Preface

• Author: Lloyd G. Waller/Densil A. Williams/Omar E. Hawthorne/Donavon Johnson
• Profession: Head of the Department of Government at The University of the West Indies, Mona. His research focuses on research methodologies; governance and public policy; and digital transformation/Professor of International Business at the UWI/Lecturer of International Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Leadership and Governance at ...
• Pages: 9-10

Jamaicans are some of the most business-minded humans on earth. Take a

drive one day through the streets of Kingston, through the nook and crannies

of townships and municipalities, across the length and breadth of its coasts

and counties, and you will nd that one of the most vivid details about the

country is the presence of business activity. Jamaica’s very metamorphosis

from ‘Xymaica’ into Jamaica land we love was premised on business and a

slave trade that prompted a mercantilist way of life among Jamaicans, a system

that Jamaicans have now owned, reshaped, reidentied, and reproduced as

one that is reective of a society within which one can live, work, raise families,

and do business. Jamaicans’ penchant for doing business using myriad forms

of creativity has regarded the country as one that is ideal to do business in.

What we must never fail to appreciate is that doing business in Jamaica is part

of the life and livelihood of the people. It is part of the brand identity of what

Jamaica is, and this thread in the fabric of the culture is not one bourn from

macrocosmic stimuli; it is wrought from the essence of being Jamaican and

from being in Jamaica.

It, therefore, is no surprise to nd a group of Jamaican scholars applying the

rigour of scientic enquiry to locate the veracity of any claim that challenges

these closely held beliefs and ideals that Jamaica is the place to do business.

Rest assured, however, that this book has not been motivated by, nor sets out

to motivate any attitude of contention or carnage. It is, however, a common

understanding among those of us who publish for either scholarship or for

general edication that anything published is open to public deliberations,

which often include public scrutiny, support, challenge, or praise. This book

simply plays its part by placing on record, a reasoned and scientic alternative

to understanding doing business in Jamaica.

When you move beyond this page, open your mind to the authors’ intent

to be pedantic and not persnickety, probing and not fault-nding, critical

and not nitpicking, constructive and not destructive. This book was written

from the authors’ axiological core that no position is absolute, not even our

own, but the world deserves alternate understandings of phenomena and

Preface