Dr. James M. Wilson presents at Association for Global Business
10.14.2010
Transnational entrepreneurs face many challenges, especially when competing in markets with an emerging economy. In his latest paper, Transnational Entrepreneurs and the Evolution of the Nigerian Automobile Market, Bay Path College Assistant Professor of Business and ethnographer James M. Wilson III, PhD, examines how the “Tokunbo” industry of Nigeria significantly contributes to the developing economy and the challenges entrepreneurs face to maintain a successful business. “Tokunbo” means “from over the ocean,” and signifies used automobiles from either the U.S. or Europe. A thriving market for this used capital good has emerged in Nigeria. Wilson, along with his colleagues Anaele Diala Iroh, PhD, a visiting faculty member at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and Kevin Taylor Anderson, PhD, a lecturer and visiting scholar at University of Massachusetts Amherst, will share their research findings at the Association for Global Business (AGB) from November 11 to 14 in New Orleans, LA.
The Tokunbo industry emerged as Nigeria’s economy evolved toward a more developed economy. As the middle class grew, more residents were in need of vehicles. Therefore, transnational entrepreneurs began the Tokunbo trade by shipping used vehicles from overseas to Nigeria. This Tokunbo market has been so successful that it is undermining the development of indigenous new automobile manufacturing. In Transnational Entrepreneurs and the Evolution of the Nigerian Automobile Market: The Competition between Used and New Capital Markets in an Emerging Economy and the Challenge to Economic Development, Wilson addresses the Tokunbo process, the socio-economic significance, the network of transnational entrepreneurship that sustains this process.
For more information on Dr. Wilson, click here. To learn more his research on the Tokunbo industry, click here. Find out more about the AGB’s International Academy of Linguistics, Behavioral and Social Sciences, visit http://www.jmu.edu/forlang/agb/~damanpfx/wsdindex.html.
