Editorial

Citation

Wang, Y. and Li, J. (2009), "Editorial", Journal of Chinese Entrepreneurship, Vol. 1 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jce.2009.40501caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Chinese Entrepreneurship, Volume 1, Issue 3

When you open this issue, the Journal of Chinese Entrepreneurship is delighted to invite you to join our celebration of its first year anniversary. We specified in our launching issue that the aim of the journal is to “give a broad international coverage of subjects relating to entrepreneurship in China”. We have also come to realize that Chinese entrepreneurship would be better appreciated if it were to be explained and explored from an international lens. It is for this reason that this special issue of the journal is dedicated to the topic of entrepreneurship in developing countries. This is to acknowledge that entrepreneurship is the engine fueling innovation, job creation, and economic growth in China, and other developing economies alike. Yet, leverage of entrepreneurial opportunities across a wide range of developing countries varies significantly. A lot is still to be learned about the contexts, behaviours, and processes of entrepreneurship so that the theoretical underpinnings of entrepreneurship can be strengthened, that experiences and good practices can be exchanged, and that ultimately an environment where entrepreneurship can prosper can be created. Thus, in this special issue, the main aim is to present, explore, and reflect on the experiences of entrepreneurship in developing countries. More specifically, we aim to:

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  Examine the problems of starting up a new business encountered by entrepreneurs in general and disadvantaged groups in particular.

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  Investigate the processes in which entrepreneurs manage new venture development and growth.

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  Explore various aspects of entrepreneurship policies that are being initiated to improve the entrepreneurship environment.

There are seven research articles and one article of “industry insight” in this special issue. The issue starts with two articles examining women entrepreneurship in Pakistan. Ansir Ali Rajput and Murad Ali present findings from a survey of 340 women entrepreneurs in Potohar Region in respect of the profile of women entrepreneurs and the barriers entrepreneurial women faced in gaining access to resources for new venture creation. They find that a typical women entrepreneur in the region was likely to be a sole trader who just started a small business in the garment business sector, under 35-years old, married and educated up to the college level with a non-business degree. They have also found that the women entrepreneur was most likely to be the eldest children in their family, without a family business background and prior knowledge of business and work experience, have a business partnership with her husband, and set up a business in order to support her family. Not surprisingly, women’s entrepreneurial endeavor was largely constrained by the lack of financial resources and challenge of social values against them. Adopting a survey approach similarly, Talat Afza and Muhammad Amir Rashid’s research covers a sample of 872 women entrepreneurs in four provinces. Their research confirms some of the findings in the previous article. They find that the majority of women entrepreneurs were under the age of 40, with low-educational attainment, vulnerable with low income, burdened with household errands, struggled in an unfavourable environment. Again, lack of access to capital was identified as the main hurdle they had to overcome.

Moving focus away from women entrepreneurs to a wider community of entrepreneurs, Md. Serazul Islam surveyed 250 small-scale traders in the Pabna and Gazipur Regions of Bangladesh and finds that the entrepreneur in his sample was typically at the age of 25-35, educated up to secondary educational level, and engaged in another business prior to self-employment. Like women entrepreneurs in Pakistan, entrepreneurs in the regions were dependent on personal and family savings to start up a new business and their trading was handicapped by shortage of capital, lack of business knowledge and lack of skilled employees. Growth of their businesses was also held back by their inability to raise growth capital, lack of efficient and reliable employees, and competition in the same sector. These findings are echoed by Kakumani Lavanya Latha and Bevvn Murthy’s research in India. In their survey of 196 entrepreneurs in Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh, India, Latha and Murthy find that the main problems facing entrepreneurs were high price of raw materials, lack of marketing information and marketing of products, high competition, and absenteeism of labour.

Can the practice of entrepreneurial management help mediate some of the constraints faced by entrepreneurs in developing countries? Mridula Gungaphul and Mehraz Boolaky explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and marketing in the context of Mauritius. Based on a sample of 30 successful entrepreneurial businesses, they find that entrepreneurs used marketing to a large extent although some applied it unknowingly. Entrepreneurs tended to emphasize product development rather than improving product offering based on customer needs and wants. The results also reveal that some of the entrepreneurs practised marketing in mostly unconventional ways although there is evidence of convergence with traditional marketing in many respects. On the whole, the results of the survey indicate that entrepreneurs viewed marketing as an important function in achieving their business goals.

Since achieving its independence in 1957, the industrial development in Malaysia has gradually shifted from traditional- to technology-based entrepreneurial activities. Syahida Abdullah studies the transformation of Malaysia’s industrial development between 1957 and 1997 applying the World Bank’s framework introduced by Bessant et al. (2000). The findings indicate that the government’s effort and support through the implementation of different policies and various state-led programmes have driven Malaysia’s entrepreneurial activities to become technology oriented.

Facilitating change is part of the attributes of entrepreneurship in the public sector, but how easy is it to achieve the goal of change? Tony Kai Pong Leung and John Adams use the theory of bureaucracy to test if resistance to change (RTC) is a significant external factor relevant to the technology acceptance model (TAM) in explaining internet and communication technology (IT) acceptance and usage in a government context. They conclude that RTC can improve the explanatory power of TAM. The TAM is confirmed applicable in the government context and most of the theoretical relationships are hold true. However, the usefulness-intention direct link is found to be unstable. Statistical tests show that there are heterogeneous behaviour groups within the organization. Specifically, younger and more educated staffs are more willing to change.

The last article of the special issue is an industry insight. John Adams and Jialiang Wang examine the development of industrial clusters and its impact on regional economy in Heilongjiang Province of China using the green food cluster as a case study. They find evidence that government policies have boosted the development of the cluster and argue that the future development of the cluster should focus on a greater involvement in the international market, strengthening of both forward and backward supply chains, and building of identifiable brand names in green food.

Yonggui Wang, Jun Li