Small Business in a Non-Entrepreneurial Society: The Case of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos)
探讨老挝传统佛教价值观如何抑制男性创业精神，导致小企业主要由女性和外国人经营，并基于实地调研描述老挝作为亚洲最不发达国家的现状。
Social values may cause entrepreneurs to be looked up to, or down upon, depending on the beliefs of a people and their prominent moral code of behavior. In Laos, a nation which still embraces the traditional values of Theravada Buddhism, the belief system functions against the fostering of entrepreneurial spirit among Lao men. Consequently, the small business sector is mostly limited to women and foreigners, while Lao men tend to refrain from business activity. Hence, Laos is one of Asia's most undeveloped nations and among the five poorest in the world. Annual per capita income is $230 U.S. Any large corporation in Thailand earns more than the value of all the goods and services produced in all of Laos. Methodology Laos is a difficult country in which to conduct research. Visa formalities are complex, as government authorities are concerned about cultural pollution. Infrastructure is unreliable. Although Laos exports electricity to Thailand, blackouts in Laos are frequent; maps of Laos tend to be incomplete, despite efforts during 1994 to chart maps from aerial photos; disease is rampant in Laos (the author witnessed a cholera epidemic); war mines from decades ago are still exploding. As a result of all the above, empirical research about Laos is lacking. Given the shortage of secondary sources about this relatively closed nation, this essay is exploratory in nature. It is based on primary field research conducted on location by the author, using ethnographic means involving in-depth interviews and observations. Interviews with Laotians were conducted by the author in English, in French, and via local interpreters; interviews with Muslim entrepreneurs were conducted by the author in Arabic and in English; Chinese entrepreneurs were interviewed in their language through a German-Chinese interpreter. Traveling from one town to another was quite challenging. Using public transport usually entailed riding on buses with no windows and plenty of ceiling cracks. Alongside people, other passengers normally include live chickens, pigs in baskets, fish splashing in leaking containers, and frogs jumping from bowls. Finding a frog on one's journal is not uncommon. Culture and Entrepreneurship Weber (1905-6, 1920, 1930), seeing the entrepreneur as the ultimate source of formal authority in an organization, analyzed the presumed relationship between the Spirit of Capitalism and the Work Ethic. According to his thesis, the success of the entrepreneur can be traced to the values of frugality, deferred gratification, and asceticism, all of which are fundamentals of the Protestant culture (but not exclusive to that particular culture). Thus, culture was his explanatory variable which predisposed some peoples towards entrepreneurial activity while other peoples tended to refrain from new ventures. This explains why the Protestants in France, for example, were often entrepreneurs. In essence, the Weberian approach argues that entrepreneurial behavior is culturally influenced by values, beliefs, and disbeliefs. According to Weber, religion, the caste system, and the family system affected the emergence of entrepreneurship in India. He noted that the Jains (an ascetic religious sect) became a trading sect for purely ritualistic reasons, as only in trading could one practice ahimsa, the absolute prohibition of the killing of live things. Along the same theme, Gadgil (1959) showed that Muslims, Christians, and Jews were the chief traders of Kerala, in South India. The Japanese have been described as a non-Protestant group succeeding in entrepreneurship because of hard work, diligence, and frugality inspired by Confucianism (Petersen 1971), although Confucianism does not encourage entrepreneurship per se (Jones and Sakong 1980). To be ethnically Japanese, according to Devos (1973), is to have an achievement-oriented culture, and it is this culture which helps entrepreneurs persist until they succeed. …