Understanding the interdependence of personal, business and social characteristics of youth entrepreneurship in Malaysia

Abstract

In recognition that youths are potential leaders as well as individual and social transformers, youth development programs in Malaysia have aimed at increasing the role and participation of youths in national development. In the Ninth Malaysian Plan, extensive programs are implemented to develop youths with good leadership qualities as well as to equip them with entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. This is to prepare youths to be productive, self sustaining and self reliant individuals in a world in which situations of employment, economic markets and political stability are unpredictable. Despite these efforts, in Malaysia, the level of youth engagement in self-employment especially in entrepreneurship is not as high as one would imagine and expect and this has initiated the authors of the paper to conduct a study on business sustainability of Malaysian youth entrepreneurs and to investigate the challenges they face in sustaining their businesses. This study recognises that a study on business sustainability must hinge on studying the interdependence between personal, business and social characteristics of entrepreneurs and not studying each characteristic separately in a vacuum. This paper is based on an exploratory study on youth entrepreneurship in small and medium sized businesses in Malaysia. The survey method was used to collect data for the study. The selection of respondents were via purposive sampling and snowballing sampling methods. 531 youth entrepreneurs from different types of businesses in the Klang Valley were surveyed. This paper aims to discuss some findings related to the profiles of the youth entrepreneurs as a result of the relationship between personal traits, business characteristics and social characteristics, specifically the nature of youth entrepreneurs' social background/context/relations, i.e. social influence, role models and types of social networks possessed. The authors hope that the research findings discussed in this paper would help describe patterns of commonality among the youth entrepreneurs studied in terms of the above 3 characteristics, and consequently, would be of interest to those who are involved in the alleviation of unemployment among youths (in Malaysia and elsewhere) and the lack of interest in self-sustainability especially in the area of entrepreneurship.