The influence of informal institutions on informal sector entrepreneurship: A study of Nigeria’s hand-woven textile industry

This paper draws on the institutional theory framework to explore the prevalence of entrepreneurship in the informal economy in Nigeria. An interpretive approach was taken in analyzing open-ended interview data collected from 26 entrepreneurs in the hand-woven textile industry in the southwestern region of Nigeria. Our findings show that beyond regulatory burden or survivalist economic necessity, the enterprise culture in the Nigerian informal economy is determined by value-driven criteria of sociocultural and normative environment that constitute part of the cognitive process of entrepreneurial emergence in a typical institutional context.