From madam to master: Pedagogical practice and the construction of entrepreneurial legitimacy in Ghana's informal fashion economy

Informal economies are widely characterised as operating under fragmented institutional conditions, yet less is known about how institutional pressures are translated into economic practice in such contexts. This article examines how institutional logics are mediated through pedagogical practice within master craft workshops in Ghana's fashion economy. The study draws on qualitative fieldwork with 32 master craftspersons in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale. It investigates how apprenticeship-based workshops organise training, authority, and legitimacy under conditions of institutional fragmentation. Findings show that institutional pressures are not directly internalised by entrepreneurs but are mediated through pedagogical relations in which masters structure apprenticeship, enforce standards of workmanship, and negotiate competing legitimacy demands from informal craft traditions, formal vocational training systems, and emerging digital fashion platforms. In this process, workshops function as institutional mediation sites where legitimacy is produced through teaching rather than formal certification. This mediation is uneven and contingent. Pedagogical authority does not automatically generate transferable legitimacy for apprentices, and entrepreneurial outcomes vary depending on relational dynamics, market exposure, and institutional positioning. The article makes three contributions. First, it advances institutional theory by showing that institutional influence in informal economies is pedagogically mediated rather than directly transmitted. Second, it reframes informal apprenticeship as both skills formation and legitimacy production. Third, it shows that legitimacy in informal economies is produced through culturally embedded pedagogical relations rather than formal organisational credentials. The workshop emerges as an institutional mediation site through which entrepreneurial authority is constructed and stabilised in fragmented governance environments.