Regional cultural diversities amongst small business entrepreneurs in India

Abstract

Small businesses are entrepreneur driven initiatives and are usually influenced by the entrepreneur's cultural environment including their attitudes, and beliefs. This paper attempts to study the nature of cultural diversities of the entrepreneurs across two different regions in India. The six cultural dimensions enunciated by Geert Hofstede and the ethnic orientation dimension brought out by Thampi et al. (2015) are the core constructs for this study. Data collected from small business entrepreneurs across two sample Indian states were analysed. Significant variations were observed in the cultural attributes of small entrepreneurs across the two sample states, and within these states across locations (rural-urban), and business types (manufacturing and service). In all these contexts power distance, risk propensity, collectivism, masculinity, indulgence, and ethnic orientation significantly varied across different segment combinations. The finding of this study, therefore, could be useful pointers towards explicitly incorporating cultural factors in policy design.