Heidi Dahles

The Institutionalisation of Oknha: Cambodian Entrepreneurship at the Interface of Business and Politics

Abstract Since the early 1990s in Cambodia, the title of “oknha” has been bestowed upon business people who make substantial financial contributions to national development projects. Recipients of this honour are identified by the leadership of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), in particular Prime Minister Hun Sen. This article addresses the politics of awarding and receiving the oknha title as an expression of the reciprocal relationship between the Cambodian business elite and the CPP leadership, the so-called “elite pact.” This pact revolves around the tacit agreement that the oknha receive protection and privileges in their business ventures in return for loyalty and financial contributions to the CPP. Building on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, this article reveals the unequal albeit reciprocal patronage relationships that cement the interdependencies between business and state actors. In terms of theoretical contribution, this article proposes that oknha, being both the medium and the outcome of the encompassing patronage system, is subject to processes of institutionalisation within the elite organisational field and is turning into a template that regulates and orders entrepreneurial ventures at the interface of business and politics.

Commercialization in the Non-Profit Sector: The Emergence of Social Enterprise in Cambodia

Abstract The increasing commercialization among non-profit organizations is shifting financial dependence from charitable donations to self-generated earned income through social entrepreneurial ventures. Little is known about the consequences of this shift. There is a lack of literature discussing how ventures into social entrepreneurship by non-profit organizations evolve and what effects they have on multiple dimensions of these organizations. To address this gap, the aim of this paper is to describe and analyse processes of commercialization of non-profit sector organizations and their effects on social-entrepreneurial NGOs in Cambodia. The data used in this study is based on a large-scale quantitative survey and qualitative key informant interviews with NGO leaders and administrators of NGOs in five regions across Cambodia. The authors found that the struggle for social and financial sustainability is one of the major motivations for organizations engaging in commercial ventures. Commercialization has transformative effects on the goals, motives, methods, income distribution, and governance component of NGOs in the sample. At the same time, however, commercialization tends to sideline the social mission of NGOs.

Female empowerment and tourism: a focus on businesses in a Fijian village

ABSTRACT Women’s participation in business is gaining momentum amongst communities in the South Pacific, yet very few studies have explored this area in the context of tourism in Fiji. Based on ethnographic research, this study focuses on the gender dimension of community-based tourism development in Vatuolalai village, along with the Coral Coast of Fiji. In particular, this study seeks to extend our understanding of the links between female empowerment, tourism and business in this indigenous Fijian community. The paper discusses how indigenous Fijian women, through their involvement in tourism, have adapted to becoming successful business operators and influential drivers of socio-political change affecting established gender relations within an indigenous Fijian setting. Therefore, the current study argues that through tourism-based entrepreneurship, local women have attained not only economic but also psychological, social and political empowerment. Given the literature, this is not a mainstream result, particularly in patriarchal and embedded indigenous communities.

Stakeholder involvement in the higher education sector in Cambodia

This article examines how stakeholders involve themselves in the higher education (HE) sector in donor-dependent Cambodia and to what extent and with what result these stakeholders succeed to collaborate, or fail to do so. This study is based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 46 key research participants from relevant institutions representing the major stakeholders in the sector. The triple helix model, advocating a close government-university-industry collaboration, is employed as a guiding tool for data analysis. The study identifies four categories of stakeholders in the sector, namely government, development partners, HE institutions, and the industries. The stakeholders contribute to the sector in diverging ways and at different levels. Despite their involvement, collaboration among stakeholders has remained very limited, impeding the advancement of the sector. Thus, stakeholder collaboration, as postulated in the triple helix model, has yet to emerge in the Cambodian context.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR. The Case of the Pedicab Drivers of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

In entrepreneurship literature informal sector ventures are usually described as necessity-driven and survivalist businesses and denied the qualification of “entrepreneurial”. Recently, an emerging argument in western and transition economies has been that informal entrepreneurs are not always necessity-driven. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically its validity to developing countries. This article analyzes the case of the pedicab drivers in Yogyakarta, a famous tourist destination in Java (Indonesia). With tourism developing into a major industry in Indonesia, pedicab driving came to constitute a sector unregulated by the government but managed by neighborhood-based self-organizations for about three decades. However, a series of disasters led to the demise of the sector. Based on anthropological fieldwork in Yogyakarta, it is demonstrated that the self-employed, low-skilled pedicab drivers of Yogyakarta first succeeded and then failed to create and exploit opportunities in the local tourism industry both in times of economic growth and collapse.

