The Creation and Development of Entrepreneurship in Asian Chinese Communities

government interventions, cultural values, organizational design and the Gaia perspective.

Authors

  • Ji Li 1Professor Department of Management; Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Phone: (852) 3411-7562; Fax: (852) 3411-5583
  • Xiaolong Tao Department of Management; Yunnan University, China
  • Lan Liang Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Stony Brook University, USA
  • Fangzhu Zhao College of Economics and Management Southwest University, Chongqing, China 5Phone: (852) 6093 8781
  • Herly Yang College of Economics and Management Southwest University, Chongqing, China 5Phone: (852) 6093 8781

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We study the creation and development of entrepreneurship in two Asian Chinese communities, i.e., Hong Kong and Singapore.   Addressing a theoretical puzzlement why these two communities have shown different patterns of the changes, we propose a model of social Gaia which highlights the effects of four social forces, i.e., local cultural factors, foreign cultural factors, local government interventions and local firms’ activities.  While stressing that all these four forces are malleable or continuing evolving, we pay special attention to their symbiotic processes and co-evolutions.  Several important interactive processes are identified, such as the co-evolution between local firms’ activities and local cultural factors and that between local government interventions and foreign cultural values.  All these also cause the changes in entrepreneurship and OD among local firms in a relatively short period of time.  This paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this Gaia-based model for future academic research and managerial practice.