Abstract
The Chinese entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Indonesia experienced the Asian Financial Crisis and emerged from it stronger than ever in their own economies. In contrast, many indigenous entrepreneurs were bankrupted by the financial crisis. This paper seeks to explore the reasons that contributed to the resilience of the Chinese diaspora entrepreneurs in the respective economies. The study will not only contribute to a better understanding of diaspora entrepreneurs but also determine factors that enhance the resilience of entrepreneurs. In order to synthesise the research on resilience and Chinese diaspora entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Indonesia, the study employs a historical institutionalism method. The study shows that resilience capacities identified in the literature include financial, physical, informational, and social resources; cognitive, behavioural, and emotional capabilities; and personality traits are acquired or developed within a turbulent environment and deployed in future such environments, i.e. experience is key to the development of the capacities.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Publicly available data.
Code availability
Not applicable.
References
Aspinall, E. (2013). The triumph of capital? Class politics and Indonesian democratisation. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43(2), 226–242.
Blussé, L. (1986). Strange company. Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia. Dordrecht/Riverton: Foris Publications.
Bodomo, A. (2018). The bridge is not burning down: Transformation and resilience within China’s African diaspora communities. African Studies Quarterly, 17(4).
Boisot, M., & Child, J. (1996). From fiefs to clans and network capitalism: Explaining China’s emerging economic order. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(4), 600–628.
Bonacich, E. (1973). A theory of middleman minorities. American Sociological Review, 38(October), 583–594.
Bonanno, G. A., Westphal, M., & Mancini, A. D. (2011). Resilience to loss and potential trauma. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 7, 511–535.
Britt, T. W., Shen, W., Sinclair, R. R., Grossman, M. R., & Klieger, D. M. (2016). How much do we really know about employee resilience? Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 9(2), 378–404.
Bullough, A., & Renko, M. (2013). Entrepreneurial resilience during challenging times. Business Horizons, 56(3), 343–350.
Chadwick, I. C., & Raver, J. L. (2018). Psychological resilience and its downstream effects for business survival in nascent entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 44(2), 233–255.
Cheong, K. C., Lee, P. P., & Lee, K. H. (2014). Developers and speculators: Housing, ethnic Chinese business and the Asian financial crisis in Malaysia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44(4), 616–644.
Chin, C. C. (2009). Re-examining the 1948 revolt of the Malayan Communist Party in Malaya. Kajian Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies, 27.
Christopher, M. (2004). Creating resilient supply chains. Logistics Europe, 11, 18–19.
Chu, Y. H., & Smyrnios, K. X. (2018). How small-to-medium enterprises thrive and survive in turbulent times: From deconstructing to synthesizing organizational resilience capabilities. Routledge.
Chua, C. (2008). Chinese big business in Indonesia: The state of capital. Routledge.
Crawford, D. (2000). Chinese capitalism: Cultures, the Southeast Asian region and economic globalisation. Third World Quarterly, 21(1), 69–86.
Cribb, R., & Coppel, C. A. (2009). A genocide that never was: Explaining the myth of anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia, 1965–66. Journal of Genocide Research, 11(4), 447–465.
de Oliveira Teixeira, E., & Werther, W. B., Jr. (2013). Resilience: Continuous renewal of competitive advantages. Business Horizons, 56(3), 333–342.
Diao A. L. & Tan, M. (2001). Indonesia. In E. T. Gomez and H. H. M. Hsiao (Eds.) Chinese business in Southeast Asia. Contesting cultural explanations, researching entrepreneurship. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, pp. 124–45.
Dick, H. (1993). A fresh approach to Southeast Asian history. In J. Butcher and H. Dick (Eds.) The rise and fall of revenue farming. Business elites and the emergence of the modern state in Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 3–18.
Diehl, F. W. (1993). ‘Revenue farming and colonial finances in the Netherlands East Indies, 1816–1925’. In J. Butcher and H. Dick (Eds.) The rise and fall of revenue farming. Business elites and the emergence of the modern state in Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 196–232.
Dieleman, M. (2010). Shock-imprinting: External shocks and ethnic Chinese business groups in Indonesia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 27(3), 481–502.
Elo, M., & Volovelsky, E. K. (2017). Jewish diaspora entrepreneurs-The impact of religion on opportunity exploration and exploitation. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 31(2), 244–269.
Erol, O., Henry, D., Sauser, B., & Mansouri, M. (2010). Perspectives on measuring enterprise resilience. In 2010 IEEE International Systems Conference (pp. 587–592). IEEE.
Ezzedeen, S., & Zikic, J. (2017). Finding balance amid boundarylessness: An interpretive study of entrepreneurial work–life balance and boundary management. Journal of Family Issues, 38(11), 1546–1576.
