hotchkiss, 2006), managerial talent (Madrid-Guijarro et al., 2011), and a
combination of factors can explain organizational failure in agribusiness (Purves et al., 2015).
Predictors of success or failure in farm and corporate agricultural businesses will become
more prominent as population expansion places pressure on the global food supply (Purves
JSBED et al., 2015). This situation may be more important for developing countries as agricultural
27,2 failure often has dire consequences for these regions. An understanding of factors that
promote success in agribusiness, therefore, has both theoretical and practical importance.
There appears to be a mixed record on aquaculture success in developing countries.
Although there are cases of aquaculture success in places like Asia (FAO, 2013), Honduras
(Martinez et al., 2008), Chile (Perlman and Juarez-Rubio, 2010), the case of aquaculture in
Africa is less promising. While Asia and some Latin American countries seem to have made
240 great progress, the performance of aquaculture across Africa has been spotty at best when
compared to those two regions. A comparison of aquaculture development in Asia and Africa
reveals the extent of the failure of aquaculture in Africa. According to Lazard et al. (1991),
African aquaculture development received some US$72.5 million over the period 1978–1984,
versus US$171.3 million for Asia and the Pacific. For this less than threefold funding
difference, Asian countries produce 1,000 times more fish than Africa. The constraints to
aquaculture development in Sub-Saharan Africa are rather well-known. These include a lack
of feed, seed quality and availability, cost of infrastructure, financing, and the lack of
technical support for early adopters (Asmah, 2008).
Ghana’s fishery sector contributes significantly to national economic development. The
sector makes important contributions to employment (the sector is estimated to employ about
2.6 million people or 10 percent of the country’s population), provides foreign exchange
earnings, food security, and helps poverty reduction (Ministry of Food and Agriculture, 2011).
Fish constitutes 92 percent of the animal protein intake in Ghana with fish accounting for 16
percent of household expenditure (FAO, 2016). The average per capita consumption of fish in
Ghana is 27.2 kg per person. This ranks among the highest in the world, as the world average
consumption is 13 kg per person (Washington and Ababouch, 2011). According to the
Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA, 2011), the demand for fish was 968,000 MT with
supplies put at 486,000 MT leaving a substantial shortfall with the country importing about
$200 million worth of fish. The supply chain for fish is rudimentary. According to Antwi-
Asare and Abbey (2011), market women often buy fish at the farm gate for salting and
smoking. The fish is then sold directly to consumers because of a lack of adequate cold
storage facilities.
Accordingly, the government has earmarked aquaculture as an important area for
investment. Ghana now has one commercial fish feed factory whose production is
supplemented with imports. The country has witnessed an increased production from
aquaculture in the last decade. Recent data shows aquaculture production grew from over
32,512 metric tons (MT) per annum in 2013 to 52,470.49 MT per annum in 2016 with
projections of 72,000 MT in the next 3–5 years (MOFA, 2011), still far short of estimated
demand. About 83 percent of the increased production is in cages in water bodies, with two
commercial producers accounting for almost all the production. Despite the increase, several
challenges remain concerning management and production (Ayisi et al., 2016). According to
Amenyogbe et al. (2018), these include limited knowledge of modern aquaculture techniques,
inadequate supplies of improved fingerlings (seed), and lack of continuing aquaculture policy
direction.

Agricultural entrepreneurship
Agricultural entrepreneurship has become a subject of study in recent years. Scholars from
both agricultural economics and mainstream entrepreneurship have begun to focus on
research in entrepreneurship in recent years (Dias et al., 2019.) Lans et al. (2013) note that
entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector is a distinct form of entrepreneurship. According
to Korsgaard et al. (2015), most agricultural entrepreneurship takes place in rural areas and
that in itself poses a problem. The authors note that the rural setting of most agricultural
entrepreneurs means they face particular challenges such as low levels of human and
financial capital, relatively small markets and poor communications. Farm-based Entrepre-
agricultural entrepreneurship has sometimes been labeled lifestyle entrepreneurship neurial failure
(Gasson et al., 1988), some acknowledgment that agricultural entrepreneurship may not
always be profit-driven (Vik and McElwee, 2011).
in agribusiness
Dias et al. (2019) categorized the emerging agricultural entrepreneurship literature into
three groups: (1) those focusing on entrepreneurial skills and behavior, (2) entrepreneurial
strategies, and (3) community and entrepreneurial activity. Fitz-Koch et al. (2018) note that the
agricultural sector is highly influenced by the institutionalized context. Both formal and 241
informal institutions (North, 1990) play a major role in the sector and the role of institutional
factors in agribusiness in Sub-Saharan Africa has been had been recognized (Raile et al.,
2019). Researchers suggest that both formal and informal institutions (e.g., norms, values,
and attitudes) can both facilitate and constrain entrepreneurial activities in the agricultural
sector (Welter, 2011). Zahra and Wright (2011) note that we can gain better insight into
institutional perspectives on entrepreneurship by studying the agricultural sector in
developing countries.

Literature review
Research on business and entrepreneurial failure has generally explained causes of failure in
terms of factors related to the entrepreneur’s personality, education and traits, the firm’s
specific resources, and the environmental conditions facing the firm (Khelil, 2016).

