Learning About Local Culture to Research Developing Markets: How I Rediscovered the Importance of Lakou in Haiti
一位海地裔博士生反思自己研究海地商业动态的经历，强调理解本土概念Lakou（一种以尊重、社区建设和精神联系为核心的公共生活方式）对开展有意义的田野研究至关重要，并呼吁研究者重视本土视角。
I am writing this essay based on my own experiences as a PhD student who wanted to study business dynamics in my original home country of Haiti. In this essay, I discuss how I learned the importance of gaining knowledge about indigenous, local perspectives, and how the concept of Lakou – a communal way of doing things rooted in respect, community building and spiritual connection – was critical to my process of engaging in field research. Lakou is a Haitian concept which first manifested after the 1804 revolution that led to independence for Haiti. With their freedom, the formerly enslaved Haitians began building their houses in groups surrounding a central courtyard which they called a ‘Lakou’. This physical courtyard served as a relational space for Haitians to meet, pray, and collaborate socially and financially with other families and friends. As a PhD student, when I was initially specifying my research agenda, I was encouraged by academic colleagues to focus on gathering quantitative data from Haiti to learn more about perceptions of poverty and corruption, and how they influenced business; however, my own sense of Haiti told me that there were critical insights missing in external databases. I unpack how my previous knowledge of the Haitian context turned out to be insufficient, and how I ended up taking purposeful steps to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of Haiti – thus improving my ability as a researcher to understand the local dynamics in a meaningful way. My call to action for other researchers is to learn more thoughtful and respectful ways of entering, re-entering, and studying organizational dynamics in developing economies where local business practices may be unique and potentially underappreciated. From my first-hand experiences, I recommend to other researchers that they pay close attention to how their own identities can interact with their research design choices and influence their interpretation of data they collect. I believe that this is even more relevant when studying phenomena within developing countries. My approach to qualitative research changed significantly over time because I experienced several epiphanies based on my identity. In particular, I had to learn how to listen more and talk less; this was a truly invaluable learning for me, even though I was ethnically Haitian. My narrative begins with my childhood memories of Haiti. I am 100% Haitian, yet my parents raised me primarily in the United States. Both of my parents were born and raised in Haiti, and we immigrated to the United States in the 1970s to escape the brutal and corrupt Duvalier dictatorship. One of my key childhood memories is that there was a huge back yard directly behind our house. More importantly, our yard was surrounded by other houses on all sides, which made it resemble a courtyard connected and seemingly belonging to everyone. When my parents planted vegetables in this area, all the neighbours would naturally see them and each other, connecting and laughing with each other in a shared, communal manner. When we immigrated to America, my parents determined they would buy a house with a similar arrangement, and I always wondered why. As it turned out, the answer did not come to me until I returned to Haiti as part of my PhD research. It was through my efforts to better understand business in Haiti that I was reminded of my early life; this led me to reconnect with the indigenous Haitian concept of Lakou that is at the heart of living in clusters of homes that surround a courtyard. As a young child, I observed Lakou as a physical space in the backyard. My father would regularly walk back there into this space and pray quietly as he meditated on everything. This space was used as a garden, a recreational area for kids, and a building area where he and his friends learned how to build houses. I realize now that there was a strong emotional component attached to how my family used this space and how it was deeply connected with Haitian culture. My mom and dad would plant fruit and vegetables for our own family in a vast garden that was in the centre of six houses. We always talked with all our neighbours while we worked. As I began reflecting on the value of Lakou during my PhD research, my memories of these personal experiences became increasingly front of mind. On 2 August 2015, I stepped off the plane back into Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As a Haitian American man, I was now travelling back to my childhood home from the USA as a researcher. My intended focus was to study how people (Haitians) could actively resist local challenges while building their businesses in local communities. My research plan had been developed as part of my PhD programme, and I believed that it was sound; yet shortly after arriving in Haiti, I realized how unprepared I was. As I left the airport, I was surprised to be suddenly surrounded by hundreds of Haitian people scrambling to get the attention of any arriving passenger. I learned later that they wanted the opportunity to make a little money providing any services that might be needed. This scene is one that I often saw repeated; it embodies the typical, chaotic nature of Haiti's overcrowded capital city where people are poor and in continual need of income. My intention at that time had been to stay in the city of Port-au-Prince only for 2 days before travelling to the quieter, more laid-back coastal city of Les Cayes, where my father was born. However, I found myself becoming increasingly intrigued with Port-au-Prince and wanted time to understand the city more deeply. As I remembered my childhood experiences with Lakou, I began to appreciate its connection with spirituality and engagement with spirits who could provide guidance. As a researcher entering the Haitian community and culture, I started to realize that I might be interfering in important social relationships; it became clear that I needed to be careful or else I could cause harm. Above all else, I didn't want my research to be misconstrued, and I recognized that my entry into the Haitian context could inadvertently be seen as offensive to the very people I was hoping to study. Through some of my early conversations, I learned more about the many ways in which Haitian people were stigmatized. For example, Voodoo is practised by members of some Lakous. Some outsiders had developed misconceptions of these practices, leading to assumptions by