AMBH500 - Exploring the Influence of Maori Business in New Zealand

This essay examines the significant influence of Maori business on New Zealand's market, highlighting its contribution to the national economy and its impact on business policies. It discusses how Maori culture and traditions, including Tikanga Maori, provide a unique value proposition in the glob...Read More

Running head: INFLUENCE OF MAORIBUSINESS IN NEW ZEALAND’S MARKET
INFLUENCE OF MAORI BUSINESS IN NEW ZEALAND’S MARKET
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The Contributions of Maori to the New Zealand Business:
The pre-European economic condition based on Maori culture was independent in both
consuming and producing resources as per their own requirements. The earlier trading concept
follows the method of exchanging gifts, involved the inter-tribal trading resources. Then, Maori
culture more smoothly builds up the commercial relationships, like by battering food, the
ground-based assets in the altercation of European technology. The unique ability of this tribe
has helped them to attract people through the traditional customs and norms in business schemes.
Maori successfully operated enterprises, transporting and trading within New Zealand and
abroad by 1850s.
New Zealand is considered a small market among the international markets of countries
like China and India. The developed nations around the world are competing in the global
market; New Zealand needs to have to be unique and have the value proposition for entering the
international market and which, most of the larger competitors will be lacking. That value
proposition of New Zealand is Maori culture. Maori economy is the commercial powerhouse of
the New Zealand economy. New Zealand’s business market involves the indigenous product and
services, which was the impact of Maori culture. The Maori goods and services are unique
among the international business market because of the Tikanga Maori aspects of those products
and services. The design or the materials not only make the Maori products different from others
but also the ways of their dealings in their business. Many Maori organizations are significant
contributors to the New Zealand economy. In this new era of business, people want to know the
story behind every product like people wants to know what the products whakapapa (genealogy).
There have been seen that the prosperity of the tribal business even in the depths of the last
recession period (Hanusch, 2015). This business is helping in the increased expansion of sectors

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like the property, power generation, forest, digital technology, and telecommunication. This
Maori tribal business involves a partnership with governments, private organizations and
overseas investors (Petrie, 2013).
The impact of Maori culture affects positively the economy of New Zealand and holds
the most significant role in the growth of New Zealand economically as well as socially as the
contribution of Maori tribes sketches a robust development in different businesses of New
Zealand in every aspect. The culture and diversities of Maori tribe become a hallmark of most of
the businesses of New Zealand nowadays. Hence, most of New Zealand’s business tries to
follow the Maori culture for their business growth by involving the Mori history in the products,
and also every product involves a story behind them, which influences positively on the national
economy. The Maori business is considered as the ideal model of the enterprise, as this business
operates within the entity, which is owned and controlled by Maori, and it is also partially
government funded. The cultural authenticity and flexibility are the key factors of this tribal
business (Love, 2017). The long-term relationship with the Maori Enterprises helps New Zealand
business to prosper and participate in the competition of the Global Business market. The
essential factors on which the New Zealand business depends are the cultural competency that is
the knowledge of the Maori language, culture and the ability to implement that culture, the
relational competency that is growing relationships with the Maori Entrepreneurs and the
technical competencies that is the promises of delivering. The recent Maori business has various
extents, and it is continuously developing as the major contributor towards the extensive
economy of New Zealand (Berryman, SooHoo&Nevin, 2013). The cultural distinctiveness
provides additional value to the Maori cultural goods and services, the different worldview and
the interpretive lens enables various approaches towards the innovations and problem solutions.

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Maori also includes other services such as health, cultural, community, recreational and personal
services, property services, primary sector and the manufacturing sector (Dyall et al., 2014).
The impact of Maori business to the policies of New Zealand’s business:
There is a huge impact of Maori culture on New Zealanders in respect to policies such as
human resource management. According to the Employment Relation Act, 2000, the business
needs to build up the productive relationship with the employees by promoting confidences and
mutual trust in every aspect of the employment environment. In the last ten years, there have
been vast changes as the business service providers merge, divests and also re-invent them. The
human resource management mostly recruits the employees through the web that is most of the
New Zealand organizations have their job pages, and some organizations also have the
interactive software, which is associated with the workflow enabling personal interactions with
the candidates. There has been an emerging trend of the business operation process as the impact
of Maori business enables the New Zealand Business to compete in the global market. The
business introduces quarterly updates, and the online systems enable the progress against the
objectives. The Human Resource Management sets smart goals and objectives for the employees
and provides effective coaching to the employees for achieving those goals and objectives. The
HR professionals are facing challenges such as in achieving growth in the emerging competitions
in the global business market, in evaluating the relative qualities and strengths of the internal
processes, value chain analysis.
New Zealand business identified sustainability as the key factor, for competing in the
global market and acknowledged its role in growing its brand reputation, which ensures the trust
of the peoples, stakeholders. This tribal business also finds sustainability as the significant factor
for attracting capital, innovation, increasing competitions and retaining the talents. The