Environmental/institutional determinants of failure

This approach assumes that the external environment over which the entrepreneur may have
no control determines business failure. This approach is reflective of the population ecology
stream (Romanelli, 1989). That stream of research contends that organizations founded under
resource scarcity, especially those that are too small at their founding suffer initial, if not a
permanent liability. The whole “liability of newness” argument (Stinchcombe, 1965) suggests
that young organizations face both external and internal organizational challenges that
increase their risk for failure (Ucbasaran et al., 2013). Hannan and Freeman (1984) suggest
that density or the number of firms in the market at the time of the founding, and resource
scarcity affect the initial mortality rate of new organizations. However, some organizations
founded under adverse conditions still survive, showing that adverse conditions are not
necessarily a death sentence (Swaminathan, 1995). New organizations can use collective
action, and mutual learning to improve survival chances (Aldrich and Ruef, 2006). Social
learning, learning by direct experience, and observing others can also lead to behavior change
that improves survival (Bandura, 2001).
A second stream of the deterministic perspective suggests that organizations, particularly
those associated with novel activities with few precedences face a critical task of building
legitimacy to access both direct and indirect support from stakeholder groups (Aldrich and
Fiol, 1994). Businesses operating in new industries commonly lack the relevant experience
that might otherwise improve their odds of survival. Legitimacy opens access to needed
resources, including investment capital, and actors can build legitimacy through deliberate
strategic choices (Zimmerman and Zeiz, 2002). The implicit assumption of deterministic
perspectives is that survival is synonymous with success, and mortality with failure
(Wennberg et al., 2010). However, as Khelil (2016) points out, some underperforming firms
and entrepreneurs may choose to persist while others may close because of other reasons
(DeTienne and Wennberg, 2014).
The third stream of research emphasizes the role of institutions for new business creation
and survival (Zahra and Wright, 2011). Institutional theorists have emphasized the importance
JSBED of institutions in constraining or opening up economic activity. The presence of both formal
27,2 and informal institutional factors can be a key determinant of the founding and survival of
new ventures (Bruton et al., 2010). In emerging economies, in particular, it has been suggested
that weak institutional structures or their absence can often impede entrepreneurial success
(Murithi et al., 2019). Relatedly, research from economic sociology has emphasized that social
structure and ties shape economic activity, including entrepreneurship (Uzzi, 1997). Social
systems affect the diffusion of innovation (Shaw-Ching Liu et al., 2005; Darr and Pretzsch,
242 2008). Rogers (1983) defines diffusion as the process by which new ideas are communicated
through certain channels among members of a social system. Hansen (1999) made an
important conceptual advance when he found that while weak ties aid knowledge search,
stronger ties are more useful when it comes to transferring that knowledge to recipient firms.
More importantly, he found that weak ties were beneficial to transferring simple knowledge,
while strong ties are more useful when it comes to transferring complex knowledge.

Human capital and firm factors

Human capital and economic approaches place failure on organizational factors. First, human
capital theory suggests that failure may be a result of a lack of entrepreneurial skills or
mistakes (Cardon et al., 2011). Educational level, management and professional experience of
the owner are negatively related to failure (Lussier and Halabi, 2010). General human capital
confers generalized knowledge on the entrepreneur, allowing them to be more
“entrepreneurial” or guide them in the non-technical aspects of new business activity
(Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). The second form of human capital, industry-specific knowledge
confers specialized, technical knowledge about the chosen market, either product-specific or
industry-specific on the entrepreneur (Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). Both general and technical
knowledge may enhance an entrepreneur’s survival chances. Second, the resource-based
view (Grant, 1991) suggests that firm-specific resources positively affects success in
entrepreneurship. A firm’s operational level resources are critical factors in small-firm
bankruptcies (Lussier and Halabi, 2010).

Psychological factors
Psychological theories show how organizational outcomes, including failure, are a reflection
of the characteristics of their decision-makers (Rider and Negro, 2015). According to this
perspective, we can explain failure by looking at the entrepreneur’s motivation, commitment,
and aspiration (Khelil, 2016: p. 75). The focus here is on the entrepreneur as the firm’s
principal decision-makers and failure or success, therefore, is attributable to the kinds of
actions and decisions such entrepreneurs make (Amankwah-Amoah, 2015).
This review is by no means exhaustive. However, it points to the fact that several factors
may account for entrepreneurial and business failure. Therefore, failure may be explained by
looking at the interaction of both firm-level, personal, and external factors (Mellahi and
Wilkinson, 2004), an approach that can be described with the metaphor of an onion. The
“onion model” is often used as a metaphor for the relationship between several concepts.
Following Reeg (2013), we can characterize: (1) entrepreneurial characteristics such as human
capital, (2) characteristics of the enterprise such as location and age, (3) business environment,
and (4) personal or professional networks of the entrepreneurs as the “layers of the onion” that
explain entrepreneurial and business failure.

