Ethnic Entrepreneurship, Cultural Capital, and Enterprise Performance: An Integrated Framework Applied to Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa Business Cultures

This dissertation develops an original integrated framework for ethnic entrepreneurship that synthesises cultural capital theory with entrepreneurship research, empirically testing its predictions across three of Nigeria's most economically significant ethnic business cultures: Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa-Fulani. Ethnic entrepreneurship research has established that ethnic identity shapes entrepreneurial behaviour through cultural values, community networks, and ethnic market access, but the mechanisms through which cultural capital specifically translates into enterprise outcomes differ significantly across ethnic groups and have not been systematically compared in the Nigerian context. The dissertation employs a comparative mixed-methods design across three culturally distinct Nigerian states: Anambra for the Igbo community, Oyo for the Yoruba community, and Kano for the Hausa-Fulani community. In each state, 100 SME owners participated in a structured survey measuring cultural capital dimensions, network characteristics, and business performance, supplemented by 20 in-depth interviews exploring cultural entrepreneurial practices and values. Structural equation modelling with multi-group comparison is applied to test between-group differences in theoretical relationships. The original theoretical contribution is the Ethnic Cultural Capital Enterprise Model, which proposes that the three cultural communities show distinct cultural capital configurations, with Igbo entrepreneurship characterised by commercial diaspora knowledge capital, Yoruba entrepreneurship by aesthetic and creative cultural capital, and Hausa-Fulani entrepreneurship by historical trading relationship capital, and that these configurations produce different competitive advantages and market access mechanisms. Keywords: ethnic entrepreneurship, cultural capital, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani.