Co-Creating Knowledges and Institutional Space: Introducing Entrepreneurship to North Korea

DOI: 10.5176/2251-2039_IE16.17

Authors: Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, Thomas Wainwright, Ewald Kibler and Simon Down

Abstract: Recently economic geographers have sought to move their focus beyond the national scale, and to examine relational and institutional spaces in order to advance their understandings into how economic and social activities are shaped by formal state regulations and softer, cultural norms and traditions which form institutions. This paper seeks to address a gap between the Varieties of Capitalism and institutional literatures, by seeking to gain insight into the emergence of new market-orientated institutions within North Korea’s political economy. We seek to examine how knowledges of European entrepreneurial activity, education, and markets, can be used to co-create and embed new locally specific knowledge and norms to reshape institutional spaces. By systematically analyzing data from local and international media sources, and supporting this with secondary data from entrepreneurial education, this paper investigates how knowledges of entrepreneurship are used to co-create knowledges that could be used to create new spaces for enterprises and entrepreneurship education in North Korea. In doing so, paper draws upon and contribute to research on institutional spaces and entrepreneurship education literature.

Keywords: varieties of capitalism, institutions, entrepreneurship education, North Korea)