EXPERIENCES OF ENTREPRENEURS OF NEPALI SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES

Abstract

The thesis explored the experiences of entrepreneurs of Nepali SMEs regarding their “habitus fit” in the competitive market context. It includes the process of becoming - building entrepreneurs’ habitus and exhibiting the embodied dispositions in the market - field. Those are (a) sources and ways of ‘becoming’ (b) exhibition of entrepreneurial ‘doing’ on strategic readiness and (c) exhibition of entrepreneurial ‘doing’ on product-making and product-selling. Using the sociological viewpoint of Bourdieu's ‘Theory of Practice’ with an interpretive perspective of narrative inquiry, I collected the stories of entrepreneurs, analyzed and extracted the insights on ‘habitus fit’ within the contexts they were living in. The findings of this study reveal that the entrepreneurs of Nepali SMEs gained entrepreneurial orientation from different sources like parent’s professions, past experiences, and formal education and training activities. They have distinctive ways of ‘becoming’, utilizing their business activities. They learn much about their business activities from the participation to the business events, observation of others' practices, connections with business colleagues. Likewise, they have everyday practices of listening to customers and observing the practices of competitors. ………………………………………… Prof. Binod Krishna Shrestha, PhD Thesis Supervisor ………………………………………… Assoc. Prof. Prakash Chandra Bhattarai, PhD Thesis Supervisor ii The entrepreneurs have their unique practices on strategic readiness, utilizing much for ensuring subsistence continuity and business growth under the competitive context through collecting more capitals and utilizing them. They have innovative practices in the areas of contextual movement, use of business plan, resource management, innovation leading, organizational culture, employee motivation and reward, ready for uncertainty, and communication practices. They collect and utilize the resources (capitals), search for new ideas and incorporate them into their products. They provide emphasis on production technology, cost, quality, and flexibility. They focus on both, manufacturing process and responding to the competitive context. They produce products based on local resources, needs, and cultures. On product selling, they value the components like pricing techniques, sales and distribution, market communication, and market plan as the major components. They exhibit their products in the markets traditionally and using narrow sets of promotional activities. However, SMEs are ‘light-weight players in the field’ living in the position of ‘dominated’ in the markets due to their smallness. They have a culture of ‘multitasking’ which seems one of the compulsions, but a barrier of business progress. Combining and mixing the local and imported technologies, methods and materials as the practice of ‘combination’ is a kind of compulsion, fashion, or a strong motivation headed to globalization and a way of their existence. The entrepreneurs’ habitus has been influenced by the duality of localization and globalization. Local cultural demands are the foundation of the SMEs and the globalization has been presenting multiple opportunities and challenges. The insights produced by this research have the implications for the planning of sustainable SME development identifying the status and emergences in the sector of contextual sources and ways of becoming, course of strategic readiness, product-making and product-selling.