Ties That Bind: the emergence of entrepreneurs in China

Barbara Krug

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: The paper describes the emergence of entrepreneurship in Shanxi province based on fieldwork in the last 6 years. Employing institutional and evolutionary economics shows that both the kind of firms that emerge and the individual behaviour of entrepreneurs reflect a systematic response to the situational constraint all would-be entrepreneurs face, namely a high level of uncertainty and weak institutions. In this situation to establish firms with a weak organisational identity allows to flexibly respond to new opportunities, while a strong reputation for accountability of the owners and managers is needed to get long term business relations started. As the Shanxi sample shows accountability can be achieved by a mix of reviving old economic institutions, hijacking social organisations, and building new business practices. To the extent that old institutions, social organisations and business practices do not spread equally across China, different forms of firms and different forms of entrepreneurship can be expected within China. In short, local cultures matter.

Keywords: dealing with uncertainty and risk; evolutionary economics; organisational change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H32 L2 M M10 M13 O53 P21 P3 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-12-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repub.eur.nl/pub/283/erimrs20001201150211.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ems:eureri:283

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RePub ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).