Investigation of Oman’s Entrepreneurial Culture and its Potential Impact

Investigation of Oman’s Entrepreneurial Culture and its Potential Impact

Thuraiya Alfarsi^*, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rosima Alias, Noor Alzakwani

Unisel University Selangor, Malaysia

^*Corresponding Author

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.8120363

Received: 21 December 2024; Accepted: 26 December 2024; Published: 24 January 2025

ABSTRACT

According to the economic downturn that Oman is experiencing due to falling oil prices, an entrepreneurial culture needs to be developed at the national level. In this paper, entrepreneurial culture and its dimensions are defined. After determining the significant role an entrepreneurial culture can have in developing the economy, its measurability is discussed. By applying these measures to Oman, and using some indicators it is found that the entrepreneurial culture in the country is low, and that growth of the SME sector is not only being obstructed, –Consequently, this discourages entrepreneurship from contributing to the nation’s economic growth, despite this paper demonstrating the advantages entrepreneurial innovation can have to a diverse economy. Considering these results, this paper discusses how Oman, and nations practicing similar policies, can encourage the adoption and growth of entrepreneurial culture by providing entrepreneurial education, facilitating the entrance of new businesses by relaxing or updating regulations, and exerting more efforts on research and development in the field of economics and the technological field. The paper here made an overview of entrepreneurial culture national, regional and local. Whereas many aspects taken in consideration for developing the cultures by the Oman government and other countries entrepreneurship culture. Many studies collected here and analysed by their recommendations, findings and conclusions.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Culture, Organizational Culture.

INTRODUCTION

The Sultanate of Oman is one of the Arab and Gulf countries, located in the Arabian Peninsula. It is considered a developing country, and its economy relies heavily on its oil production, with oil constituting of almost 84% of total revenues in 2014. The discovery of oil improved the Omani economy and society as a whole over the last decade, however, this means the economy is also beholden to oil prices and, when they drop, it is a dilemma. In 2012, Dr. Al-Shanfari said, “Today more than ever there is a greater urgency to diversify the economy”. Between 2012 and 2016, the crude oil prices have decreased from an average price of $109.6 per barrel to just $40.1 per barrel (National Centre for Statistics and Information, 2017). Thus, the economy needs to reduce its dependence on the oil sector. Further confounding this issue, the economy is facing high unemployment. The unemployment rate was 16.897% of the total labour force, and it increased to 17.52% in 2016 (World Bank, 2017).

To try and combat these issues, the Omani government has encouraged more entrepreneurship and self-employment, as well as improving and developing the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector. The aim is to stimulate the SMEs sector by encouraging more people to invest in new and diverse businesses, solving unemployment and diversifying the economy at the same time. However, one of the obstacles is the work environment (Al Harthi, 2015) especially the entrepreneurial culture absence.

Many researchers questioned the effect of national culture on entrepreneurial activities or entrepreneurship, and studied the relationship between the entrepreneurship in terms of innovation and its role in the economic development. However, few have pointed out the values and beliefs that motivate the entrepreneurial actions which constitute the entrepreneurial culture. Even though it is not a new subject, due to the depreciation of many economies it receives the attention of many developing countries one of them is Oman economy.

In this paper, the focus is on defining the entrepreneurial culture and its dimensions in purpose of examine the Omani entrepreneurial culture presence and potential impact on the economy. For any policy makers, it is important to investigate the current statues of the entrepreneurial culture to find out what exactly to be developed and why.  In addition, the tendency is toward measuring the entrepreneurial culture but as it is a new field in Oman, the question that will be answered by this paper is it possible to measure the Omani entrepreneurial culture?

By conducting a literature review of this subject and related studies, entrepreneurial culture will be defined more specifically in part 2. Part 3 will discuss the importance of entrepreneurial culture, while part 4 will highlight how entrepreneurial culture exists in Oman. Part 5 addresses the ability to measure entrepreneurial culture and the indicators required to do so. Finally, using the established criteria of previous parts, steps are recommended to develop and improve entrepreneurial culture in part 6.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

There are a lot of change done by the government to add in their policies more guides and instructions to enhance the entrepreneurship especially the small and medium enterprises, but still there is lack of knowledge of entrepreneurship culture as found many failures in entrepreneurship management. Its need to review the plan of programs which provided to the companies that can increase the knowledge of entrepreneurship culture. (AlMahrouqi etl, 2019). This idea can be lead the Omani youth to participate and start their own ventures in the future.