Methodology
In this research, we examine entrepreneurial and business failure in aquaculture. Our
interest was in explaining failure in a cohort of firms. There are four culture systems in
aquaculture: pond, raceways, recycle systems, all land-based, and cages that are water-
based. This research focuses on pond-based aquaculture in Ghana. The Department of Entrepre-
Fisheries is the lead agency vested with the administrative control of aquaculture. It is also neurial failure
the main institution responsible for planning and development in the aquaculture sub-
sector whilst the Water Resources Institute (WRI) of the Council for Scientific and
in agribusiness
Industrial Research (CSIR) is mandated to carry out aquaculture research. The WRI has
developed a strain of tilapia for aquaculture Ghana. Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), the
primarily cultured fish in the country, is an ideal aquaculture fish because they grow
rapidly and tolerate high stocking densities and poor water quality with some varieties 243
surviving in brackish water. The research covers three contiguous administrative regions
(Volta, Eastern, and Greater Accra) in Southeastern Ghana, about a 100 mile-radius. All the
farms were located in the rural areas of the country. Table I presents a description of the
sample.
We chose the period around 1980–2009 because prior research has documented that the
takeoff phase in the industry started around 1982, the period that Prein and Ofori (1996)
call the “surge,” a period in which the industry started to grow. Prein and Ofori (1996) note
that a nationwide campaign to promote fish farming in the country was launched by the
Fisheries Department in the early 1980s. This led to several people entering fish farming.
However, poor provision of technical support in all key aspects of fish farming such as site
selection, pond design, and construction, pond management, availability of fingerlings, led
to the poor performance of many of the farms and near collapse of pond-based production
by 2008 (Asmah, 2008). We categorized those farmers who entered the industry between
1980 and 1985 as early entrants and those who entered after 1985 and beyond as late
entrants.

Data collection
As Wennberg et al. (2010) note, one important methodological issue in entrepreneurship
research is that big differences often exist between new ventures as well as their founders and
unless we control for these differences, our findings may be contaminated by the nature of the
sample. In this research, following Wennberg et al. (2010), we used the following protocols to
control for this unobserved heterogeneity. The sample included (1) only small firms with
fewer than 20 employees (2) new ventures that had been in business for fewer than five years
and (3) businesses that were created from the scratch by independent, single founders were
part of the sample.
We focus on independent firms and the entrepreneurs who owned and run their
businesses. In independent firms, it is difficult to separate the owner from the firm (Ucbasaran
et al., 2013) as a key resource for the firm is the human capital of the entrepreneur. Thus, when
conceptualizing failure in this context, both firm and individual-level criteria are relevant

Percentage of owners who finished high school 70

Percentage of owners with some college education 30
Percentage of owners experienced in fishing (non-farm) 5
Percentage of male owners 85
Percentage of farmers with direct prior aquaculture experience 0
Average age of respondents 36.5
Average life farms (in years) 4.5
Number of respondents that started farming between 1980-1985 (approximate dates only) 35
Number of respondents that started farming between 1986-1990 15
Number of respondents that started farming between 1991-1995 7 Table I.
Number of respondents that started farming between 1996-2000 6 Descriptive data of
Number of respondents that started farming between 2001-2005 6 sampled population
JSBED although firm failure may be the same as the owner’s failure (Jenkins and McKelvie, 2016). We
27,2 relied on a local NGO that had a database of entrepreneurs they had either helped or contacted
during the formative years of their ventures. Out of an initial list of 134, we were able to locate
and interview 69. We approached six of the individuals on the list, and four consented to take
part in the study. Those who responded initially became our link to others. In this respect, we
used snowballing as a sampling technique for studying this hard to reach group.
Our interest was in exploring how and why entrepreneurs and businesses engaged in
244 what was an economically attractive activity experienced such high business failure rates.
According to Yin (2003: p. 1), “case studies are the preferred strategy when ‘how’ and ‘why’
questions are being asked.” We followed established case study research methods in the
design and analysis of the data (Miles and Huberman, 1994). We used interviews because
qualitative research is well suited to examining poorly understood phenomena, and other
researchers have successfully used detailed, field-based archives in emerging countries. Since
the data collection relied on retrospective recall, we followed existing guidelines for
improving the accuracy of the data (e.g. Creswell and Miller, 2000). We allowed respondents
to answer questions freely and as honestly as possible, to skip questions if they chose, and
decline to answer a question if they could not recall something. Second, to minimize social
desirability from biasing the data as much as possible, we assured respondents that we would
not share their data with anyone.
We collected the data using in-depth, semi-structured interviews reliant upon interview
guides. Interviewees were asked to describe and make sense of the following: motivations for
starting the business, production model, relationships with other producers, nature of
institutional support, knowledge about fish biology, and decisions about abandoning their
activities. Although the structure and contents of interviews built on extant literature, the
empirical research was exploratory and flexible. All interviews occurred in the residences of
respondents and when the site of the ponds was close by, the interviewers visited those sites.
The average interview lasted for about an hour with some going to about 2 h, with the
shortest taking about 45 min. We called the interviewees back for clarification when needed.
In cases of non-English speaking respondents, we transcribed responses into English using
trained linguists. Each interview ended with an open invitation to respondents to share any
other knowledge they had that they wished to share. We were concerned that given the
passage of time, the recall of events could be blurred, but this was allayed as respondents had
vivid recalls of their experiences, and several noted that it was painful but therapeutic to talk
about their failed ventures.
Reliability and validity issues are important but not easy to maintain when we study
phenomena in new firms (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994). Therefore, we took steps to increase the
validity and reliability of our data by following three protocols. First, our general research
questions were based on existing theories of entrepreneurial and business failure. Second, our
research focused on a small geographic area and that allowed us to trace the relationships
between most of the players. Finally, we recorded and transcribed all the interviews verbatim.
We made field notes to verify the information and we replayed tapes over when needed to get
a clearer picture of what was going on. Field notes were written in the hours following the
interview to keep the procedure compliant with the “24-h rule” (Miles and Huberman, 1994).

