ASHKAR Adib, DBA

Previous Board member of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Syrian Exporters Association, Adib Ashkar is a Syrian-Canadian entrepreneur who has managed medium-sized businesses in Syria, UAE, Lebanon, and most recently in Montreal through MAG- MTL Projects Inc., specialising in building renovation and window soundproofing.
Based on experience in small and family business operations, Adib Ashkar focuses on how firms adapt to chaotic economic environments and uncertainty. He will defend his Executive Doctorate of Business Administration (EDBA) in March 2026 on the theme “Small Business Survival in Chaotic Contexts and the Role of the Third Party,” under the supervision of Professors Nathalie Mitev, King’s College London University, United Kingdom, and Françoise Chevalier, HEC Paris, France.

Prof Chevalier Françoise, Prof Mitev Nathalie

Small Business Survival in Chaotic Contexts and the Role of the Third Party.

This thesis examines how small and family businesses survive amid regulatory disorder and armed conflict, focusing on Syria (2010–2019) and the mediating role of the “third-party” representations, principally the Damascus Chamber of Commerce. The study addresses a persistent gap between the symbolic presence of representative bodies and their substantive ability to mitigate bureaucratic harm, influence policy, and support firm-level resilience during crises. It asks: How do small and family businesses survive in chaotic contexts, and what role should intermediaries such as chambers of commerce play in that survival?
Two grounded contributions emerge. First, the thesis shows that in Syria’s crisis context chambers largely operated as symbolic bodies; where members did perceive any help, it was through basic, ad-hoc functions, clarifying procedures, forwarding complaints, brokering a contact, or hosting a meeting, rather than shaping rules or outcomes. Second, drawing from respondents’ preferences and pain points and through my life story experiences, the thesis proposes an actionable reform checklist to make chambers consequential, statutory independent from ministries: small professional policy units able to analyse regulations; transparent, and predictable, year-round service interfaces (case-tracking help desk, and sector councils). These changes should translate “ceremony” into service and measurable member value.
Methodologically, the thesis adopts an interpretive, autoethnographic approach (three interview-based life narratives) complemented by an email questionnaire of Damascus Chamber members. From a registry of ~7,000 members, 1,718 had valid emails; 1,745 messages were sent (including personal contacts), 646 were delivered, and 94 complete responses were received (14.5%). This mixed design captures lived experience alongside structured evidence on representations and wartime coping.
Findings reveal limited practical intermediation by business associations during the war: 59.8% of respondents reported “no benefit,” 35.9% “a little,” and only 4.3% “a lot.” Electoral engagement was weak to modest: exactly half (46/94) reported participating in representative elections, while non-responses and dispersed “success of preferred candidates” suggested skepticism about electoral efficacy. Open-ended responses and interview excerpts consistently described bureaucratic blockage, clientelism, and a chamber unable to act. At the same time, entrepreneurs articulated a clear profile of credible representatives: educated, humble, visible, and communicative over wealth or identity traits.
Implications for policymakers and chambers are: (1) legally separate chambers from supervising ministries (own statute and budget line); (2) create a small policy unit consists of 2 or 3 analysts to produce rapid regulatory-impact notes; and (3) standardize member interfaces such as a ticketed help desk with case-tracking, monthly sector councils, and a public reporting of complaints received/resolved.
The core conclusion is that in conflict-affected, over-regulated environments like Damascus, the binding constraint is not entrepreneurial effort but the absence of an effective intermediary able to aggregate voice and negotiate rules. Building that intermediary capacity is a precondition for market recovery, not an optional add-on.
Some limitations are that the email survey likely over-represents reachable, urban businesses and under-represents smaller/offline businesses; non-response and self-selection introduce bias; autoethnographic material reflects only one personal trajectory. Triangulation across survey frequencies, interview excerpts, and documentary records mitigates, but does not eliminate, these constraints.