The Role of Bumiputra Developers in Housing Development Industry

THE ROLE OF BUMIPUTRA DEVELOPERS IN HOUSING DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

Dr. Mastura Jaafar

Quantity Surveying,

School of Housing Building and Planning

Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)

Research Officer

Roslinda Ali

Mohd Hijas Shaari

ABSTRACT

Since the colonization era, the immigrants from mainland China (and now their descendants) dominate the Malaysian housing industry. Their high entrepreneurial ethics stimulated early venture in all economic sectors to become dominant in business. To increase the participation of indigenous entrepreneurs in economic activities, Malaysian has practiced its own version of the affirmative policy since the 1970s which is known as National Economic Policy (NEP). Unlike other economic sectors such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture, the government has not provided special assistance (other than those that are generic in nature) for the indigenous population to penetrate and thrive in housing development. Consequently, their participation in this sector is conspicuous by their absence. The objective of this paper was to look into the involvement of indigenous housing developers in housing industry. In exploring these issues, the main variables covered were the demographic and entrepreneurial characteristics of the Bumiputera developer, their business set-up, the company performance, business strategy, networking and comparison with their main rivals.

The most significant findings suggest that a few of Bumiputera developers do have strong motivation and capability to succeed. The higher mean for proactiveness, ambiguity, independent, internal and acquisitiveness show that they possess some entrepreneurial characteristics. However, their late involvement might explain for their poor performance. In comparing the Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera in the industry, one interesting result obtained shows that many Malay housing developers started from being hired or prompted by their companies, while for the Chinese, most of them started their business based on their own initiative and interest. Besides that, lack of support in the industry forces Malays to learn more about business by taking various courses after involved in the industry. In terms of entrepreneurial personality characteristics, the significant difference between both groups lies on proactiveness and innovativeness. Malay developers have the same qualities as Chinese in terms of acquisitiveness, internal locus of control, independence and tolerance for ambiguity except for risk-taking propensity.

In terms of operation, one-third of the Bumiputera companies can be classified as “successful”, operate on a medium and large scale with paid-up capital more than RM 1 million, having more than 10 employees and have business diversification.

Keywords: Bumiputera developers, Housing Industry, entrepreneur characteristic and performance.