Data analysis
The data analysis was guided by the entrepreneurial and business failure explanations
reviewed in the background section of the article. That literature provided a useful starting
point for understanding entrepreneurial and business failure as well as made our conceptual
framework explicit (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The information from these interviews was
coded according to the key variables and relationships in question—specifically, the start,
development, management, and exit of businesses, and the recurrence and emphasis of Entrepre-
certain themes as an indicator of the strength of those themes (Weston et al., 2001). A theme is neurial failure
defined as a recurring topic of discussion that captured an interviewer’s central ideas (Dutton
and Dukeric, 1991). After consolidating the main themes from all interviews, we collapsed
in agribusiness
some dimensions. Each of the individual sentences was reviewed to extract key sentences
that related to the theme.
245
Findings
Motivation, and early years
We sought to understand what led entrepreneurs to enter a business involving a novel
activity and the events that defined the early years of their entry into the business. Three key
themes seem to explain the early years. First, the idea for the pond-based tilapia culture came
from the government. Early adopters mentioned that they first heard of the idea of tilapia
aquaculture from government Agricultural Extension Officers of the Ministry of Fisheries
and Agriculture. At least one NGO was also mentioned as a source of initial ideas on
aquaculture.
All respondents were familiar with wild, not farmed tilapia. This prior familiarity seemed
to have played some role in the initial decision of some entrepreneurs to enter the business.
Respondents indicated that this species of fish was popular in the country and that there was
a ready market for tilapia. The farmer-entrepreneurs recognized an opportunity to grow fish
for food and income. Out of the 69 respondents interviewed, 12 had some experience with fish
holes, the practice of using nets in the lagoon to trap young fish that matured and then
harvested. The key difference between the two types of experience was that in the latter case,
the fish still lived in their natural, not an artificial ecosystem, and issues of feed and fish health
were not the responsibility of the farmer. It was clear that even those who had experience with
fish holes seemed to forget that growing fish in a controlled environment was different from
fish in its natural habitat. One respondent said:
[. . .] we had experience of blocking off small fish in the lagoon until they matured and harvesting
them. We were sure that growing the fish in the ponds would not be difficult. It was the same type of
fish we catch in the lake and lagoon. We were hoping to make money from the business. I bought the
small fish from a man who sold it to everyone I knew. He said he bought them from another farmer in
the Eastern Region. At first, I did not think it was a difficult business.
The initial group that started in the Greater Accra Region reported they had some training
from a local NGO and government personnel. The training covered the basics of pond
construction. While most indicated that they were told about the need to periodically drain
the ponds, most did not drain their ponds because they were unsure about how, and when to
drain their earthenware ponds.
Beyond the inadequate understanding of pond management, respondents seemed to lack
detailed knowledge about fish biology. Issues about quality fish seed (fingerlings), feed, and
fish health did not seem to have been properly addressed at the beginning. The data showed
that respondents had no scientific basis to know how much feed to use. The unavailability of
commercial feed at this time led respondents to improvise what they fed the fish. The amount
of feed required to produce 1 kg of fish, the Feed Conversion Ratio (FRC) is the rule of thumb
for determining feed efficiency (DeLong et al., 2009). None of our respondents knew anything
about FCR. Asked how they knew if they were feeding the correct quantities, most
respondents indicated that they simply decided when, and how much they fed the fish. The
using of none-floating feed meant that a substantial amount of the feed was sinking to the
bottom of the ponds, and unavailable to the fish. Respondents also had no understanding of
why it was important for the ponds to be drained periodically or the role of oxygen in the
JSBED ponds. None of the farmers used aerators to increase oxygen supply in the ponds, resulting in
27,2 high mortality rates. A lack of adequate oxygen meant that fish development and growth
were low and the mortality rate of fish high. Oxygen depletion or hypoxia is detrimental to
fish growth as it causes asphyxiation and fish death (Svobodovaet al., 1993). It was clear that
there was little understanding of biology, the health of the fish and pond management.

246 Defining success and emergence of a “production model”

The findings show that the respondents were operating under adverse conditions. In spite of
that, respondents described what they saw as some initial successes in the form of several
harvests. The definition of that success, however, seemed rather subjective. For example, the
farmer-entrepreneurs did not seem to have any scientific basis for determining the sizes or the
quantity of fish to be stocked or harvested per pond size. A respondent noted:
I was happy with our harvests in the beginning. The fishes were of the sizes of tilapia that are caught
in the lake. I had three harvests and was happy. Any harvest encouraged me. I believe that some
people who visited my farm started their own after they saw me harvesting from the ponds. After I
started, my friend also started a small fish farm. I taught him everything I knew because I started
before him.
The sample on which the entrepreneurs based the definition of success seemed questionable,
if not inadequate. The respondents seemed to have used knowledge from small, non-random
samples as a shortcut for decision-making. A respondent mentioned, “I had a few harvests in
two years and that gave me hope that the future would be very good.” A few harvests in
two years seem hardly enough to assume the future was bright, suggesting perhaps that
farmers were underestimating the errors inherent in using unrepresentative samples
(Kahneman, 2012).
A far more important theme from the data was the emergence of a near-uniform approach
and shared mindset around operations on the farms – specifically how the farmer-
entrepreneurs managed their operations across the board. It became clear from the data that a
set of shared ideas on how to run a “successful” fish farm quickly emerged among the
entrepreneurs around pond construction, feeding, and harvesting. This sort of behavior is
hardly surprising given that the owners were improvising under resource and time
constraints (Aldrich and Ruef, 2006). A respondent noted:
Soon everyone was doing the same things. I was not always sure that we knew what we were doing.
We were learning together and continued sharing ideas. We were learning from those who started
first. Everyone was ready to share what he or she found out. Most fish farmers I knew had the same
problems so we just tried to share ideas.