The sultanate of Oman main revenue is derive from the oil and gas, and mostly the profit is from this source while Oman has to find another resources as the oil and gas cannot be available for many millions years. The oil production capacity in Oman is up to one million barrels daily of oil, while 110 million cubic meters of natural gas daily. This study has focused on many numbers of projects based on the oil and gas while there are very few in numbers the new other production company specially the small and medium enterprises. (MoOG, 2018).

There is one research that consider as the comprehensive collection of researches done in Sultanate of Oman about the entrepreneurship, but mostly they have concentrated on the main topics or specific topics about the small and medium enterprises, higher education institutions and entrepreneurship education. But in Oman we need more studies about the entrepreneurship culture as a whole to know each and every local individual how to think regarding the entrepreneurship. (AlLawati, E etl, 2021).

Some of the challenges that Oman faced related to entrepreneurship enhancement is the people who want to start their own business but they are from the rural areas and highlands. Many problems encounters for their personality, family, educational, socio-cultural, facilities, legal, financial and economics. Oman Need more policies support entrepreneurship culture in general. (Suhail, M etl, 2021).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Entrepreneurial Culture

Entrepreneurial culture can be identified as the general environment where can find individuals encouraged to finding a new ideas, working on creativity and innovations more to utilize the critical thinking to help the society by their ideas. They are ready to take risk. In business area, the persons who are have the unique ideas and products new to the market. (European Union, 2020). The cultural process can be studied on the entrepreneurial spirit. People working hard to achieve profit from the businesses that can have a high risk and they are trying to operate the business in the effective way of running business activities. (Chakraborty, S. et al, 2016). One of the research paper covered for around 131 publications among the Scopus indexed. Used many techniques like Chi square test, qualitative thematic analysis. Eight of them were talking about the characteristics and motivation of entrepreneurs, business models, and incubators end entrepreneurial education. The findings were those papers mostly conducted in UK. The conclusion is that the entrepreneurial culture is the main point of cultural processes. (Dobreva & Ivanov, 2020) Perceiving the entrepreneurial culture is a culture that promotes and encourages entrepreneurial activities could be true. Here, the culture takes the form of society, group, or environment, but culture as defined above is the set of values, beliefs, norms and customs within a given environment. In addition, the frequency of establishing new firms and ownership rates were considered as indication of the entrepreneurial activities (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013), so the culture at national level that facilitate such activities could be described as entrepreneurial.

Culture

Culture is defined as the way, or traditions that the group of people share, common beliefs, values and norms. The culture can be cover the social science thought, different lifestyles, attitudes, habits, mentality and experiences. Living with community people and working closer to the mentality or habits. Culture means our group making different in the society than other group of people. To spread out our culture, our group need to communicate and interact very well with the circle that you are belong to. (Sevil, U. et al, 2018). Culture means is a different situation happen in the society along with people, places and practices. People refers to the population in particular location, places can be the influence by institutional affects, and culture. Practices can as the participation, activities, action taken. (Causadias, M. 2020). The different definition of culture is showing that the culture is changed based on the human behaviour and nature, individual personality characteristics, but the culture cannot change within the short term but it is required the long term that the new generation can lead change culture based on the modern life update and continues change. (European Union, 2020)

Based on the A Culture2030 Goal Campaign Report. It provides the general overview on how a culture emerge with the national efforts. The main steps has been started in 2015, which was to mobilization the culture for the development purposes. The analysis part were focused on how the government achieve the sustainable development. The report was depend on the exploration of references to culture. The findings of the report were mentioned that the target in the culture goal zero draft are reflected. There were a strong variation degree to culture with Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Oman, Palau and Vanuatu. All that because of each country has different GDP than the other countries. To achieve the goal of culture development, each country can give more attention to the practices taken by each countries government. The revision of culture goals should be have a cycle review that cannot be used the same for a long period of time. (CFG, 2024)

Entrepreneurship

Baron and Henry (2011) describe entrepreneurship as understanding how opportunities to provide something new are discovered, created, or developed. The entrepreneurship was simply viewed as the process of establishing a new business called a venture. However, this view has been developed to include the process of recognizing, discovering, or creating opportunities^[1]. There is another research conducted in Sultanate of Oman which selected studies that highlighted some aspects like: study concepts, study the last trends, study design, population and contextualization. Depend on this study, they found that the highest studies conducted in 2018, while the studies concentrated on the students followed by the entrepreneurs, in other hand the study design were done by using the quantitative studies more than the qualitative which were focusing on students not on the teachers. Also many studies covered the following concepts: entrepreneurship, women’s entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial intention, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and technology

Entrepreneurial Culture Within An Organization:

It is noted that most of the entrepreneurial culture definitions are descriptive, thus Wong (2014) introduced a theoretical contrast and stated that entrepreneurial culture is “a pattern of values, assumptions, and practices shared within an organization that is centrally concerned with opportunities, where opportunity is the creation of new value to society in part or in whole”.

