Exploring the Relationship between Hakka Values and Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition Activities

• Main Authors: Dong-ching Yan, 嚴冬晴
• Other Authors: Yu-ning Hu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48308349657083656488

碩士 === 國立聯合大學 === 經濟與社會研究所 === 98 === In government policies regarding to ethnic minorities, assisting minority entrepreneurs is an alternative to common subsidization to the minority people or to the area. The entrepreneurs, if successful, will bring economic growth that is not only beneficial to the minority, but also good for the whole society. In addition, prosperous minority businesses may sustain themselves, alleviating government financial burden of subsidization. However, designing a fine assistance policy needs a deep understanding of the minority people. Hakka people accounts for 13.5% of total Taiwan population, have their distinct culture, and form several clusters of residence. Traditionally, Hakka people are considered as conservative, behind the economic development, and poor at entrepreneurship. This study aims at exploring the relationship between traditional Hakka values and entrepreneurial activities, hoping to help government design better policies through better understanding of Hakka people. In this study the researchers firstly reviewed Hakka literature and consulted Hakka academics to determine a set of traditional Hakka values. These values are integrity, harmony, frugality, diligence, savings-loving, hardships-bearing, education-emphasizing, and aggressiveness. Secondly, the researchers conducted content analysis on video records of interviews of thirty Hakka entrepreneurs, which video records were made by Dr. Yang-Sung Fan for the TV program named “The Summit Hakka Power” broadcasted by Hakka TV station since 2008, to understand their Hakka values. Lastly, the coded Hakka values of the thirty entrepreneurs were further analyzed with nonparametric tests to explore the relationships between entrepreneurs’ values and their methods of finding entrepreneurial opportunities. The key findings of this study are: first, the top four values to characterize Hakka entrepreneurs are: aggressiveness, hardships-bearing, education-emphasizing, and harmony. Next, the value of integrity, frugality, diligence, and savings-loving seem not to affect the entrepreneur’s opportunity seeking behavior. Last, some value seems to lead to some preferable opportunity seeking behavior: harmonious entrepreneurs seem to reject to use formal organizational process to appraise opportunities; hardship-bearing entrepreneurs prefer to prototype their ideas and test the market directly; education-emphasizing entrepreneurs like to seek opportunities from relative knowledge; aggressive entrepreneurs will develop a formal organizational process to scan and evaluate opportunities. The above conclusions were made by testing the entrepreneurs’ value scores against four modes of opportunity seeking behavior: 1) opportunity recognition is a random process without any plans, 2) searching opportunity from related knowledge and information, 3) appraising possible opportunities with formal organizational planning and evaluating systems, and 4) developing product or service concepts or making prototypes for inspecting market chances. Since it is researched that opportunity recognition affects entrepreneurial performance, and for better entrepreneurial performance, use of formal organizational opportunity appraisal systems and use of prototyping are suggested by literature, according to the above findings, the value of education-emphasizing and the value of harmony may impede Hakka entrepreneurs from adopting better opportunity recognition methods, although Hakka values in general support entrepreneurship. Therefore, the government or schools should introduce more about the method of formal opportunity scanning and evaluating and the method of market testing by prototyping in helping Hakka entrepreneurs recognize opportunities around them. For Hakka entrepreneurs, they should reflect what and how much education they really need and whether they are over harmonious in pursuing their entrepreneurial careers.