Bayview Beach Resort, Batu Ferringhi Beach, Penang, Malaysia
27-30 September 1999
Life skills for making a living in the third world business market
Dr Linda Niehaus
University of South Africa
Dr MP van der Merwe
Rand Afrikaans University
IE Walters
South Africa
(Authors in alphabetical order, equal contributions)
Research problem and aim: Within the contemporary South African context, as a result of the accelerated rate of conditions such as social change, unemployment and poverty, new and even higher demands are being placed on many individuals to make a living. It is therefore not surprising that increasingly more individuals start their own informal businesses; in particular, entrepeneurs in the third world business market. The burgeoning third world entrepeneurships include taxi services, stokvels, spasa shops, shebeens, hawkers and professional beggars. Focussing on professional beggars, this type of entrepeneurship seem to involve in particular the identification and exploitation of opportunities or certain circumstances which would enable individuals to address their basic needs for survival and to ultimately experience some level of quality of life. Although these entrepeneurs do not have any products to sell, they purposefully seem to rely on and employ certain learned behaviours in order to obtain monetary awards and to beat rival entrepeneurs at their own game. In fact, this type of entrepeneurship seem to involve even more uncertainty and creative opportunism than other third world entrepeneurships which demands a wide range of life skills enabling individuals to cope successfully with daily demands. Bearing this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to address the following issues: How do different types of professional beggars, as third world entrepeneurs, make a living. What life skills do they use to cope with daily demands? How do they experience making a living in this manner? How could they be equipped to make a better living?
Research design and methodology: A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was used for purpose of this research. Professional beggars were purposefully included in the sample. Data gathering methods included observation, videotaping and phenomenological interviews during which one central question was posed: What do you do to make a living? Field notes were used to capture data.
Research findings: The results indicated inter alia that professional beggars whose life skills included manipulative and/or intimidative behaviour, survive better than their rivals.
Conclusion: Based on the findings obtained, life skills were identified which endorse and enhance the survival of professional beggars as entrepeneurs. Guidelines are proposed for equipping these entrepeneurs to make a better living.
Theme: Worlds of Learning: Globalisation and Multicultural Education
Biography: Linda Niehaus
Dr Niehaus has a Doctorate in Psychology of Education and is currently employed as a researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of South Africa. She is author and co-author of a number of articles, monographs, research reports, etc. and her research work has received international recognition. In addition, she provides supervision to postgraduate students as well as, professional advice and guidance to co-faculty members with respect to various aspects of educational research, to writing scientific articles and the use of computer software. She actively presents papers at national and international conference.
