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Religion and entrepreneurship in New Zealand

Peter Carswell (School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand)
Deborah Rolland (School of Communication, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand)

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy

ISSN: 1750-6204

Article publication date: 5 June 2007

3564

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between religion and entrepreneurship and whether religious practice impacts on how individuals view the individual and societal contribution of business enterprise. As ethnic diversity is increasing within the Western world, so too is the religious mix of value systems and religious belief systems that come with such diversity/religions. Paralleling increasing diversity is the decreasing participation rates in the traditional Christian churches. The paper questions the impact of this changing religious mix on entrepreneurial participation and perception.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 2,000 randomly‐selected New Zealanders were telephone‐surveyed to measure their perceptions of individual and societal impacts of entrepreneurial participation and religious practice.

Findings

The findings indicate that increasing ethnic diversity and associated religious value systems are certainly not going to negatively reduce the business start‐up rate. If anything, the start‐up rate may be enhanced.

Originality/value

The paper shows that the value that New Zealand society places upon entrepreneurship is not diminished by the increasing religious diversity in the country.

Keywords

Citation

Carswell, P. and Rolland, D. (2007), "Religion and entrepreneurship in New Zealand", Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 162-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/17506200710752584

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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