Entrepreneurial activity in Malaysia: A country level perspective

Abstract

Despite being the third largest economy in Southeast Asia, Malaysian entrepreneurial activity is under-reported in the scholarly literature. This book extends such research by examining the impact of entrepreneurship on its economy and evaluating the existing systemic problems. The Malaysian economy has benefited from the density of knowledge-based businesses and utilization of the latest technologies in the manufacturing and digital economies. However, Malaysia faces ongoing challenges, namely concentration of wealth in the city, high regional unemployment and workplace gender inequality. In regional areas, there is an over-reliance on agriculture and necessity based entrepreneurship. Consequently, entrepreneurial activity has been encouraged with the creation of eco-systems, seed corn funding and provision of entrepreneurship education to offer entrepreneurial career choices. Providing recommendations and best practice for driving entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviours, this contributed volume presents the first opportunity to reflect on both the success stories and systemic problems related to effective entrepreneurial behaviour in a South East Asian context.