Mohit Sharma

The present study examines the impact of Buddhist values on agripreneurship and sustainability, with a mediating effect of market orientation. The study is carried out in Bhutan and the Sikkim state of India, employing 287 farmers, and utilised the GET2 Test Scale to assess entrepreneurial orientation, which considers five main parameters: Calculated Risk-Taking, Creative Tendency, Locus of Control, Need for Autonomy, and Need for Achievement. This study employs Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using SmartPLS 4 to investigate the relationships among Buddhist values, Entrepreneurial Orientation, Sustainability, and Market Orientation. The results reveal that Buddhist values exert a statistically significant direct influence on sustainability across all samples, with comparatively stronger effects observed in Bhutan compared to India. Buddhist values also demonstrate a modest but significant influence on entrepreneurial orientation in India and the pooled sample, while the relationship is not significant in Bhutan. Notably, Buddhist values exhibit a strong and statistically significant association with market orientation across all contexts. Furthermore, market orientation significantly influences sustainability and partially mediates the relationship between Buddhist values and sustainability. Results suggest that incorporating Buddhist values into entrepreneurship training and policy frameworks can enhance sustainable production and consumption while promoting and retaining sustainable livelihoods. The study further recommends that targeted entrepreneurial training for farmers should focus on balancing sustainability and farm economics and positioning them as exemplars of alternative development models. The present study addresses a timely need for culturally focused models of entrepreneurship that reflect the ethical frameworks of farmers in Buddhist-majority Himalayan regions.

What is ethics in the contemporary world? What is the need of defining ethics and, secondly, defining it in contemporary context? The meaning of ethics is so ambiguous to nonphilosophical academicians, corporate world, and others who look to the meaning in the branch of Philosophy called Ethics. At the end of endless debates, if the purpose of getting a definition is done, it is clarity in thinking in defining ethics which would happen. This may lead to clarity in the study of ethics. And why should one study ethics at all? Ethics is interwoven at various levels in our life. The same individual is often in an obligation to face ethics at different levels like home, office, society, etc., or different ethical obligations. With a number of normative theories, the individual mind would be indefinite as to which one to follow. Is it just one theory alone which can be resorted to in an ethical dilemma or a combination of them? Are these theories practical also? Or are they just theories per se? To clear this ambiguity and in order to define ethics, the discussion of the meaning of ethics is important. This paper answers the above questions and throws light on the enquiry. This study hence is an exploratory one. Since the word ethics is interwoven with morality, it is worthwhile to define the word moral