Practicing Indigenous Enterprise Through Culture: Evidence from Indonesian Case Studies

This chapter analyzes the practices and sustainability of indigenous enterprises in Indonesia through a cultural lens, utilizing comparative qualitative evidence from four case studies across various sectors: festival-based cultural economies, culinary product entrepreneurship, performing arts enterprises, and place-based agrarian coffee entrepreneurship. This chapter explores the theories of cultural entrepreneurship, embeddedness, and indigenous enterprise, demonstrating that entrepreneurial activities in these contexts are influenced by local values, symbols, narratives, and community norms, rather than being culturally neutral. The cases demonstrate through interviews, observations, and document analysis, the intricate role of culture as a strategic resource, governance mechanism, and source of legitimacy, influencing entrepreneurial decision-making, value creation, and growth trajectories. The findings demonstrate consistent patterns of community embeddedness, collective value creation, and adaptive tradition, indicating that innovation emerges from the recombination of cultural resources instead of their displacement. Sustainability in indigenous enterprises is attained through the integration of economic practices with collective identities, social responsibilities, and locally relevant meanings, rather than relying on standardized or culturally foreign business models. This chapter emphasizes culturally organized and community-owned enterprises, promoting a context-sensitive and pluralistic perspective on entrepreneurship, which has implications for theory, policy, and practice in indigenous and developing-economy settings.