Framework Conditions and Entrepreneurial Support Structures in Morocco: A GEM-Based Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Morocco has sustained two decades of institutional investment in entrepreneurial support infrastructure: incubators, accelerators, and public programmes have all multiplied. Yet the gap between entrepreneurial intention and actual venture creation remains. This paper responds to a specific and documented gap in the literature: despite growing policy activity, the internal functioning of Moroccan entrepreneurial support structures at the organizational level remains empirically undocumented in peer-reviewed research. How do support structures actually engage with national ecosystem conditions? Which conditions do they address, which do they structurally neglect, and through what mechanisms do ecosystem dysfunctions reproduce themselves at the organizational level? We address this question through a qualitative field study combining documentary review and semi-structured interviews with managers and accompanied entrepreneurs across seven purposively sampled support structures in Casablanca, selected for operational maturity and typological diversity. Cross-case analysis mapped each structure's observed practices against the nine GEM Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions. Three findings emerge at distinct levels. The primary empirical result is that Morocco's support landscape is organizationally diverse but structurally incoherent: no shared strategy, referral system, or coordinating mechanism connects the seven structures. The two secondary empirical findings concern financing access (only 2 of 7 structures formally integrate investment facilitation) and post-creation support (5 of 7 structures terminate at business registration). The core analytical finding is that these gaps reproduce through institutional design: a performance measurement architecture that rewards throughput counts rather than firm survival systematically disincentivizes post-creation engagement. Morocco climbed from 39th to 30th in GEM's National Entrepreneurial Context Index between 2020 and 2024. This aggregate progress primarily reflects gains in peripheral conditions such as physical infrastructure, while the conditions most critical to entrepreneurial survival remain structurally weak. This finding contributes to the ecosystem literature by demonstrating that rising aggregate ecosystem indices can conceal persistent organizational-level dysfunctions, a pattern likely to recur in comparable emerging economies.

JEL Classification: L26; O17; O55

Paper type : Empirical Research