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employees are significant factors for the business sustainability. This tribal business delivers
simultaneously on the economic, social and the environmental factors for ensuring the long-term
benefits of the organization. The increasing demands of the customers and the society have
brought up the sustainability factor to the surface. There are different activities of Maori culture,
which are based on tribal assets, commercial transaction, Maori services, Maori house designs
and the entrepreneur ideas of Maori tribes. As the Maori tribes usually do not incorporate with
their morals and ethics in business purpose, their business policies can be defined as the most
sustainable policies for growing a business in any aspect. Although there are no specific patterns
of Maori businesses, there are some basic dissimilarities among the Maori and a kaupapa
business (Grimes, MacCulloch & McKay 2015). According to the New Zealand Institute of
Economic Research (2003), the Maori traditions are solely based on individual trusts and the
incorporations, for the growth of the business.
In the Maori business, how staff carries out their day-to-day work:
The Maori business has great influence upon the New Zealanders and the peoples of
Maori tribes are very determined to their work and solely committed towards Maori culture, so
that, whenever they are starting a new business, their entrepreneurial activities draws a picture of
growth as well as indicates the values of Maori culture. Their basic focus is on tourism where
they can showcase their culture and at the same time, they put their instinct cultural values and
mottos in their products and services so that, they can attract the peoples from different places
which is significant enough to increase the national economy. Therefore, Maori culture is the
most important necessity in any business of New Zealand as per today’s statistics (McNeill,
2016).

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There is another noticeable factor of Maori culture, that is their working structure with
different stakeholders on a daily basis, which constantly improves the individual motto of
internal stakeholders and attracts the external stakeholders at the same time. In the case of
internal stakeholders, they use to follow a holistic approach, which provides the intrinsic values
of Te Reo Māori. The definition of success for Maori tribes is a little bit different from others.
They believe that inner peace is more important than economic growth. Every individual of
Maori culture should respect their cultural values and maintained as well to grow their inner
peace (Ladkin& Spiller, 2013).
On the other hand, focusing on work for money does not make any sense for them. Maori
culture believes that people become more efficient whenever they can change the way of
thinking, it is more important to replace money into happiness than to convert money into
happiness. Buying any materialistic product makes people happy for an instance, but for
achieving that inner peace, one should believe in every cultural connections and instinct values
because it gives more happiness than to pursue a material product. So, they need to focus on the
creative and performing arts, books, videos, music, and provide all these facilities to their
internal stakeholders on a daily basis to improve the way of thinking of their peoples and to grow
their inners instinct as well. Now, in the case of external stakeholders like customers, suppliers,
local community, local and central government, they usually focus on their products and their
languages, which attracts the visitors. Their businesses are almost based on tourism. Therefore,
they are the suppliers of their own. They usually put their ideas of cultural values on their
products in their languages, which makes the entire product different from other cultures. These
are the main attractions of Maori culture and people usually visits here for being the witness of