Modeling “resilient” others

We uncovered from the data that uncertainty and the lack of public knowledge on how to
manage a productive aquaculture operation intensified the entrepreneur’s reliance on each
other in terms of imitation and learning. Respondents reported that late entrants sought them
out for information. Those farmers who were copying from earlier entrants indicated they
visited the farms they heard about to learn what the farmers were doing. Imitation of what
people consider as successful models tend to be higher under adverse environmental
conditions (Haveman, 1993). In some respects, the early entrants were seen as resilient
individuals whose behavior was worth modeling. What was unique here was that what
imitators regarded as success was subjective, and it seemed that some entrepreneurs were
following each other without a clear understanding of the risks and benefits of what they
were copying. The data showed that the entrepreneurs were unsure of the likelihood of
possible outcomes of what they were copying and had difficulties recognizing cause–effect
relationships and the full range of potential consequences of the business decisions they were Entrepre-
making. A respondent indicated: neurial failure
We were learning from each other. We asked other farmers what they were doing about the low in agribusiness
harvest and fish dying. Everyone was worried but we were still hopeful. We tried to do everything
we knew to improve the situation. We increased the feeding of vegetable waste.
It seemed that the respondents saw the public pool of knowledge to be at least modestly more
informative than their hunches. A respondent noted: 247
Everybody I knew was learning from other fish farmers. I asked other farmers what they were doing
and did the same thing. I did not try to do anything by myself most of the time. Sometimes I just tried
things, especially feeding. Later on, I thought maybe I should have sought help from outside this
group, maybe the government. Should have done something different. Definitely.

Social structure and learning

Another pattern of behavior that emerged from the data was the importance of relationships
among most of the entrepreneurs we studied. The data showed that the farmers, from the
start, were building relationships and social ties as a way of sharing ideas and learning from
each other. Respondents noted that they felt an obligation to share anything they knew
because everyone was sharing ideas, and there emerged a sense of obligation on the part of
respondents to share the business-related knowledge they had, and information they came
across. The information seemed to circulate rather quickly about what other fish farmers
were doing. One respondent noted:
We became very good friends with each other. I knew about five farmers from my area and one of
these men always went to the Eastern region to see what the other fish farmers were doing. We
always asked questions. We knew we had to be close and share ideas.
The data showed that individual expectations of maintaining social ties increased the
willingness to share information. It seems that reliance on social ties may have prevented the
entrepreneurs from looking for other sources of information to both explain what was
happening, as well as look for the means to take corrective action. In this case, the
respondents failed to engage in this vital function, turning instead, to rely on their shared ties.

Institutional context
The lack of sustained institutional support seemed to have played a large role in the failure of
these businesses and entrepreneurs. The irony was that although the government did not
directly provide adequate follow-up guidance, there was personnel in the Ministry that could
have been of assistance. An interview with two retired officers from the Fisheries Ministry
revealed that a lack of resources, including vehicles, prevented personnel from visiting farms
and projects regularly.
This was a low munificent environment to start with. What amplified this was the failure
to access the little available assistance, thereby aggravating the impact of low munificence.
We found that the majority of the entrepreneurs were simply not aware of the availability of
even the limited resources that they could have accessed. The failure to seek help from the
very source from which they heard of the opportunity may be an indication of entrepreneurial
failure on the part of the farmers. It is also clear that the government, for its part, failed these
entrepreneurs. Merely introducing a business idea was not enough, the extension of support
services was key to ensuring that ideas translated to sustainable businesses but that was not
the case here. A respondent expressed the general sense of frustration:
No one I knew went to look for help from the government. I heard from at least one farmer that the
people in Accra (the Ministry) could advise you on somethings. They should have come here to teach
JSBED us. I thought the government should have taught us more. It was a very good idea. I would have
supported my children with the money I made. This farm failed because no one taught me the
27,2 right thing.

