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Transparency and other hot topics revisited
Edited by Tom McManus, Yair Holtzman, Harold Lazarus and Johan Anderberg
Introduction
This paper examines entrepreneurship in Egypt, an Islamic society in transition to a free market, and makes general comparisons with entrepreneurship in the United States, a secular society with a highly developed market economy. The author contends that the social and economic changes and adversity that accompany the transition to a free market, for example competition, create pressure on an emergent market like Egypt to create an environment more hospitable to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The paper contends that the emerging capitalist market in Egypt is accompanied by the rise of political and economic Islam and that both forces of change are shaping the business and cultural environment. This paper attempts to examine both the transition to a market economy and the rise of political and economic Islam as they are related to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in Egypt.
Analysis and criticism of Egypt by western financial institutions has largely focused on what is called structural reform, including such factors as the rule of law and protection of property rights, developing a free market, deregulation, and privatization of public enterprises. It may be that insufficient attention is given to the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and national culture, as well structural elements influenced by or directly related to culture.
[25] Hayton et al. (2002) have reviewed empirical research on the association between national culture and entrepreneurship. They suggest that future research needs to focus more on the many cultural and environmental factors that impact entrepreneurship and the individual characteristics of entrepreneurs themselves. American and Egyptian entrepreneurial differences are discussed in this paper within a number of themes related to such cultural and environmental factors: transition to a free market including transparency, money and its cultural meanings, locus of control, attitude towards risk, and work-life equilibrium. These values are regularly argued to be related to economic growth (e.g. [22] Furnham et al. , 1994). A number of suggestions for further research are developed.
Many millions of dollars are sent annually to Egypt by international organizations and donors in the name of empowering the poor, supporting the transition to a free economy, and promoting the development of entrepreneurs. Yet despite some...