Maori Business
Historical Review of Maori Business
New Zealand seems to be a country where not only the plates of the continents but also different worlds and cultures collide. Before it was annexed by Britain in 1840, it used to be the largest Polynesian country (Mathew, 1984). Behind the landscape of this spectacular country lie two hundred unresolved years of history that explain why almost the whole land in the country is owned by white settlers while the native people have become rare. Two hundred years ago, New Zealand was colonized by a race of aliens that was technologically advanced, but after the arrival of the Maori people from Polynesia, there has been widespread development of strong social structures, values, attitudes and customs that were very impregnable in that they were barely shaken by the European culture that came during the colonization of the British that came after the aliens (Mathew, 1984).
Though the foreigners control land ownership in the country, most of the cultural dispensation, business tactics and methodologies is controlled by one of the native tribes of New Zealand called the Maori. The Maori people are the indigenous people of the republic of New Zealand and are about 13 percent of the total population of New Zealand. Their native language is the Maoritanga which has a close relationship to the languages that are spoken in Hawaii and Tahiti. The Maori people migrated from Polynesia and went to New Zealand in the 9th century. The Maori society has really changed, especially in the commercial sense, after the arrival of the sealers, the traders and the whalers.
This is because the Maori people reacted to their arrival and had mixed feelings towards these foreigners with white skin. Each of the aforementioned groups had an effect on the Maori culture and their effects can be seen in the modern New Zealand. The biggest effect was the introduction of barter and trade into the old New Zealand this introduction of trade opened up the communication between the natives and the foreigners because of the interaction involved in trade. The contacts that the Maori people made with other people in the Pacific is the ones which helped them to develop an early business sense that was later to spread throughout New Zealand as the Maori culture and customs influenced the way of life in the entire nation. Though waves of contacts with the whalers and the traders changed the way the Maori people traded, it was the Maori-Pakeha contact that enhanced trade among the Maori and Europeans to a greater extent. By 1830s, the Maori and the Pakeha people had started exchanging services and goods that included food, fish and other agricultural products.
In tandem with the emergence of the culture of the Maori, the expansion of their sectors of business also took place. The traditional business sector of the Maoris was agriculture, fishing and forestry but due to diversification and globalization there are other sectors that have grown into the Maori culture including energy, IT, horticulture and most importantly tourism to a large scale. The base of assets for the Maori has been augmented in the past years because of settlements from earlier claims from the other tribes, especially under a treaty called Waitangi. These settlements are the ones that are assisting the Maori people in their goals of diversification. The key focus now is the development of strategies and visions for the future as the ministry of Maori development has been set up.
Due to the influence of the Maori business patterns, New Zealand has developed a modern and prosperous economy and the country enjoys high standards of living which even exceed those of some countries in Europe. The Maori business patterns that are highly viable and stable helped New Zealand to escape the economic recession that hit most parts of the world recently.
Maori trade is among the most advanced ones in the Oceania region and its influence can be felt in all the economic aspects of New Zealand. Due to this, the people of New Zealand have a high level of life satisfaction according to international surveys. In the human development index, the country ranks in the top 20, where it was ranked first in satisfaction and 5th in prosperity margins. The Maori culture is very conducive to the businesses in the service industry which is that largest sector of the economy of New Zealand, bringing 68 percent of the overall gross domestic product (Harlow, 1994).
The culture of the Maori is flexible enough to allow free trade to thrive in New Zealand and the country is highly dependent on free trade especially in the agricultural exports, because agriculture is one of the pillars of Maori trade. The contribution of Maori agriculture to the exports in New Zealand is generally high and accounts to around 24 percent of the national output. The strong base of the Maori agricultural business makes New Zealand not to be susceptible to global economic meltdowns and price slumps. Apart from agriculture, other businesses or industries that have had heavy influence on the Maori culture are horticulture, tourism fishing and forestry.
The analysis in the Economist magazine has put out the commercial outlook for New Zealand under the influence of the Maori culture where it sees the fiscal position of the government being strong, especially because of the increased revenue growth and reducing expenditure (Clark, 2004). This is because the Maori culture is very friendly to foreign trade which has made the New Zealand dollar remain strong in the wake of the global economic slump that has hit almost all countries in the world in the last two years. The New Zealand economy is built on a wide range of products some of which originated from the people of Maori who live in the Southern Island (Sutton, 1994). In the 1950s, the high demand for the Maori agricultural products was the one that sustained the economy of the country and many things that undermine business in many countries around the world do not affect New Zealand because the Maori cultural disposition does not make New Zealand susceptible to the external economic forces. Maori, being the most influential group in the entire New Zealand, was the first to embrace the commerce and this has helped the government of New Zealand in shifting from the traditional heavy economy to the modern knowledge economy due to the internet revolution that has been influenced by Maori scholars and the wave of globalization that was spearheaded by the Maori economists in New Zealand (Clark, 2004). One of the disadvantage centered on the Maori as part of the New Zealand economy is the increase in brain drain where most of the educated youth, most of them from the Southern Island (Maoriland), are leaving the country to look for greener pastures abroad in countries like the United States of America, Britain and Australia . This is very unfortunate for the business disposition in New Zealand because these educated youthful professionals are the ones who are supposed to drive the engine of knowledge that is currently keeping the economy of New Zealand away from economic shocks such as recession and economic slump down.
One area where the set up trade went against the Maori culture was the decriminalization of prostitution. Prostitution is a vice that is abhorred in the Maori traditions, but the decriminalization of the sex trade by the New Zealand government was a slap in the face of the Maori culture and today, New Zealand has the fairest sex trade system where the prostitutes are allowed to provide their services freely at home or even on the streets and the law protects them from violence and abuse by brothel owners. However, the robust culture of the Maori has kept New Zealand free from the illegal drug business that has wrecked many cultures around the world, another factor that has contributed to this is the state of isolation of the country and the strong legal system that makes it hard for such vices to thrive (Clark, 2004). The traditional business sector of the Maoris was in agriculture, fishing and forestry but due to diversification and globalization there are other sectors that have also grown. The Maori people are very conscious of fashion and style and they have dominated the fashion business and influenced it in New Zealand for decades. Since the year 2000, the fashion industry in New Zealand has grown tremendously and the exports from the fashion industry have doubled in a period of just ten years. There are more that 50 fashion labels in the southern Maori dominated islands and half of them sell their products abroad. This in contrast to the rest of the country that is not fashion conscious and labeled by foreigners as people who dress like soldiers. The Maori business patterns that are highly viable and stable helped New Zealand to escape the economic recession that hit most parts of the world recently. Maori trade is one of the most advanced in the Oceania region and its influence can be felt in all the economic aspects of New Zealand.
Maori Tourism
Maori tourism business represents just one percent of the total tourism turnover in New Zealand. However, it has been noted that the Maoris rich culture can have an immense impact in attracting visitors and accommodation operations in the South, making up to 35 percent of the tourism businesses that are operated by the Maori people. One of the factors that are promoting Maori tourism is the appreciation of the cultures that are indigenous, thus creating immense opportunities fro the Maori tourism. The main thing is the continuous focus on sustainable tourism and the Maori people are strategically placed to provide various experiences that can be of interest to the wide range of tourists who visit the southern island and New Zealand at large.
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