The differences in ethnicity and religion that each race embraces may have been conflicting to any one race yet have given some impact on the life style of the Malays. Malaysia comprises three major ethnic groups who are the Malays, Chinese and Indians. The what and how to make them improve, and grow are not widely researched hence offering limited ideas to the Malaysian government on how best to improve the owner managers of SMEs who are Malays. In Malaysia, alt- hough SMEs is one of the priority sectors of the government due to the sector’s high contribution to GDP, research on SMEs is still far reaching as most research in Ma- laysia concentrates on achieving the profiling characteristics (Hashim, 2002 Mansor,Ģ005), and examining problems and challenges (Hashim et al., 2010, Hashim, 2000b) of SMEs. As a result of this, personal values have recently received attention by Western scholars (Schwartz, 2009 Trian- dis, 1995 Kotey & Meredith, 1997 Shane et al., 2003 House et al., 2004 Morris & Schindehutte, 2005) and a few Eastern scholars (T-Asiedu, 1993 Busenitz and Lau, 1996 Cheung & King, 2004, Mansor, 2000 Audretsch et al., 2007). The variables that have been studied mostly and which show positive influence on EO are personality traits (McClelland, 1962 Beck- erer & Maurer, 1999) and characteristics of owner manager of SMEs (Hornaday & Aboud, 1991 Brockhaus, 1980 Carland et al., 1988). Addi- tionally, the recent trend in entrepreneurship research shows the search for anteced- ents or determinants of this EO.
1.1 Background of the StudyĮntrepreneurial orientations (EO), as one dimension of entrepreneurial behavior (Lumpkin & Dess, 1984), have consistently been proven by research (Zahra, 1996 Lumpkin & Dess, 1996 Covin, 1991) to influence performance significantly. The final section outlines the structure of the whole thesis. The significance of the study is discussed in the fifth section, followed by operational definition in the sixth section. The fourth section presents the research questions. The purpose and objectives of the study are explained in the third section. This is followed by research problems which highlight the issues to be investigated in this study. The background of the study is presented first.
This chapter is comprised of seven sections. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.0 Introduction
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