Success, submission and succession: Malaysian Indian entrepreneurs as founders, builders, and breakers of enterprises

Indians in Malaysia make thriving businesses. The richest man in Malaysia is of Indian origin. Yet most Malaysian Indian enterprises are small family businesses. A saying among the Malaysian Indian entrepreneurs states that ?the third generation will break the enterprise?. This book examines the businesses, based on fieldwork by the author. Process analysis of the case material presented, suggests that the life cycle of a business corresponds to the model of the joint family: An entrepreneur founds the enterprise; the second generation continues building the enterprise as a joint estate. In the third generation the enterprise, and the joint family, disintegrates. The analysis demonstrates that a set of two incommensurate values can explain the observed emergent social organization of the Indian diasporic entrepreneurs. The first of these values is the desire among Indians to be ?eminent successful individuals?. The second, conflicting value, is that of patriarchal authority implicating that of being a subordinate son or daughter, and thus the impossibility to achieve eminence within the family and enterprise, unless they break out on their own.