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this exceptional culture, for enjoying and cherishing the different values of Maori culture and for
buying the unique products as well (Anaya, 2015).
The customers are more interested in those products and services, which has history
behind it and the Maori products and services are rich in cultural aspects. This is the ultimate
reason why the customers are always attracted towards the authentic design of their products and
services. Not only the designs of the products attract the customers, but also their way of
dealings attracts people. Every product and the services represent their rich cultural values
towards their customers. The suppliers always look after the cultural authentication of that
product, which is the most important factor in their products and services. The central
government has prime responsibilities towards the Maori that is the attempt to work through past
Waitangi treaty protests by the negotiations and trying to deal with them by settlements. By
doing this, the Crown and Maori both can focus on the Maori problems and the better
development in the future process. The government also has a responsibility to promote and
retain their indigenous language and culture. This is important for the government to involve
them, empower them and raise their average achievement level from their present level, equal to
the rest of the society (Wepa, 2015).
Changes occurred in cultural awareness and their demonstrations by the New
Zealand framework:
The increasing cultural awareness strengthens the relationship between the Maoris in the
south and the local authorities. There are two councils in the country, which represents Maori
that is the Wairoa District Council and Waikato Regional Council. The Local Electoral Act 2001,
allows the councils to form the distinct zones for Maori. The public event like the Matariki
(Maori New Year) mainly highlights the cultural variety of the place with the celebration of

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collaboration, friendships, arts, and harvest. The new training program has been introduced,
which helps the planners, the engineers and the architects to be more responsive culturally as per
the Maori perspectives and the values while designing the living places and the surrounding. The
local institutions, the universities of Auckland, Victoria, and the Auckland Council supports this
cultural awareness and prepares their student to work on the Maori culture. This training
program has been specially introduced for the students to ensure that the future professionals will
be involved in designing and will be better prepared in working with the Maori culture. This
program in understanding the Maori culture has recognized an industry gap. As the industry
professionals are more culturally mindful of the Maori traditions, they will be more engaging and
building relationships with Maoris (Burford, 2017).
Nowadays Maori people are present throughout New Zealand, and many people are
actively keeping their culture and language alive. In the Maori community, the Maori people
focuses on the social, cultural and the spiritual life (Tsui&Tollefson, 2017). The preschool
children are encouraged to speak in the Maori language, and the primary and the secondary
schools have involved the Maori language in the curriculum. The traditional carvers create the
intricate works, which helps the Maori culture to keep alive. Every carved piece has a history
behind it, and it can only be understandable by the peoples, those who know this culture. The
ancient values and beliefs of this tribal culture are accepted and valued by New Zealand’s
leaders. Around 130 years ago, the Maori tourism was started that is the local Maoris guides the
visitors through the central plateau region of New Zealand. The traditional arts like the carving,
weaving, kapahaka(group performance), moko(tattoo),whaikorero(oratory)are practiced in all
over the country and this represents the rich and the varied Maori culture.

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Hakarepresents the history rich in the folklore and a legend, which reflects the Maori
heritage. The current tradition suggests that it was mainly the domain of the men but the legends
and the history reflect different story whereas the story of the haka is about the female sexuality
power (Papesch, 2015). As stated by the legend, from the sun of God Ra, haka was derived. Most
of the people think that haka means war dance but the word haka means a simple dance or songs,
which are accompanied by dance (De Marco, 2016). Nowadays, New Zealanders are great
customers with haka like the modern All Blacks perform haka with pride and passionately and
this increased its recognition as an icon of New Zealand (Palmer, 2016). The New Zealand army
has their own and unique haka, which was both, opened and ended by the female soldiers and
also acknowledged special position in the armed forces. Today, haka is considered as the unique
form of the National expression. In New Zealand, the trade delegations and the other various
forms of functions increasingly requesting the haka groups to accompany them. Haka is
considered as a unique symbol of New Zealand’s culture and identity, and this helps to
internationalize haka in the global village (Brougham &Haar, 2013).
The Heritage New Zealand PouhereTaonga Act (2014) guides the heritage of New
Zealand and promotes the identification and protection of the New Zealand heritage
(Magallanes, 2015). This act provides for the heritage covenants and also prohibits the
destruction and the modification of the archeological site. The Protected Objects Act (1975),
administered by the Ministry of culture and heritage, protects the New Zealand’s object from the
illegal export and import of the foreign objects and protects the Maori culture as the objects are
dependent on the Maori culture, this act protect every object of rich cultural value and saves it
from getting illegally exported (Norton, 2017). The Conservation Act (1987) guides the
department of conservation of the New Zealand historical resources, and this act promotes the

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conservation of the natural resources and the culture of New Zealand (Dodson, 2014). In all the
ways mentioned above, New Zealand is protecting its culture and spreading cultural awareness
among the New Zealanders.

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