Fioretos, O., Falleti, T. G., & Sheingate, A. (2016). Historical institutionalism in political science. The Oxford handbook of historical institutionalism, 3–30.
Fisher, G., Stevenson, R., Burnell, D., Neubert, E., & Kuratko, D. (2020). Entrepreneurial hustle: Navigating uncertainty and enrolling venture stakeholders through urgent and unorthodox action. Journal of Management Studies, 57(5), 1002–1036.
Franzenburg, G. (2013). Displaced values: From remembrance to resilience. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 56, 59.
Garrett, R., & Zettel, L. (2021). Entrepreneurial resilience. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management.
Gomez, E.T. (2002). Chinese business development in Malaysia: Networks, entrepreneurship or patronage. In Gerke, S., & Menkhoff, T. (Eds.). Chinese entrepreneurship and Asian business networks. London: Routledge.
Hamel, G. & Valikangas, L. (2003). The quest for resilience. Harvard Business Review, September, 355–358.
Heidhues, M. S. (1974). Southeast Asia’s Chinese minorities. Longman.
Hing, L. K., & Ping, L. P. (2003). Malaysian Chinese business: Who survived the crisis? Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, (3).
Hodder, R. (1996). Merchant princes of the East: Cultural delusions, economic success and the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Wiley.
Ives, A. R., & Carpenter, S. R. (2007). Stability and diversity of ecosystems. Science, 317(5834), 58–62.
Jacobsen, M. (2004). On entrepreneurship and ethnic belonging. Ethnic Chinese SME Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. Asia Insights, (3), 11.
Kahane, B. (2012). “Tikkun Olam”: How a Jewish ethos drives innovation. Journal of Management Development, 31(9), 938–947.
Kao, J. (1993). The worldwide web of Chinese business. Harvard Business Review, 2, 24–36.
Kawangit, R. M. (2015). Assimilation of Baba and Nyonya in Malaysia. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 3, 11.
Kieser, A. (1994). Why organization theory needs historical analyses—And how this should be performed. Organization Science, 5(4), 608–620.
King, D. D., Newman, A., & Luthans, F. (2016). Not if, but when we need resilience in the workplace. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(5), 782–786.
Koon, H. P. (1996). Chinese responses to Malay hegemony in Peninsular Malaysia 1957–96. Japanese Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34(3), 500–523.
Kraar, L. (1994). The overseas Chinese: Lessons from the world’s most dynamic capitalists. Fortune, October 31: 91–114.
Kuok, R., & Tanzer, A. (2018). Robert Kuok: A memoir. Landmark Books Pte Ltd.
Lengnick-Hall, C. A., & Beck, T. E. (2005). Adaptive fit versus robust transformation: How organizations respond to environmental change. Journal of Management, 31(5), 738–757.
Lian, K. F. (1995). Migration and the formation of Malaysia and Singapore. In R. Cohen (Ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (pp. 392–396). Cambridge University Press.
Liem Y. S. (1980). Die ethnische Minderheit der Überseechinesen im Entwicklungsprozess Indonesiens. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung interethnischer Vorurteile in der Dritten Welt, Saarbrücken: Breitenbach.
Liu, Y. (2020). Contextualizing risk and building resilience: Returnee versus local entrepreneurs in China. Applied Psychology, 69(2), 415–443.
Liu, Y., & Almor, T. (2016). How culture influences the way entrepreneurs deal with uncertainty in inter-organizational relationships: The case of returnee versus local entrepreneurs in China. International Business Review, 25(1), 4–14.
Luthans, F., Vogelgseang, G. R., & Lester, P. B. (2006). Developing the psychological capital of resiliency. Human Resource Development Review, 5(1), 25–44.
Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71(3), 543–562.
Ma, Z., Xiao, L., & Yin, J. (2018). Toward a dynamic model of organizational resilience. Nankai Business Review International, 9(3), 246–263.
MacIntyre, A. (1990). Business and politics in Indonesia. Allen & Unwin.
Mackie, J. (1996). ‘Introduction’.In Reid, A. (Ed.) Sojourners and settlers. Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp. xii-xxx.
Mackie, J. (2003). ‘Pre-1997 Sino-Indonesian conglomerates, compared with those of other ASEAN countries’, In Jomo K.S. and B. C. Folk (eds.) Ethnic business. Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia, edited by, London/New York: Routledge (pp. 105–28).
Mallak, L. (1998). Putting organizational resilience to work. Industrial Management, 40(6), 8–13.
Marino, L. D., Lohrke, F. T., Hill, J. S., Weaver, K. M., & Tambunan, T. (2008). Environmental shocks and SME alliance formation intentions in an emerging economy: Evidence from the Asian financial crisis in Indonesia. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 32(1), 157–183.
Meyer, A. D., Gaba, V., & Colwell, K. A. (2005). Organizing far from equilibrium: Non-linear change in organizational fields. Organization Science, 16(5), 456–473.