tourists and other visitors that all Haitians worshipped the devil. This false stereotype had emerged relatively quickly and was sometimes ascribed to Lakou, even though such practices do not represent the Haitian culture. I felt many tensions as I contemplated the beginning of my research because I did not want to contribute to spreading misinformation about my home country. And yet, I simultaneously wanted to embed myself in the culture to learn more and uncover new knowledge. In short, I was torn between immersing myself in the spiritually rich environment of my childhood where I loved the drums and dancing that were essential to Lakou and yet trying to keep myself away from situations where the results of my research could worsen North American stigmatization of the Haitian culture. After careful thought and further conversations, I began connecting with Haitian experts in two other cities to better understand the rich diversity of experiences across the country. My meetings and interviews provided essential knowledge that allows me to steadily increase my understanding. A restaurant owner in the city of Les Cayes taught me how she continually integrated indigenous Haitian values into her business through the Lakou concept. Her restaurant was thriving even though her husband had recently been assaulted. She had been able to find a resolution to her husband's troubles and grow her business because her Lakou came together in her support, helping to restore business relationships and facilitate a return to financial stability. I also connected with the owner of a thriving hotel in the city Port Salut, in the southwest coastal region of Haiti; this entrepreneur helped me understand how the key principles of Lakou were under threat because of outsider interventions. He described the abundance of foreign NGOs in Haiti, and their habitual nature of intercepting millions of dollars in humanitarian aid meant for poverty-stricken Haitians. I was truly dismayed to learn that instead of NGOs working with the Lakou communities, funding that was meant to help rebuild the country was going into the hands of people who were already relatively rich. Although I heard about misuse of funding and other travesties, I also found that in the face of potentially insurmountable challenges, Haitians themselves were persisting and organizing. This gave me encouragement to continue digging deeper to learn more about the psychological and social mechanisms within the Lakou. I met a hotel owner who told me, ‘the government had failed the people’. He pointed to a ‘vicious cycle’ where local institutions (such as access to capital) can be broken or absent, reinforcing the embedded practice of bribery, and we talked about how this made it even more difficult for Haitians striving for economic freedom. Nevertheless, the hotel owner's business was clearly growing. I asked him: How can you grow in these conditions? He replied that his Lakou helped him to expand into multiple partnerships, and thus I learned more about the positive aspects of Lakou. It had taken significant time, but I gradually began learning through the voices of the locals about the power of the Haitian spirit and the ways that people were actually organizing to survive and even thrive. Building on my experiences, this essay is a call to action encouraging other scholars to study phenomena in developing markets by learning and integrating local, indigenous perspectives. I will explain some of the local, cultural philosophies that I learned during my academic journey to collect research data in Haiti, where I overestimated my own understanding and had to regroup, reassess, and take significant time to develop a more culturally informed research agenda. My desire to conduct research in Haiti was innate, but I soon found out that it was simply not enough. There was much for me to learn and unlearn in the research process. I hope that this essay will encourage researchers to learn better ways of entering, re-entering, and studying organizational dynamics in developing economies where local business practices are unique and underappreciated, yet crucial to producing rigorous and impactful research. The key learning of my research journey was when I was reintroduced to the Lakou concept. Lakou (a commonly shared central courtyard) is a multidimensional concept that goes beyond the narrow sense of physical space to include spiritual, social, economic, and historical aspects. For example, the infamous culmination of the Haitian revolution took place in a ceremony on the night of 14 August 1791, in a place called Bwas Kayiman. This ceremony represented the Haitian spirit as it involved people coming together to collaborate and resist to inspire change (Désir, 2011). The concept is deeply embedded in history because it originates with my early ancestors who liberated Haiti from the French in a long revolution from 1791 to 1804. From that point forward, Haitians proactively built clusters of homes that surrounded a courtyard to increase their security and their sense of community – thus establishing the Lakou as fundamental to Haitian ways of life. The spiritual and social components of the Lakou make it an ongoing source of pride in the country. Although the social fabric in Haiti has sometimes been shredded through political instability and economic uncertainty, Lakou spaces continue to serve as a respite for a culture of resilience. Today, many Haitians strive to create and join ‘Lakous’ as a key part of their identity, and as a strategy to survive and thrive. Haitians commonly spend time in their Lakou to socialize, pray, and connect with their ancestors; they also collaborate with each other through economic mechanisms called ‘konbit’ and ‘sang’ leading to entrepreneurial activities with others in their Lakou communities. The konbit is an agricultural cooperative specific to Haiti where people share ‘labor’ with each other; it is organized by relatives to establish more efficient production. The sang is a financial system within a lakou that supports family members with loans or other forms of credit when crops fail in a given year, or in times of sickness or other personal difficulties. As I learned more about the importance of Lakou, it became easier to understand why (and how) some entrepreneurs and families were surviving and thriving. More generally, my ability to engage in research improved as I took time to improve my understanding of local, indigenous concepts. This process helped me to avoid stereotypes and biases, and over time I became better at experiencing the context from a (quasi)insider perspective. For instance, my improved understanding