Entrepreneurship as a Potential Solution to High Unemployment: A Systematic Review of Growing Research and Lessons For Ghana

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic coupled with perennial natural disasters, wars, population increase and urbanization have rendered many people jobless and new job seekers with little or no opportunity for employment. In line with these challenges, this paper sought to review extant literature on the successes of entrepreneurship as an approach to solving unemployment across the globe. The study sought to specifically identify whether entrepreneurship alone is sufficient to achieve unemployment reduction or it must be used in tandem with other approaches, and the necessary conditions for entrepreneurship as an unemployment reducer. The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach was used to search for relevant journal articles from Scopus, Emerald Insight and Google Scholar search engines. The search criteria were limited to unemployment and entrepreneurship nexus globally, a period of 1970 to 2020 and journal articles. Using the SLR technique, a total of 32 articles were identified out of which 19 were relevant to the research topic. The review identified that entrepreneurship alone decreases unemployment conditionally, but when combined with innovation produces a powerful force capable of revolutionizing every economy unconditionally. Another finding indicates that unemployment reduction through entrepreneurship is not instantaneous and thus requires a minimum of five years to be evident. Further findings show that entrepreneurship in the construction, transportation and utilities, financial activities, professional and business services sectors have the most impactful reduction on unemployment. Again, it was identified that provision of funds, credit facilities, training and tax reductions as well as new ideas, knowledge-based economic activities and self-reliant activity programs are key entrepreneurial recipes to halt unemployment. Thus, on the whole, entrepreneurship reduces unemployment but its true strength manifests when it is combined with innovation, and stakeholders are committed to making entrepreneurial conditions readily available. Ghana can then benefit massively by incorporating innovation with its entrepreneurship interventions.