Failure and exit

The entrepreneurs we interviewed failed to see several threats on the horizon. Our analysis of
the data shows that actors failed to anticipate, recognize, and certainly did little to neutralize
248 the threats that were buffeting them. The businesses were clearly neither able to identify the
hazards they faced nor calculate the risks (i.e. the threshold condition) of their behavior. For
example, repeated low yields of fish harvest and high mortality of younger fish were
symptoms of the failure which unless reversed was going to collapse the businesses.
However, most respondents simply assumed that such mortality rates and low yield were an
acceptable risk of the business. One respondent noted:
Everyone I asked told me the same thing. Their small fishes were dying. We just thought that those
fish that were strong enough would survive. We were just happy that some survived, even if it was a
small number. Well, I knew it was not a good sign but I did not know that finally, things would get
worse. They did and I was very sad.
Some respondents noted that their subsequent harvests were getting progressively less than
previous ones, yet they failed to recognize the severity of the situation. For example, a fish
biologist explained the anomaly of reduced harvests over time in a personal interview. As fish
droppings and detritus increased in the ponds, the oxygen levels in the ponds are further
reduced, leading to greater fish die-off and stunted growth of surviving fish. We probed to
understand why respondents did not realize after say two cycles that they had a major
problem on their hands, especially as the other farmers they spoke to seemed to be having the
same problems. What respondents did, instead, may have amplified, rather than dampened
the problem. One respondent indicated,
When the amount of fish I harvested reduced, I increased the stocking rates of the ponds by
increasing the number of fingerlings in each pond. This was what most people I knew we were doing.
It did not improve the situation but we thought the more small fish we put in, the more we could
harvest. At least that was my hope.
In the end, the signals that emerged may have gone unnoticed because the actors lacked an
adequate understanding of the situation; they seemed to have been affected by their success
biases, some attribution errors, and the complexity of the situation. A respondent observed:
Everyone I spoke to was hopeful things would get better. However, they were not getting better. The
last time, I harvested just a few baskets of fish. Nothing seemed to be working. When I contacted other
farmers, they were having the same problems. I started wondering if this was a good business to be in.
The data revealed that late entrants seemed to have fared worse than the early entrants did.
While the average age of the farms from inception to collapse was about four and a half years,
those who reported the least amounts of successful harvests were the late entrants. There did
not seem to be any noticeable differences in the sample based on educational level, gender, or
previous experience.

Discussion and implications

The purpose of this article was to explore factors that explain entrepreneurial and business
failure. This study extends research on agricultural entrepreneurship and responds to calls
for extending contextual factors in entrepreneurship research. The themes that emerge from
the data have implications for theories of entrepreneurial and business failure.
The findings show that a mix of factors explains failure in this study. The conclusions
mirror Gillespie and Dietz’s (2009) definition of entrepreneurial failure as a combination of
external and internal factors. The findings also support some earlier findings on aquaculture Entrepre-
failure. For example, Tisdell (2001) suggests that the economic failure of an aquaculture neurial failure
project may stem from production, technical, cost or marketing problems. This study found
that production and technical problems were two contributory factors for failure. Similarly,
in agribusiness
Onumah and Acquah (2010) found that a poor understanding of the technical aspects of
aquaculture leads to failure. In the cases we studied, what may have worsened the situation
was the personal choices that the entrepreneurs made; they failed to learn and educate
themselves, preferring instead to copy from each other. 249
Our findings are also generally consistent with some earlier studies in organizational
research. Research has shown that firms may copy either the behavior of successful firms
(Haveman, 1993) or those they resemble (Yang and Hyland, 2012). There is some evidence
that firms often do not imitate the actions of small firms (Terlaak and King, 2007). Our
findings show that in the absence of other options, firms may imitate similar others who may
be small. Start-up firms in the same industry often have similar strategic profiles. They tend
to have few assets and human resources (Bradley, Shepherd and Wiklund, 2011). In their
struggle to survive, we see these firms employ similar strategic tactics. It appears that the
entrepreneurs were using each other as a reference group in navigating complex challenges
and dealing with uncertainty (Peng et al., 2005). Importantly, the farmers seemed to have
developed a “recipe,” that was shared by the community of actors as a means for reducing
uncertainty (Spender, 1989). Although shared mental models can be useful, they can also
become detrimental if based on erroneous elements as seems to be the case in our study.
Worse, the tendency to copy from each other may have led some entrepreneurs to ignore their
private signals. Such behavior, of course, can lead to serious problems if the observed actions
in question are based on third-party observations rather than their own knowledge.
Information cascade theory (Bikhchandani and Sharma, 2001) explains the tendency for
people to quickly share their experiences and ignore their private signals, which thus never
joins the public pool of knowledge. The public pool of knowledge need not be very
informative to cause individuals to disregard their private signals.
The data shows that the entrepreneurs had the passion and drive to achieve a particular
objective, but low business and entrepreneurial knowledge. There was a failure to learn as
events unfolded for several reasons. First, perhaps because it is often difficult to learn about
other firm’s failures. Organizations often mask a failure to save face, especially as the
respondents in our study had social ties and some implied obligation to share what they know
with others. Second, perhaps the failure to learn was inadvertent; it is not always easy to link
actions and organizational outcomes because of the ambiguity of organizational systems
(March and Olsen, 1976). In the case of novel activity, there was greater ambiguity associated
with the activity itself, making it more difficult to link behavior to outcomes. Third,
respondents seemed to have adjusted their aspirational levels to the facts as they saw them.
Several respondents indicated that considering all the problems they were having, any
harvest was better than no harvest. Finally, the presence of a level of unrequited optimism
may have prevented the actors from realizing that they were in a crisis. It seemed impossible
for the actors to learn any lessons because they were still not seeing what was happening as
failure, yet people are only able to learn when they “recognize errors, understand why errors
are errors, compare errors to correct actions, and update knowledge structures accordingly”
(Stiso and Payne, 2004: 3). The findings give rise to some emerging theoretical perspectives.

