Socio-cultural factors as driving forces of rural entrepreneurship in Oman

The Omani government’s current drive towards economic diversi- fication is focused on the expansion of entrepreneurial activities to power the country’s socio-economic development. However, the participation rate of the indigenous population in such activ- ities remains low. This paper studies the indigenous value system and behavioral mechanisms which drive rural entrepreneurship in Oman. A constant comparative method has been applied to face- to-face interviews with contemporary entrepreneurs - twenty par- ticipants from three rural localities. Based on the obtained data, three types of the entrepreneurial community’s orientations have been observed which are rooted in the interplay of three catego- ries of values or drives. It has been found that: (1) cultural value orientations carry a significantly more profound importance to the entrepreneurs’ choices of either pursuing or abandoning entrepreneurial activities compared to economic or infrastructural factors; (2) the most influential drives are centred around the past and are fuelled by Islamic and Omani culture-specific values; and (3) random socio-cultural values need a systematized classification based on their time orientation and their sources of origin. The findings corroborate both existing community-led rural develop- ment theory and the theory of immobile resources. The findings can be generalizable to other GCC countries with shared demo- graphic, political and socio-cultural features.