It is so amusing to read/know that people in the west are so cool and open with failing of their businesses...I mean, they don't feel conscious opening admitting that so-and-so venture of theirs did not do well and they had to shut shop...and that this year they are planning on spending a lot of family time, taking vacations, doing community work, etc..as the last couple of years was a lot of work and stress..!!!!
Case-in-point: I was reading about this gentleman Michael Wolfe ... no, not This Mr. Wolfe, who is an American poet, etc. but This Mr. Wolfe....on Quora and FB and he was talking about his start-up which didn't do well and so he was shutting it down....
Contrast it to the way Indians, or broadly South-East Asians, would deal with this situation...
A typical middle-class Indian whose business is dwindling would go off all social media activity - or maybe stop posting anything and restrict himself only to reading what everyone else is doing. He would never mention it to anyone that his business is about to shut down. He would bring his expenses down to the absolute minimal. He would lessen his social interactions, in the embarrassment lest someone should ask him, " Hows the market?" and he is not able to pretend well! Spending time with the family and planning to go on a vacation (because the recent past has been stressful) will be part of his nightmares!
The failure of a business is taken very personally here, because people are very emotionally attached to their business. In fact, there was this survey somewhere in a British college when I was in XLRI which was titled " Emotional Ownership of Business". I had taken part in the survey and the student conducting it was gracious enough to share a copy of the results...and it showed that Indians are most emotionally attached to their businesses, followed by Britishers!!
Digression aside....the running of a business is taken to be directly proportional to a person's capabilities here....and who wants to be labelled as incompetent! But it is intriguing to see that it might not be the case out there in the west....or is it just that the people I have heard/read about were just careless and shameless to admit to the whole world that their business failed but it doesn't affect them....at least not enough to not post on social networking sites!?
If it isn't the case there....how do they perceive the failure of a business? Just a matter-of-fact incident?
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