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Published: 01:16 AM, 26 July 2019

https://dailyasianage.com/news/188272/socio-cultural-barriers-of--entrepreneurship-in-bangladesh

Socio-cultural barriers of entrepreneurship in Bangladesh

M S Siddiqui
Enterprise is a crucial engine of economic growth. Entrepreneurship can start and propelled the
enterprises. Entrepre-neurial success is fully depends upon environment of a society. The mix
of attitudes, resources, and infrastructure is known as the entrepreneurship 'ecosystem'. The
most critical of these are related to lack of access to finance, lack of business support
assistance and negative social and cultural attitude to entrepreneurship.

Most importantly, the main obstacle of entrepreneurship is the social acceptance of being an
entrepreneur rather than that of job holder is also a barrier. Starting from family, friends to
acquaintances, most people are prejudiced in a negative way against entrepreneurs. One of the
vital reasons for their irrational perception is that the society stereotypically brands
entrepreneurs as cynical and doesn't want to recognise them until they can establish
themselves financially.

One study viewed Bangladeshi society as an ascriptive society where economic roles are
distributed according to the social status of individuals--not according to their competences.
Consequently, it offers a hostile climate for entrepreneurship. Other study argued that these
features would have a negative effect upon entrepreneurship.

Therefore, image, reputation and credibility of entrepreneurs in the society also affect the choice
of young people to become an entrepreneur. Initial family assistance, social motivation is not
available to kick start a venture and to uphold the start-up ecosystem in Bangladesh.
Conversely, young persons have hardly adequate patience in entrepreneurship. For instance, if
someone fails in his first attempt, he wants to keep away, though he should pursue till ultimate
success. The major obstacles are the Social Stigma, Finance and administrative and regulatory
barriers and state and institutional supports.

Stigma as a special kind of gap created between virtual social identity and actual social identity
of a person. It is the attitudes and beliefs that lead people to reject, avoid, or fear those they
perceive as being different. Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, a
person based on perceivable social characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other
members of a society.

In Bangladesh the major socio-cultural barrier for young entrepreneur is the existence of fear of
being rejected. The society values more on doing job for others rather than doing job for own
business, The social and cultural environment has a far-reaching effect upon the
entrepreneurship.
The culture and its scope has been defined by a researcher that 'it is a set of historically evolved
learned values, attitudes, and meanings shared by the members of a given community that
influence the material and non-material way of life. Members of the community learn these
shared characteristics through different stages of the socialization process of their lives in
institutions, such as family, religion, formal education and society as a whole." An individual in
this society is not free to choose his career on his own. Rather the choice of his family is found
to be more important of a determinant in this respect.

A society's culture determines the rules of how a person should behave in society. The society
of Bangladesh may be perceived to have the some of the characteristics that most of the
Bangladeshi individuals maintain interdependent construal of selves as opposed to independent
construal of selves where the self is unbounded, flexible and inseparable from social context.

In our power respect society, people give preference to the views of the elders and maintain
difference among the social classes. This feature is contrary to the spirit of entrepreneurship as
it restricts individual choice and innovation. Rather it encourages duplication and preservation of
tradition. This concept of culture justifies the attribution of status within the society.

The parents hypnotized the children to be Ductar-Engineer and the educational institutes in
primary level encourage the 'good' students to enroll in science group to become Ductar-
Engineer and the public Universities teacher encourage the students to become BCS officer and
private Universities oriented students to be executive of multinational companies. The teachers
are very often giving a very negative impression of businesspersons.

This is perhaps the most difficult of the challenges one has to wade through in Bangladesh as
far as entrepreneurial pursuit is concerned. Starting from family, friends to acquaintances, most
people are negatively and heavily prejudiced towards entrepreneurs. One of the reasons is that
the society stereotypically brands entrepreneurs as ethically challenged and usually looks down
upon them compared to professionals. Alongside that, there is also a risk factor when you are
doing business compared to when you are a professional. As a result, family and friends
discourage the idea of entrepreneurship.

The media are very unkind towards business community. They highlighted the name and
identity of any offender if someone is a businessperson or came from business family at the
same time avoid referring to family and professional background in case of suspect is from other
profession. Consequently, the good students are found to pursue the traditional subjects like
govern job, medicine, engineering and recently business administration in their studies, and in
their career, they choose either government or private job rather than independent
entrepreneurial career.

The society is still a semi feudalistic in nature. Consequently a role that is consistent with such a
setting will naturally seek high status. Thus government jobs which match such types of role are
given high status value and it is found that the most brilliant students vie for government jobs
rather than pursue entrepreneurial roles in the county.

In the face of acute unemployment in the country and rapidly developed job market in the
private sector, the entrepreneurs are now viewed as the rescuer and consequently partially
receive high status in the society. Even though, the status of government job is very high
although this perception is changing fast.
On the other hand, there are some facts about Bangladeshis, such as: (a) we are strongly
believe that fate is determined and so nobody has anything else to do with it. (b) we use to
waste time in determining the auspicious days in order to commence their activities with the
help of a clergyman. (c) we believe that the success of any venture or enterprise depends on
the will of God. (d)Ownership of land is valued more than ownership of an enterprise. (e) there
is no dignity of labor and manual labor is thought to be the least dignified of jobs. (f) government
job is considered as the most dignified and stable job. (g) to help in the building of mosque or
temple is considered more of a socially responsible job than investment.

However, some research findings relating to entrepreneurial features of Bangladeshi

entrepreneurs offer favorable indications and reported that Bangladeshis did not lack
psychological traits of risk-taking for doing business. Based on a study, it has been concluded
that the businessmen of Bangladesh are sufficiently intelligent and smart in taking advantage of
the business opportunities. These are indicative of the potentialities of entrepreneurship that can
be developed through proper policy framework.

Bangladesh can be regarded as a country upholding collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power

respect and masculinity, which are commonly believed to be less friendly for entrepreneurship
development. Besides, many scholars identified the risk bearing attitude of the Bangladeshi
people as an indication of presence of the entrepreneurial zeal among the people. Since culture
is always in a state of flux, many scholars believe that things are changing, in many cases,
favorably for development of entrepreneurship in the country.

Cultural support is a combined measure of how a country's inhabitants view entrepreneurs in

terms of status and career choice, and how the level of corruption in that country affects this
view. Without strong cultural support, the best and brightest do not want to be responsible
entrepreneurs, and they decide to enter a traditional profession. Career Status is the average
percentage of the population age 18-64 who say that entrepreneurship is a good career choice
and enjoys high status. The associated institutional variable measures the level of corruption.
High levels of corruption can undermine the high status and steady career paths of legitimate
entrepreneurs.

The Global Entrepreneurship Index is an annual index that measures the health of the
entrepreneurship ecosystems in each of 137 countries. Global Entrepreneurship index 2018
observed that there are so far 7 Million small entrepreneurs in the country. But the amount
frustrates with the world ranking of entrepreneurship where of Bangladesh places itself in the
134th position in Global Entrepreneurship index 2018 among 137 countries. One of the core
problems behind this lower ranking can be the funding obstacle.

The Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) has found one-fifth of the middle class
has already taken business as the means of income. The middle class does not depend on only
jobs now (2015). One-fifth of them are businessmen by profession. In line with this
classification, the number of middle-class people rose from 9 percent of the total population in
1990 to 20 percent in 2010, according to the researcher. The number would rise to 25 percent in
2025 and 33 percent in 2030.

The writer is a legal economist. Email: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com