Moha-Asri, A. (2002). The impact of the Asian financial crisis on small and medium enterprises in Malaysia: Policy responses. The Journal of Comparative Asian Development, 1(2), 227–244.
Ouchi, W. (1980). Markets, bureaucracies and clans. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 129–141.
Pauker, G. J. (1969). The rise and fall of the Communist Party of Indonesia. Rand Corp Santa Monica CA.
Phoa L. G. (1992). ‘The changing economic position of the Chinese in Netherlands India’, In Chinese economic activity in the Netherlands India. Selected translations from the Dutch, edited by M. R. Fernando and D. Bulbeck, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 5–18.
Ping, L. P., & Yean, T. S. (2007). Malaysia ten years after the Asian financial crisis. Asian Survey, 47(6), 915–929.
Priebe, J., & Rudolf, R. (2015). Does the Chinese diaspora speed up growth in host countries? World Development, 76, 249–262.
Rauch, J. E. (2001). Business and social networks in international trade. Journal of Economic Literature, 39(December), 1177–1203.
Reid, A. (1988). Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450–1680. I: The lands below the winds. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Reid, A. (1992). ‘Economic and social change, c. 1400–1800’. In Tarling (Ed.) The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia. I: From early times to c. 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 460–507
Ren, N., & Liu, H. (2022). Southeast Asian Chinese engage a rising China: Business associations, institutionalised transnationalism, and the networked state. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(4), 873–893.
Richardson, G. E. (2002). The metatheory of resilience and resiliency. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(3), 307–321.
Santasombat, Y. (2017). Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia: Culture and practices. Springer.
Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2010). Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 1025–1041.
Setiono, B. G. (2003). Tionghoa dalam pusaran politik. Jakarta: Elkasa.
Shepherd, D. A., Saade, F. P., & Wincent, J. (2020). How to circumvent adversity? Refugee-entrepreneurs’ resilience in the face of substantial and persistent adversity. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(4).
Shepherd, D. A., & Williams, T. A. (2014). Local venturing as compassion organizing in the aftermath of a natural disaster: The role of localness and community in reducing suffering. Journal of Management Studies, 51(6), 952–994.
Sin, G. T. T. (1987). The management of Chinese small-business enterprises in Malaysia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 4(3), 178–186.
Steinmo, S. (2008). Historical institutionalism. In D. D. Porta & M. Keating (Eds.), Approaches and methodologies in the social sciences: A pluralist perspective (pp. 118–138). Cambridge University Press.
Sundiman, D., & Idrus, M. S. (2015). Confucianism ethic, Guanxi, and acculturation role on the knowledge transfer process of Chinese descendant in Indonesia. International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies, 6(3), 261–278.
The Economist (2014) The slumps that shaped modern finance. The Economist, April, 1.
Thee, K. W. (1996). Economic policies in Indonesia during the period 1950–1965, in particular with respect to foreign investment. In J. T. Lindblad (Ed.), Historical foundations of a national economy in Indonesia, 1890s–1990s (pp. 315–329). Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Time (1969). Race war in Malaysia. Time, 23 May. Accessed at: https://web.archive.org/web/20070518061525/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C900859%2C00.html.
Tugade, M. M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(2), 320–333.
Velayutham, S. (2021). The impact of diaspora on international entrepreneurship in Malaysia: A historical institutionalism approach, In Jafari-Sadeghi, V., Amoozad Mahdiraji, H., & Dana, L. (Eds.) Empirical international entrepreneurship: A handbook of methods, approaches, and applications. Springer.
Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H., & Ward, R. (1990). Opportunities, group characteristics and strategies. In R. Waldinger, H. Aldrich, & R. Ward (Eds.), Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies (pp. 13–48). Sage.
Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2008). Organizing for high reliability: Processes of collective mindfulness. Crisis Management, 3(1), 31–66.
Weidenbaum, M., & Hughes, S. (1996). The bamboo network: How expatriate Chinese entrepreneurs are creating a new economic superpower in Asia. Free Press.
Wertheim, W. F. (1965). East-West parallels. Quadrangle Books.
Whah, C. Y. (2007). From tin to Ali Baba’s gold: The evolution of Chinese entrepreneurship in Malaysia.
Williams, T. A., Gruber, D. A., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Zhao, E. Y. (2017). Organizational response to adversity: Fusing crisis management and resilience research streams. Academy of Management Annals, 11(2), 733–769.
Williamson, O. E. (1975). Markets and hierarchies. Free Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Whole contribution by single author.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Velayutham, S. A historical analysis of resilience of Chinese diaspora entrepreneurs in South-East Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC). J Glob Entrepr Res 13, 14 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40497-023-00357-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40497-023-00357-1