of the local culture helped the participants and I engage in richer conversations about the founding fathers and former King of Haiti ‘King Henri Christophe’, current issues with corruption, and entrepreneurial strategies. Learning the values of the Lakou also helped me gain new insights about how Haitian entrepreneurs organize collectively to overcome lack of support from the local government. It was this lens of ‘Lakou’ that helped me pay attention to the critical mechanisms of Haitian business decisions and behaviours. If I had gone ahead with my research as initially planned (without taking time to learn about Lakou), I believe that my thesis findings would have been fundamentally wrong. The results of my research would have been lacking depth and not fully illustrating the mechanisms which lead to the varying realities of Haitian businesses. In addition, my research findings would not have captured the human element of entrepreneurial decisions grounded in local values. One of the fundamental misunderstandings about doing business in Haiti is it too risky and that the people cannot help themselves. In fact, Haitians are communal in nature, and despite postcolonial challenges damaging the social fabric, Haitians who engage in Lakou communities are more likely to be successful. Overall, my experiences reveal that in order to understand business in Haiti, I had to take time to learn more about Lakou, the ‘konbit’ and ‘sang’. It is these Lakou experiences that build up extended families, business groups, and ecosystems that support economic activity. And it is by understanding the dynamics within families, business groups and ecosystems that I could engage in research that I am proud of. Learning about Lakou mattered a great deal to the quality of my findings because I developed a deeper sense of my personal identity as a Haitian and discovered how entrepreneurs organizing themselves locally was critical to survival and growth. Although the motivations of entrepreneurs may be driven by despair, violence and disorder, many entrepreneurs can thrive in community environments. Developing a more engaged Lakou approach to research involves paying attention to local voices and their ways of doing. I learned from the majority of the participants that their spirituality and communal connection had a direct influence on their performance. How can other researchers learn from my experiences? My learnings about Lakou are specific to my research and the Haitian context. However, more generally, they represent the importance of taking time to immerse yourself in a local culture. I encourage other researchers who want to investigate a culture that is new to them to start slowly and learn as much as possible about the local ways of doing. I realize now that I should have known this at the start. Cultural ethnographers have a long history of requiring researchers to take time to learn about their research setting (e.g., Mead, 1928). Also, qualitative research textbooks provide clear advice to researchers about how to enter a new organization or situation (e.g., Charmaz, 2024). However, I was at a Business School where researchers had little experience in cultural or ethnographic research. I should have reached out to other faculties for advice and guidance, but I didn't know this at the time. I hope others can learn from my experiences so that they find appropriate help at the beginning. For me, the concept that I had to relearn was Lakou. For others, the concept will be something different, but I suspect it will be equally important. Particularly when investigating organizational practices in developing countries, I encourage researchers to be open-minded so that they deeply explore phenomena that are new to them – as I learned to do with Lakou. The key is being vulnerable and aware of how your own identity can get in the way. Your data collection, data analysis, and interpretations can be fundamentally flawed, despite your best efforts to remain unbiased. I hope researchers can gain a better understanding of their own personal and professional identities and use them to engage in more culturally relevant research. I believe that this applies to both quantitative and qualitative research. When researchers take time to understand the importance of local artefacts, use of language, and the meaning of relationships among local people, research outcomes will be more valuable to those in the local context and in broader society. It can be both positive and negative when researchers have ethnic roots in a research context (as was my case). I had some knowledge of Haiti from my family and could speak the local language; however, I was naïve enough to assume that I had sufficient knowledge about the local way of life. If I had not realized my severe lack of knowledge and re-entered the Haitian context in person on several occasions, I would have missed out on gaining critical authentic, local perspectives. My story is a cautionary tale. I encourage doctoral students (and all researchers) to find ways of learning authentic perspectives within other cultures. This requires stepping outside our comfort zones and embedding ourselves in these contexts. University ethics a in that participants are with the principles of respect, and during the research process. My story that in order to these principles when engaging in research, in developing it is critical to take time to understand and the voices of I hope that this essay researchers in studying developing markets to learn more about local, indigenous as principles that their research from the very beginning. My understanding of Lakou and myself over time, and I became more spiritually grounded and in the research process. In Haiti, the in the of the Lakou where Haitians collaborate by their their and their to grow together Learning this was essential to my research on Haitian There are spiritual, social, and economic aspects to the Lakou, and taking time to understand the importance of this in business me to engage in meaningful research. Today, some of the entrepreneurs in Haiti share their and through Lakou as a way of building their ecosystems despite ongoing violence and I would have learned this I had not engaged deeply with these concepts. This essay from the I gave at a on cultural identity, and building a of My to my and for with in the Haitian spirit of and Lakou. also to colleagues who encouraged me to continue my focus on the Haitian of community by the which we are Your encouragement is and we will continue the I would to my to the and for their insights which helped me to a better As you to the scholars within the PhD community who on of this is