Le rôle de la source de financement dans le Business Model de la PE/TPE ouest-africaine : de la convention de financement à la convention d'affaires

The aim of our work is to study the Business Model (BM) of small and micro business (SMB) in West Africa. Our research is based on a conventionalist and institutionalist approach of the concept of BM. BM and the convention are our conceptual and theoretical initial choice, while the institutionalist approach has been introduced through the emerging topics during our research. We called our conventionalist conceptualization of BM "modèle 3C" of tree convention: value convention, financing convention and operating convention. The central hypothesis of our study suggests that these three conventions link the funding source to theSMB. So the role of funding source is relevant to study the SMB BM. The operationalization of the analytical framework of the 3C model, through a mixed methodology and abductive research has produced results in three areas: 1) understanding of the conventions of SMB BM requires a return to the preconditions; 2) there is a plurality of conventions of BM based of SMB, according to the leader of the SMB and funding sources; 3) BM conventions are not only a function of the source of funding and SMB; institutional context play an important role. A critical view of the key concepts of our research based on our findings has opened new avenues of study.