How National Values Influence Entrepreneurial Behaviour: A Case Study of India and Sweden
Abstract: Entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic development is a notion that has gained traction in past decades. In addition, female entrepreneurship has been shown to encourage societal development and reduce gender inequality. These findings have helped solidify the importance of creating a business climate that favours entrepreneurship, and entailed a focus on entrepreneurial encouragement as a cornerstone of many economic growth policies worldwide. However, different countries seem to face different obstacles to entrepreneurial behaviour, as there are considerable cross-country variations in entrepreneurial activity. Given the paramount importance of entrepreneurship, the purpose of this thesis is to explore and explain national culture, one credible cause of these differences. Drawing on entrepreneurial intention theory this thesis analyses entrepreneurial behaviour through the framework of Krueger's entrepreneurial intentions model. Furthermore, in order to avoid current researches strong bias towards Hofstede's cultural dimensions, Inglehart and Baker's national values dimensions are adopted as an alternative approach to conceptualizing cultural influence. The thesis is based on qualitative comparative case study of the independent sales consultants of the Indian and Swedish branches of a large multinational company, Alpha. The study finds some interesting cross-national similarities. Nevertheless, the findings support that differing cultural values cause consistent and tangible differences in female entrepreneurial behaviour in different societies. Finally, the study concludes that current research is too focused on the entry stage of entrepreneurship and proposes alterations to current models whereby the dual phases of entrepreneurship, uncovered in the analysis, are explicitly acknowledged. The conclusions of this thesis have several implications for the relationship between entrepreneurship and society. Firstly, there is no universally correct way to create a beneficial environment for entrepreneurship as different countries' cultural values create different obstacles. Secondly, policymakers must strive to provide continuous support to entrepreneurs in both the entry and post-entry phase of entrepreneurship. Finally, the consistent results delivered by Inglehart and Baker's value dimension imply that the existing mono-method bias towards Hofstede's cultural dimensions can be broken.
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