Risk taking is fundamental to entrepreneurial activities and a central theme of the entrepreneurship literature. However, research on the risk taking propensity of entrepreneurs has met with virtually no empirical evidence on how socio-cultural factors influence on taking entrepreneurial risk in the context of South Asia where entrepreneurs consistently face challenges of high uncertainty due to socio-cultural and politico-economic complexity and instability. Purpose of this paper is to address this paradox by examining entrepreneurial risk through the lenses of socio-cultural, politico-economic and decision making. Given the self-evident that nature of complexity, irrationality and uncertainty in this context, a sophisticated exploration of entrepreneurial social reality of risk taking and management requires the fundamental philosophy of subjectivism and therefore this study adopts qualitative inductive case study methods in a sample of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs. The study found that entrepreneurs do indeed use their social and cultural understanding to a great extent in their decision making.
The focus of this article is a conceptual analysis of the western entrepreneurship paradigm and its practical implications, based on a desktop approach. In order to bring a holistic view of the western paradigm, the following questions were raised: What constitutes the western paradigm of entrepreneurship? How does this paradigm transfer to other cultures? Why is this paradigm criticized? The purpose of evaluating the western paradigm is to gain an understanding of western ideologies in entrepreneurship to consider a suitable methodology for an alternative approach in entrepreneurship research. The different disciplinary perspectives and the reductionist approach of the western paradigm resulted in limited returns to entrepreneurship programs since one disciplinary perspective can never handle all relevancies of entrepreneurial holism. It may be better to seek a context-sensitive alternative approach.
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