The process of new venture creation in the Islamic world: An organizing framework

Abstract

This book chapter highlights the major characteristics and unique aspects of the new venture creation process in the Islamic world. To organize our argument, we follow Hitt et al. (Academy of Management Perspectives 25(2):57-75, 2011) and take a mid-range theoretical lens, conceptualizing entrepreneurship as a socially-embedded and context-specific process of resource mobilization and opportunity exploitation, culminating in the creation of a new venture, whose purpose is to create value and generate wealth and other social enhancement benefits. This approach provides a broad and theoretically-robust framework that allows us to critically review and integrate conceptual developments and empirical evidence and highlight the unique characteristics of the process of new venture creation in an Islamic context. We construct our exploration in three parts, focusing on the inputs, the characteristics of the new venture, and the outcomes of the entrepreneurial process. Our study serves a dual purpose. First, by applying a universally acknowledged and well respected framework of the entrepreneurial process, it places Islamic entrepreneurship in the broader conversation of the global entrepreneurship phenomenon. Second, it simultaneously highlights and elaborates on the unique features of Islamic entrepreneurship. Thus, it presents the phenomenon of Islamic entrepreneurship in the duality of the universal and the specific.