In addition, Wong (2014) defined five dimensions that form the entrepreneurial culture within an organization: Organizational Enthusiasm, Stakeholder Alignment, Learning & Development Support, Opportunity Driven Change, and Cohesiveness. This multi-dimensional construct is important for creating or exploiting opportunities. Each one of the five dimensions contains a group of characteristics describing the culture or culture orientation[2].

1. Organizational Enthusiasm is the demonstration of excitement and passion for the organization, its goals and purposes. This facet encompasses the characteristics of the readiness and willingness to accomplish organizational goals, the perception of the vision within organization, and the desire for achievements.
2. Stakeholder^[3] Alignment refers to values and behaviors that describe and build a win-win relationship with stakeholder, such as accruing and maintain loyalty. This is important to support the organization’s prosperity and growth.
3. Learning and developing dimension, shaped by values, encourages the acquisition of knowledge and development of experiences. It is also including the willingness and the ability to exert efforts to learn or teach others new things.
4. Opportunity Driven Change concern risk-taking, creativity, and innovation in terms of openness to change and benefit from new opportunities.
5. Cohesiveness concerns the collaboration and communication of the group’s members. It is also indicated by effective teamwork, and the extent of trusting the other members, and group member responsibility.

It seems that this dimensional construct is comprehensive, almost including all aspects of the entrepreneurial culture within an organization. Putting it all together, the entrepreneurial culture is the values, beliefs, and behaviour shared within a group of members that concern about value making opportunities. Moreover, opportunity seeking, risk taking, and value creating, are aspects that depict the entrepreneurial activities that are involved in describing the entrepreneurial culture. The next part will discuss the significance of entrepreneurial culture.

According to Beugelsdijk (2004), there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurial culture and regional innovations, hence the economic growth which so often follows. The results of his study indicated 0.49 correlation coefficient the OLS between entrepreneurial culture and regional economic growth at 5% significance level. In short, economies enacting an entrepreneurial culture grow faster. In addition, Beugelsdijk (2004) stated that the role of entrepreneurial culture is evidenced in variation in national product. So, it would seem there are several advantages of developing an entrepreneurial culture because of its significant role in developing the economy.

In the light of developing the economy, in terms of the nation or government efforts to encourage and facilitate entrepreneurial activities, the employment rate may be improved as more jobs will be created. According to the World Bank indicators, most jobs in emerging markets are created by the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at a rate of 4:5 (World Bank, 2017).

 Likewise, Varghese and Hassan (2012) say that “the entrepreneurial activities provide employment opportunities and increase competitiveness”. They added that, because of the importance of the entrepreneurial activities, researchers and policy makers are concerned about evolving them. Furthermore, Al-Shanfari (2012) emphasises that entrepreneurship contributes to the countries long-term growth, while Magd and McCoy (2014) argue that SMEs stimulate nations’ GDP.

Entrepreneurial activities are proved to have a positive significant contribution to the national economic growth especially for the developing countries. The entrepreneurial culture facilitates and produces these entrepreneurial activates, behaviours, motives, creativity and innovations in a nation. In terms of take advantage of the opportunities or creating them, the entrepreneurial culture makes the organizational environment prepared for the exploiting the opportunities.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research paper designed to investigate the indicators of growing up the economy in Oman by test different dimension. The sub variables of entrepreneurial culture which taken in consideration for this paper are as follows: Cultural Enthusiasm, Learning and Developing, Stakeholder Alignment, Opportunity Driven Change and Cohesiveness. The researcher used the qualitative study by collect many articles, researches, updated government report generated in their formal websites, books, so all the data are driven from the secondary data. Then prepared the conceptual framework based on the Model of Entrepreneurial Culture Scale which is depend on five dimensions. Also collected data from the international formal report specially the economic rates, national income..etc. And that can give more clear view on the comparison between the countries of oil dependent and non-oil and concentrate on the rate showing the utilize of entrepreneurial culture, knowledge, development ..Etc.

