Toward understanding the dynamics of the relationship between religion, entrepreneurship and social change: Empirical findings from technology-savvy African immigrants in UK

Despite increasing interest in the relationship between religion and entrepreneurship, extant studies have failed to provide a clear explanation of this interdependence at the individual level. Our study addresses this knowledge gap by using a methodology based on an inductive and interpretative approach to collect and analyze primary data from 27 African immigrant entrepreneurs who are members of several Christian communities in the United Kingdom. Our original contributions include: At the theoretical level, the identification and definition of three types of individual religious expressions; at the methodological level, the development and application of qualitative measurement scales to the evaluation and graphical representation of individual religious profiles; on a practical level, the presentation of relevant content that indicates the mutual interdependence between an individual's religious manifestations and their entrepreneurial decisions and actions. Finally, in terms of modelization, we propose a general model that connects the individual profile of religious expressions and entrepreneurial initiatives in a dynamic process, which fuels emergent gradual changes in religion, culture, and the socio-economic context.