Emerging theoretical perspectives

Institutional environment and entrepreneurial behavior
Prior research has shown that institutional factors are the dominant frameworks for
explaining business founding and success in developing countries (Soto, 2000). Institutions
JSBED guide economic behavior by setting the rules of the game, monitoring, and enforcement
27,2 (North, 1990). The emerging theory linking entrepreneurial behavior and institutions has
highlighted the harmful effects of institutional weaknesses on economic behavior, what some
have called institutional voids, particularly in emerging economies. Khanna and Palepu
(1997) describe these voids as the absence or underdevelopment of formal institutions that
support business activities. In this paper, by voids, we mean a lack of sustained extension
services and institutional support for the business development of the farmers. While this
250 literature has been mainly applied to multinationals operating in emerging economies, it may
be useful to borrow from that research to explain the effects of inadequate institutional
support on domestic businesses.
The findings show that in the absence of institutional support, the farmer-entrepreneurs
improvised and relied upon what they learned from each other. In the case of aquaculture as a
novel activity, it was important for the government to provide the scaffolding necessary for
the entrepreneurs to succeed. Our findings show that the entrepreneurs we studied may have
made up for the lack of government support by building strong social ties and relying on the
untested information they got from their peers. This confirms some earlier research showing
that one way of avoiding institutional weaknesses is by building social ties (Khanna and
Rivkin, 2001). The findings provide additional support on the adverse consequences for
businesses of the lack of a strong institutional environment in developing economies.
There is a widely shared view that weak institutional environments often characterize
developing economies (Discua Cruz et al., 2013) and that may be partially supported by our
findings. The lack of adequate institutional support in the form of extension services and
training seemed especially magnified, as the businesses were associated with a novel activity.
Most of the technical and scientific components of aquaculture require education and
training. Of course, the entrepreneurs themselves shared some responsibility, as munificence
is as much a factor of a lack of resources as it is a failure to know and access any resources
that exist in the environment (Weick, 1979).
Agriculture, including fisheries, play a key role in Ghana’s economy and innovations
involving the transfer of technology requires careful management to avoid failure. The role of
governments in technology transfer is well-. For example, Chandra, Bhattacharjee, and
Bhowmick (2018) found that institutional factors were the most important factor in
technology transfer to farmers in India. Governments have access to resources, including
technical expertise and the personnel who can play a key role in training farmers in new
technology. Of course, governments themselves are resource strained, and the challenges of
effective extension services for agriculture in emerging economies is well-documented
(Sigman and Swanson, 1984). What is important here is that governments need to either
commit resources and provide proper training and follow-up services for novel activities, or
avoid introducing them altogether.

The risks of over-embeddedness

The data shows the presence of strong ties, an integrated social structure among the farmers.
Perhaps the lack of institutional guidance, the fact that this was a novel activity, the location
and proximity of the farms to each other, the reciprocal sharing of information, common
threats, all seemed to have pushed the entrepreneurs to become a cohesive social group
(Homans, 1950). Such a degree of over-embeddedness, in the end, negatively influenced the
search for new knowledge and its integration. The literature on social structure and economic
activity, and diffusion of innovation (Hansen, 1999) may be useful for our understanding of
how social structure affected the farmer’s behavior and their businesses.
Our findings confirm the well-known fact that entrepreneurial action, and economic
activity for that matter, are embedded in complex social relationships. The existing literature
on embeddedness tends to paint a positive impact of social ties on economic activity. Indeed Entrepre-
our findings confirm that embeddedness did have the types of outcomes often associated neurial failure
with social structure. The strong ties enabled the actors we studied to share ideas among
themselves, build trust, facilitated a certain level of collective strategizing about what to do
in agribusiness
under the circumstances, and reduced uncertainty (Uzzi, 1997; Shaw-Ching Liu et al., 2005).
To that extent, one could argue that embeddedness was an asset. However, looking at the
nature of the information shared in the group, and the fact that the farmers needed to both
search for, and integrate new knowledge, meant that strong ties were not beneficial. 251
First, strong ties prevented the introduction of new information and instead led to the
predominance of redundant information because strong ties often restrict the search for new
ideas. While strong ties may have aided the transfer of existing knowledge, it weakened the
search for new knowledge (Hansen, 1999). The research shows that when there is abundant
information, strong social ties are more useful. Conversely, weak ties are more beneficial
when information is scarce as was the case in this study because contacts in the social
structure are less likely to provide redundant knowledge (Darr and Pretzsch, 2008). In
addition, the level of knowledge associated with fish farming is not as complex, and prior
research has shown that weak ties are beneficial when the knowledge that is being
transferred is simple, while strong ties are more useful when we are dealing with complex
knowledge (Hansen, 1999; Shaw-Ching Liu et al., 2005). The search for new information was
more important to the farmers than how they transferred knowledge amongst themselves.
Second, strong ties may have led to herding behavior because such ties promote
reciprocity. Herding behavior explains how people adopt faddish behavior. Such behavior is
based on information cascades and social learning (Bikhchandani and Sharma, 2001). An
information cascade occurs when people ignore their private signals about the value of
something and rely instead on the observed actions of others (Banerjee, 1992). Close ties
among the farmers seemed to have created social pressure to share ideas and knowledge, and
we know that ties within networks can facilitate knowledge transfer (Wasko and Faraj, 2005).
One outcome of this sort of behavior is conformity (Ibarra, 1992). However, conformity
hinders creativity (Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003).
Finally, the strong ties among the farmer-entrepreneurs facilitated a certain degree of
social learning. According to Bandura (2001), social learning occurs when individuals acquire
new patterns of behavior through direct experience, observation of others or interaction
within a group. Social learning facilitates learning from peers and although it can lead to
multiple-loop learning, in this case, it led to single, not multiple-loop learning (Morgan, 1986).
Single-loop learning implies that learners take existing mindsets for granted. Single-loop
learning does not facilitate the questioning of fundamental assumptions even when one has
the inkling that these may not be right. Worse yet, such learning is associated with the
hesitance to seek new knowledge that contradicts one’s hunches. Conversely, the capacity to
question appropriate behavior is the distinguishing characteristic of double or triple-loop
learning (Argyris and Sch€on, 1978). For example, entrepreneurs, especially those that lack
deep industry knowledge would have benefited from questioning their basic assumptions
about why they were having low harvests.