DISCUSSION

In this part, the five dimensions of entrepreneurial culture (Wong, 2014) will be revisited and discussed at the national level to examine the entrepreneurial culture of Oman. For this purpose, some indicators will be proposed to reflect the entrepreneurial culture.

To start with, the national culture serves as a base to develop and support the entrepreneurial culture. Not only that, but, according to Hayton and Cacciotti (2013), the national culture could facilitate the entrepreneurial activities, and they confirmed several indicators of these activities. In addition, they pointed out that the national culture alters the size of institutional and economic conditions, further influencing entrepreneurial activities. Furthermore, the national culture itself may affect the people’s perception towards entrepreneurship.

The Omani environment has several features that encourage any entrepreneur to start a business, including political stability and youth population (Al-Shanfari, 2012). However, the Omani culture is characterized by risk-averse and collectivism. This characteristic driven from Hofstede’s six dimensions of national culture model that give some indication of the nation innovation rates.

The entrepreneurial culture at national level could be indicated by several elements. One of them is the use of Hofstede’s six dimensions model as explained above. Oman was not included in the Hofstede (2005) work, but due to similarity in cultural origins and facets, Oman would score similar results of other Arab countries of high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, low in individualism. It can also be assumed that dimensions of individualism, power distances and uncertainty avoidance are correlated with national rates of innovation^[4]. Entrepreneurial activities positively correlate with individualism and negatively correlate with power distance and uncertainty avoidance (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013). Based on that, the Omani culture cannot be considered entrepreneurial; however, these correlations do not always hold.

Considering the five dimensions model of the entrepreneurial culture by Wong (2014), are constructed to be applicable at organizational level. However, based on the culture definition that is applicable at organizational and national level as discussed in part 2, the five dimensions will be used to examine the entrepreneurial culture in Oman. The first dimension is organizational enthusiasm, which could be applied to describe and characterize the excitement, the desire for achievement, and passion towards work of the nation, entrepreneurs, or potential entrepreneurs in each country. Thus, we can refer to this term as “national enthusiasm”. Such descriptive and subjective aspects are difficult to measure, but they can be surmised by observing, for example, percentage of youth entrepreneurs at the age where young people would typically still be studying. Based on social media marketing campaigns, it seems the national enthusiasm towards starting a business is increasing. Perhaps these young people are motivated to find a source of income for themselves due to the national problems of low employment. Indicating this facet will be introduced in the next part. In general, there are several activates and events happened in the last five years representing improvements in the field of entrepreneurship and forward steps in the entrepreneurial culture. For example, many incubators, government institutions, and entrepreneurs’ communities such as Start-up Oman and “Al Rudha[5]” youth community[6] were established to support the entrepreneurs, and INJAZ[7] Oman that was established in 2006 to encourage innovation of young people[8].

The stakeholder alignment concerned about building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders (Wong, 2014), and government for example. At a national level, if the culture is facilitating and support the stakeholder relationship it is entrepreneurial. This could be indicated by government initiatives and policies to regulate stakeholder relationships. For instance, the Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP) ensures freedom of choice for consumers, resolving conflict between the beneficiaries and product or services provider. Varghese and Hassan (2012) suggested that the government should be responsible for developing a communication system to improve information flow among stakeholders, for example, consider the paperless communication as official. In Oman, this area needs to be developed even if it exists, because of inefficient communication with stakeholders.

With regards to the learning and developing facet, Al-Shanfari (2012) reported that there are no fast improvements in this field in Oman, as the culture of research has only recently evolved in the country.

The opportunity driven change dimension is concerned with openness of the nation to change. Oman’s culture is more preserved than flexible. Nevertheless, of the government’s recent regulation update that serves to benefit entrepreneurial activities could be considered an indication of openness to change.

The cohesiveness facet could be linked to the opposite Hofstede’s cultural dimension of Individualism, which is Collectivism^[9] is indicating the cohesiveness. The Omani culture is identical to the Emirates culture in several aspects, in addition to the shared family ratios and relatives that exists since long time ago. Thus, based on the United Arab Emirates score on Individualism of 25^[10], it is concluded that it is a collectivistic society, therefore, the Omani society can be considered collectivistic, as well.

To conclude, the Omani entrepreneurial culture appears to exist, though its features are unclear. The behavioural beliefs are not enough to foster economic progress and, thus, these beliefs need to be developed. Any decision maker of development planes needs some measures to identify the points of strength and identify what exactly must be improved and enhanced. Thus, the next section addresses to what degree the Omani entrepreneurial culture is measurable.

