UNU-WIDER UNU-WIDER workshop on Entrepreneurship and Conflict 20-21 March

Sean Crowley

UNU-WIDER, in collaboration with the Households in Conflict Network and INCORE, organized a workshop at the University of Ulster, Londonderry, 20-21 March. The aim of the gathering, attended by more than forty participants from all over the world, was to explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and societies in conflict or emerging from war.

Opening the workshop in the university’s Great Hall, UNU-WIDER’s project director Wim Naudé noted that entrepreneurship is vital for understanding the causes and triggers of armed conflict, its duration and impact on a country’s economy, as well as for post-conflict reconstruction. However, he noted that there is a current gap in our understanding of the relationship between conflict and entrepreneurship, as both disciplines have tended to either abstract for explicit consideration of the entrepreneur, or just assumed that the entrepreneur is an innocent casualty of conflict. The purpose of the workshop, according to Naudé, was to fill this gap in our understanding of entrepreneurship.

Tilman Brück from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) was one of the co-organizers of the event. He said the workshop was critical in building an understanding of how poor people in rural areas experienced conflict and how farmers could build businesses to survive war. Prof Brück is the co-editor of the new UNU-WIDER book Making Peace Work that chronicles amongst others, the importance of entrepreneurship to long lasting peace.

The workshop showcased field studies from places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia along with theoretical overviews aimed at enhancing understanding of this under-researched discipline. One aspect which stood out from the various presentations, including from countries which had been experiencing decades of intense conflict such as Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Iraq, Liberia and the Philippines, is how apparently durable and tenacious entrepreneurship seems to be. Thus, even in the midst of conflict, we find entrepreneurship coming up with innovative ways to survive.

It was noted at the workshop however, that the apparent tenacity of entrepreneurship may mask the fact that surveys are often unable to accurately capture entrepreneurship in conflict. This is due to the fact that they are often biased either in terms of geographic scope or design, that entrepreneurs are often unwilling to share information in conflict situations, that necessity and survivalist forms of entrepreneurship tend to dominate, that firms tend to get by without investing in future expansion or in employment creation, and that the few economic opportunities that may still exist in conflict situations may be disproportionately utilized by a small elite.

The unique gathering was the first time experts and scholars in the field had been brought together to discuss these issues and the research papers presented will form the nucleus of a forthcoming UNU-WIDER publication.