Implications for practice

There are some important lessons from this research for entrepreneurs and policymakers.
First, the prospect of entrepreneurship and economic development, long-held as a panacea for
moving developing countries out of poverty, may require consistent government support.
Governments have a big role to play in developing and emerging economies as institutional
conditions are the dominant factor influencing the nature and pace of entrepreneurship in
these areas (Peng and Heath, 1996; Williams et al., 2016). For their part, multilateral agencies
JSBED such as the World Bank and IMF continue to urge governments in developing countries to
27,2 promote agriculture and entrepreneurship.
The lesson here is simply introducing a novel agricultural idea that may not be enough.
Governments and policymakers must provide the necessary institutional support to help
entrepreneurs succeed. Policymakers need to build a complete business case and provide
support, including a better understanding of the entire supply and value chain associated
with the activity. A carefully thought out plan would have included training and skill transfer
252 to interested farmers before the start of their businesses, and continuing support as the
industry developed. Any training for prospective entrepreneurs should include training on
what success in that field looks like and/or benchmarks for the entrepreneurs to examine.
Resource availability would have allowed for building some dampening effect when faulty
actions started creating the conditions for failure. For example, the presence of extension
services in the form of technical support on pond construction, feeding, fingerling
availability, and the availability of proper fish feed was important.
The simultaneous investment in supporting industries such as feed as was the case in the
salmon aquaculture industry in Chile (Perlman and Juarez-Rubio, 2010) would have helped
the supply chain. Providing a portfolio of support policies and early-stage support including
training services for prospective entrepreneurs is important (Spigel, 2015). As Reeg (2013)
notes, unless governments in emerging economies provide training and human resource
development amongst others, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises will not prosper.
Second, entrepreneurs venturing into business need to understand the particular
challenges associated with a novel activity. Early adopters must build legitimacy for their
actions to open up access to needed resources, not only investment capital, but also business-
related knowledge, and social support, which are all vital to new industry creation. The use of
collective action may be one way of building legitimacy associated with a new activity
especially when the actors are small businesses. For example, forming a business association
early would have made it easier for businesses to get access to needed government support.
Finally, entrepreneurs need to recognize that strong social ties should not necessarily lead
to the convergence of ideas and behavior. Instead, an active search for diverse knowledge in
the early years especially would increase the knowledge pool available to everyone and that
may prove beneficial in the end. Today, it may be possible for entrepreneurs to seek
knowledge from the Internet. You-Tube and other platforms and sites are increasingly a
source of business ideas. Lessons from failure may be important for agricultural
entrepreneurship and aquaculture specifically in Ghana because some preliminary
evidence shows that some of the same mistakes of the past, uncovered in the present
research, are being repeated this time around as well. For example, Ayisi et al. (2016) found
that almost 50 percent of fish farmers in one region covered by this study currently had no
access to extension workers, a situation similar to what we found in the present study. While
we must await the fullness of time to know whether any lessons were learned from the largely
failed pond experience like the ones we studied, the initial reports show the same lack of
government support for current aquaculture development in Ghana (Ayisi et al., 2016) and
history, may, in fact, repeat itself.

Summary, limitations, and further studies

This study adds some richness and depth to the literature on entrepreneurship failure and
agribusiness. Unlike developed economies, agriculture enjoys little, to no governmental
support in developing countries and entrepreneurs in agriculture may be one of the most
disadvantaged groups. Like all studies relying on retrospective recall of data, this research
has some weaknesses. Primarily, the recollection of events may fade over time, especially
since most of the farmers did not keep written records. However, we know that the recall of
salient events is often reflective of the facts (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977). Two areas are of Entrepre-
particular research interest are first, a greater understanding of the specifics of government neurial failure
support agribusiness would be educative. Second, how governments manage the transfer of
small-scale technology for agro-businesses in emerging countries would be helpful to our
in agribusiness
understanding of the factors that promote the development and survival of micro, small and
medium enterprises that are so vital for economic development.

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Further reading
Food and Agriculture Organization (2012), The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012,
available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i2727e/i2727e01.pdf.

Corresponding author
Henry Adobor can be contacted at: henry.adobor@quinnipiac.edu

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