Fijian culture and the environment: a focus on the ecological and social interconnectedness of tourism development

ABSTRACT Understanding the complex and adaptive nature of Pacific Island communities is a growing yet relatively unexplored area in the context of tourism development. Taking an ethnographic research approach, this study examines how over 40 years of tourism development have led to complex and multi-scale changes within an Indigenous Fijian village. The study establishes that tourism development has brought a range of ecological shifts that have, over time, spurred far-reaching changes within the embedded sociocultural constructs of the community. The development of the Naviti Resort, a water catchment dam, a causeway and a man-made island have created substantial changes in totemic associations, livelihood approaches, and traditional knowledge structures within Vatuolalai village. The emergence of internal adaptive cycles, and new behaviours, practices and values that redefine the cultural landscape will be discussed. This paper demonstrates the interconnectivity of nature, society and culture within Indigenous communal systems and asserts that ecological changes introduced in one part of a community stimulate complex, non-linear responses in other elements of the socio-ecological system of a Fijian village.

Cambodian returnees' entrepreneurial ventures: The opportunities and constraints of mixed embeddedness

Purpose n n n n– The aim is to identify the potential for establishing successful businesses operations or institutions emanating from returnees mixed embeddedness in post-conflict Cambodia. n n n n nDesign/methodology/approach n n n n– This explorative study of the two largest groups of returnees, the Cambodian French and the Cambodian Americans, compares these two categories through a review of literature on Cambodians in the USA and France and primary fieldwork data obtained through open interviews with Cambodian returnees in Cambodia. n n n n nFindings n n n n– Cambodian French and Cambodian American returnees show different entrepreneurial dispositions and hence play different roles in the Cambodian economy. While the all-embracing welfare system in France incapacitated both the self-sufficiency and community building among Cambodian diaspora, the market-driven model of social services in the USA induced the Cambodian diaspora with a commercial orientation. While both categories initiate institutional and business ventures, their contribution to social change in Cambodia is modest. Among the returnee entrepreneurs, the Chinese Cambodians seem to be most successful in their business ventures irrespective of their diasporic background. n n n n nOriginality/value n n n n– The emerging scholarly interest in “immigrant transnationalism” tends to focus in particular on identity issues. Contrastingly, this article focuses on economic aspects of “immigrant transnationalism” in terms of its “mixed embeddedness” in both home and host country economies.

Are tourism livelihoods sustainable? Tourism development and economic transformation on Komodo Island, Indonesia

ABSTRACT Tourism development has often been regarded as an effective strategy for poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods. However, tourism often triggers transformations of traditional livelihoods and complete dependence on tourism-based income. Presenting the case of Komodo village on Komodo Island, Indonesia, this study provides an empirical evidence for such transformation. Based on qualitative methods, this article discusses the ways in which tourism development has led the local fishing community to give up their fishing to become fully dependent on selling souvenirs. Although currently, the souvenir business offers adequate return for local people, potential threats to this new livelihood, like a limited market, fierce competition, a short tourist season, and high dependence on cruise ship visits, are looming large. If tourism declines, local people will be left with no options to sustain their livelihood.

The Indonesian tourism industry under crisis: a Bourdieuan perspective on social boundaries among small-scale business owners

Abstract This study investigates how small-scale business owners in the Indonesian tourism industry seek to overcome the consequences of multiple crises, over a 10-year period. Taking a Bourdieuan perspective, the authors emphasize the context-dependency and quality differences of various forms of capital, and explain how these differences are manifested in boundary work aimed at overcoming major adversity. It is argued that social, economic and cultural capital contributes differently to small-scale business owners’ resilience, either spanning or setting developmental boundaries. This furthers understanding of how small-scale business owners cope with social boundaries and generate innovative opportunities for the development in the aftermath of crises.