Chapter 3: Heroes and Villains: Ethnic Chinese Family Business in Southeast Asia

We provide a broad overview of the literature on ethnic Chinese family firms in Southeast Asia. Employing cultural, emigrant entrepreneur, and institutional perspectives we show how each perspectives has contributed to a highly polarized depiction of ethnic Chinese businesses as either heroes or villains. We argue for the need to move beyond polarized stereotypes and attempt to unravel the sensitivities around the emergence of a population of economically powerful minority businesses. To do so we trace the developmental path of ethnic Chinese firms from small and frail trading entities to large family business groups. Contrary to cultural and migrant approaches that tend to provide essentialist characterizations of migrant firms, institutional approaches allow for an investigation of the specific processes of corporate transformation from small entities into large professional firms. The chapter ends by outlining how the literature on ethnic Chinese firms can provide insights for the field of family business.