There several measures of the entrepreneurship culture in a country. One of them is the number of days required to start a business, and the country rank in ease of doing business. When attempting to measure a culture, many researchers evaluate the personalities and traits that are common in it. Observing the characteristics that is related to the entrepreneurial efforts such as locus of control, risk taking, and creativity insight known as an internal point of view in evaluating the entrepreneurial activities. Accordingly, such entrepreneurial characteristics could be used as indicators of the entrepreneurial culture, as it positively correlated to the entrepreneurial orientation (Varghese and Hassan, 2102). This could be done by conducting a survey that targets the entrepreneurs first to confirm the entrepreneurial traits, as it varies among cultures or nations (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013), and a sample of the nation to understand the common entrepreneurial values and beliefs. In this context, the entrepreneurial culture is measurable, provided one takes the limitations into consideration.

Wong (2014) proposed a scale to measure the organizational entrepreneurial culture that is reflected by the five dimensions discussed previously. He built a theoretical construct to be used in measuring the organizational entrepreneurial culture. When it comes to national level, one way to measure the entrepreneurial culture is use the scale constructed by Wong for a sample of organizations from one country (from the same nation) to indicates entrepreneurial culture of that nation. Then repeat this for other comparable countries and use the results to reach a valuable conclusion.

Initially, Wong (2014) stated that firms that scored high on the cultural dimensions were considered to have an entrepreneurial culture. In other words, measuring and evaluating the entrepreneurial five dimensions determined the entrepreneurial culture. However, after discovering unexpected results, he amended the model to consider as reflective other than formative models. So, the five dimensions are presumed as indicators of the entrepreneurial culture, not forming the entrepreneurial culture. He found that “Entrepreneurial culture would not come into existence through the act of measurement and construction, but rather, always exists at some level with the potential to be measured”. Nevertheless, it is still an objective measure and it depends on people’s views and what they think. Thus, a survey[11] should be conducted to score each dimension.

Measuring theoretical concepts or characteristics can also be done by observing some outcomes that are consequences of entrepreneurial behaviour, beliefs, and values. Therefore, another way to measure the entrepreneurial culture is using observable outcomes or indicators of each one of the entrepreneurial culture dimensions that are discussed in part (4). Table 1 summarizes some proposed indicators for each one of the entrepreneurial culture dimensions:

Table 1: Proposed Indicators of the Entrepreneurial Culture Dimensions at the national level.

The indicators outlined above are just some of the indicators to give an idea of the level of a social economy’s entrepreneurial culture. To more accurately measure how active a culture is being indulged or implemented needs a model to be constructed based on a large sample of data; currently, there is insufficient historic data of indicators related to entrepreneurial culture or even entrepreneurship in Oman. Nonetheless, several points must be taken into consideration when indicating entrepreneurial culture dimensions. For one, the time frame should be consistent, using multiple indicators of each dimension to yield a better result, and careful study of the relationship between the indicator and the dimension should be conducted to test the stability of this relationship.

Nevertheless, following are an example of indicating two entrepreneurial cultural dimensions.  Firs the cultural dimension of national enthusiasm that is indicated by age of entrepreneurs, for instance. Figure 1 represents the beneficiaries’ age distribution by the end of 2016 of Al Rafd Fund. The fund was established in 2014 to support and develop the SMEs and the entrepreneurs in Oman.

Figure 1: Distribution of fund beneficiaries according to age (Al Rafd Fund Statistics, 2016)

As showed by figure 1, almost half of the beneficiaries from the fund are middle aged, indicating a national enthusiasm to own a business. However, it does not appear to be a stable measure as the number of beneficiaries aged 46 and above show a significantly smaller proportion still running their own business. Is this because entrepreneurial culture was only fostered in the last few decades, impacting younger generations, or does enthusiasm for one’s own business wave due to a poor entrepreneurial culture? Therefore, more data is required to give a better indication of the entrepreneurial culture.

Regarding learning and development, although there are unelectable efforts by some universities, such as Sultan Qaboos University, which produced 88 research papers in 2008 (Al-Shanfari, 2012), table 2 illustrates a general decline in research investment.

Table 2: Research and Development Indicators for Oman, Kuwait, Qatar (2012-2013).

Source: (The World Bank – World Development Indicators, 2017).

Research and development indicators of Oman show a decline between 2012 and 2013, despite the GDP increasing slightly. By comparison, Kuwait witnessed an increase of approximately 20% in the percentage of research and development expenditure relative to GDP. Qatar recorded an even higher R&D expenditure percentage in 2012. Thus, Oman’s learning and development cultural dimension is low compared to other gulf countries. However, it should be noted that there is missing data which might otherwise impact this conclusion.

