The interplay of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, collective entrepreneurship, and civic wealth creation in the tourism and agricultural sectors: A Sri Lankan perspective

Abstract

Entrepreneurship research frequently treats entrepreneurship ecosystems, collective entrepreneurship, and civic wealth creation as parallel or pairwise explanations, leaving limited understanding of how these domains interact, generate reinforcing (or weakening) feedback, and co-evolve over time, particularly in emerging-economy contexts where institutional coordination is uneven and entrepreneurial practice is routinely shaped by shocks and livelihood insecurity. This thesis addresses that gap by developing the Triadic Synergy Model (TSM), an original, mechanism-based analytical lens that specifies reciprocal influence and feedback among Entrepreneurship Ecosystems (EE), Collective Entrepreneurship (CE), and Civic Wealth Creation (CWC), while conceptualizing Individualistic Entrepreneurship (IE) as a cross-cutting constraining practice logic that dampens triadic coupling. Empirically, the study adopts a qualitative multiple-case design focused on Sri Lanka’s tourism and agricultural sectors, drawing on semi-structured interviews with SME entrepreneurs, conducted primarily in participants’ mother tongue, with follow-up interviews and iterative thematic analysis and cross-case comparison to identify mechanisms, boundary conditions, and sectoral patterning. Findings show that CE is not a generic claim of “working together” but an achieved coordination capability: synergy emerges when participation is sustained and governance is credible. Under these conditions, CE enhances EE functioning by translating ecosystem supports into usable capacity (e.g., shared infrastructures, pooled learning routines, and collective voice) and can catalyze civic endowments when collective enterprise is organized around inclusion, stakeholder participation, and community capability building. EE is experienced less as a static set of “elements” than as workable access points (e.g., regulatory and procedural infrastructure, skills, finance, market channels, and shared resource pools) that condition day-to-day continuity and shape whether collective arrangements and civic pathways can persist. CWC is evidenced as multidimensional endowment creation and, in necessity-driven settings, as a survival and resilience pathway; however, civic wealth durability depends on participation infrastructures and credible support regimes rather than enterprise goodwill alone. Across the triad, boundary conditions are systematic: low trust, role ambiguity, opportunism concerns, politicization, and survival-first constraints weaken CE and narrow civic outcomes, interrupting the reinforcing loops the TSM specifies. By sector, tourism exhibits more consistent triadic reinforcement due to higher interdependence and more visible participation infrastructures, whereas agriculture shows stronger IE resistance, coordination fragility, and weaker feedback channels, yielding more constrained and discontinuous reinforcing pathways. By integrating Active Influence and Reactive Adaptation logics, the thesis advances a contingent, governance-sensitive explanation of when ecosystem supports translates into durable collective capability and when entrepreneurial activity produces civic wealth that consolidates over time in emerging-economy sectors.