Enterprise, Embeddedness and Exclusion: Business and Development in Fiji

This paper explores the extent to which firms are locally embedded in the developing country context of Fiji. Current thinking on local growth in the face of globalisation emphasises the significance of networked, trust‐based relationships in either clusters or commodity chains as part of a broadly based institutionalist model of economic change. The changing relationships between sets of enterprises in Fiji are examined to assess whether the relationships of theory exist in this particular context. The relationships between ‘colonial’ transnational corporations (TNCs), other TNCs, Indo‐Fijian family business networks, livelihood enterprises, the Fijian political elite and an emerging Fijian business elite are examined. It is concluded that the economic and social fractures in the small island developing country limit, if not preclude, the creation of the local social capital that might foster self‐sustaining local economic growth.