Despite the measures discussed above are not reliable, because the differences in the time frame that attributed to lack of data, it still necessary to discuss for the benefit of how future research might resolve this gap in the data. Additionally, to understand the status of the entrepreneurial culture, the indicators of the five dimensions should be combined and studied together.

Overall, Oman indicates deficiencies and a lack of entrepreneurial culture. The next section presents some remedies to improve the entrepreneurial culture of Oman and similar nations. Despite understanding the benefits entrepreneurial culture can have on an economy, this does not mean that economy should rely solely on SMEs and other entrepreneurial activities. Rather, by enhancing the entrepreneurial culture within the society, working beside the private institutions and the government, collectively, will benefit the economy. Enhancing the entrepreneurial culture will enhance the entrepreneurial beliefs, values, and behaviours.

One of the critical steps to enhancing a country’s entrepreneurial culture is to provide entrepreneurial education, as suggested by Magd and McCoy (2014). Comparatively, Al-Shanfari (2012) addressed the issue of a lack business-related knowledge being taught in schools, for instance, with entrepreneurial content limited to basic math and economics materials.

In 2009, a new program was launched for high school and secondary school students to plan for their future, including how they might start their own business or plan for their career. Unfortunately, the course is closer to career guidance than detailed business guidance. Further, the programme is limited to secondary school students.

A further means of contributing to Oman’s development of entrepreneurial culture would be achieved through enhancing research and development. Due to Oman’s financial deficit, it may be difficult to increase the research and development expenditure. In this case, the private universities, colleges, or big companies should be involved in such initiative. For instance, large institutions could adopt this as part of their social responsibility.

Moreover, the SMEs sector is part of the entrepreneurial activities as the sector constitutes small businesses, projects, and ventures. As mentioned previously, the entrepreneurial culture will stimulate the entrepreneurial activities that will benefit the economy. At the same time, developing the entrepreneurial culture of this sector will stimulate its activities and role in the economy. Thus, the SMEs sector needs to be regulated and observed.

Indeed, in 2012, the entrepreneurship field, represented by the SME sector, became more organized with the establishment of Riyada, the public authority for SME development. Riyada offers beneficial courses and workshops for business owners and their employees on management and marketing, etc. However, more effort is needed to recognize the consequences and impact of these learning and development programs

In the SMEs sector, some regulations should be updated to facilitate the entrance of new ventures. According to the labour law, the Regulation of Employment of Citizens and Regulation of Foreigners’ Work imposes a specific citizens to foreigner’s employee’s rate on employers. Al-Shanfari (2012) views the regulation as an obstacle to new businesses as he argues that it is difficult to bear the cost of Omani labour when it could be replaced with less expensive and more skilled foreign labour. On the other hand, Al Harthi (2015) agrees with the law and that most employees in the SMEs should be citizens to accomplish the goals or the role of the SMEs in developing the economy and providing employment opportunities. It is obvious there is a trade-off between the two views, so a supportive regulation may need to be updated.

In summary, providing more detailed and more accessible entrepreneurial education, exerting more efforts in research and development, provide financing means, and developing the SMEs sector will enhance the entrepreneurial culture in Oman, which will help diversify the economy and contribute to its growth.

CONCLUSION

The entrepreneurial culture is a critical subject that has many dimensions at both national and organizational level. In this paper, entrepreneurial culture has perceived as the base for the entrepreneurial activities existence. At the same time, the entrepreneurial activities indicating the entrepreneurial culture existence.

In the case of Oman, the entrepreneurial culture features become clearer in 2012 with where was Riyada established. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurial culture still does not have powerful enough cultural dimensions to diversify the economy and, thus, requires improvement. Enhancing the entrepreneurial culture can demonstrably contribute to the long-term growth of the economy. Using the five-dimensional model by Wong (2014), with a few amendments to fit at the national level, gives a view of the entrepreneurial culture. In addition, the use of indicators for each dimension will help the policy makers to determine the aspects that need to be developed.

However, limitations are expected when discussing and analysing new subject in particular region or country. One of the limitations in this study is the unavailability of data of the indicators over time or across countries. Once such data is available, this would be a useful objective for any future research in this field. Indeed, a first critical step could be establishing a database for this field. But, this is an inevitable beginning and the first step to a further future research. As such, more studies on measuring and developing Oman’s entrepreneurial culture are required.

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