Extensions of Conceptual Problems

If the writers in the field of entrepreneurship generally claim that hundreds of years of research and writing have not produced a clear sense of what entrepreneurship is and how it works; then why should "systems thinking" change anything? Well, it won’t; not unless we more systematically codify this unique management concept via genuine practical learning and theoretical advance, a systematic maturity. As we begin to accept entrepreneurship’s central role in imagining and forging our progress, we must also accept the corresponding advance of abstraction and fuzziness of management advancing faster then the science and its words; and yet leaders must also accept a certain responsibility to conquer subjectivity through science and inspiration in life and organization. Systems thinking helps wise managers to admit that there is always more to learn about entrepreneurship then any other management types (other ways of managing) in this changing and uncertain world.

As a summary of this chapter, briefly revisit some of the interrelationships in our organized world that confound understanding and defining entrepreneurship. These conceptual problems have been with us for centuries, and have been studied and analyzed from various perspectives. And remember, it is this multi-dimensionality complexity that the leads one to accept open systems theory as a mechanism for organizing the convoluted management orientation known as entrepreneurship.

1. How does entrepreneurship differ from other strategic and managerial behaviors and events common to organizations and social life? Fuzzy organizational concepts like: innovation, management, administration, leadership, risk-taking, bureaucratization, creativity, rebelliousness and even citizenship overlap in connotation and annotation with entrepreneurship. How do we ultimately determine if a managerial behavior, or any behavior for that matter, is entrepreneurial, while another is not?

Well, it’s all about perspective. For instance, at an extreme, “at a life is all that matters” perspective, the continual process of living may be viewed as constant entrepreneurship. Being in charge of one’s destiny may also be viewed as somewhat entrepreneurial. But, these extreme views are too limiting, and thus are not very helpful to understanding unique dimensions, orientations and styles that are real and at the foundation of entrepreneurial management. Attempts have been made to articulate managerial behavior patterns and profiles that are different, which personify the entrepreneurial style. But even these attempts eventually gravitate to a style that may not be distinct from others, especially to the untrained eye, or as other management catches-up. Yet, it is clear that the subtle differences in the entrepreneurial style can produce profound differences in outcomes and performance in organizations and markets. Gartner (1988) goes so far as to suggest that the differences between various kinds of entrepreneurs can be as great as between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. Perspective is everything in studying the qualities and magnitudes of esoteric styles of management.

A series of articles in the Academy of Management Review (AMR, 2001) focused on the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship from other management styles. Several interesting debates focused on the classical controversy over whether entrepreneurship was based more on individual-centric forces (opportunity creator) or environmental-centric forces (opportunity exploiter). As a systems thinker, I found the debate stimulating, but not to establish some polar viewpoint; rather to better pursue the best perspective, the one that allows both sets of dimensions to be appropriately important and interdependent, a synthesis. The style may be in the person, but it manifests itself in the situation; therein is a fit, a coincidence, and performance is nothing without both. The entrepreneurial realization is quite a mental epiphany for most people, which strike at the soul. That’s why you will find me spending time in this book on imagining the distinctiveness of an entrepreneurship perspective, which is infinitely vigilant about and conscious of all interrelationships within larger contexts and is driven by the intellect, the soul and situation.

2. What are the settings for entrepreneurial behaviors and events? Different types of entrepreneurial enterprises and organizations can exist. Some typical categories include: small businesses, promising start-ups, venture-backed, corporate, revolutionary, intrapreneurial, artist and cottage. But I also suggested that entrepreneurship can also be just a state of mind; remember that states of mind are part of the whole. The truth is that no categorization can fully articulate all entrepreneurial forces that occur in real markets, organizations and people. Also remember that the analysis of distinctive fit has many abstract dimensions like: the key elements connecting the entrepreneur and the environmental factors, the stages of analysis (life cycles of organization), the levels of analysis (micro to macro settings) and the purpose of analysis (descriptive to prescriptive implementations). Furthermore, ethics aside, one needs to recognize that it might be entrepreneurial in certain situations to start a war, a prison, a terrorist attack, a plague or some form of exceptional perversion. Would you rate Charles Manson’s 1960’s cult as entrepreneurial? Was Saddam Hussein entrepreneurial? A rapidly changing relationship exists between the social setting and the strategy of being entrepreneurial that is fluid, and which inherently confounds understanding. The entrepreneurial event is thus unique and specific to the setting and time; yet, it is infinitely related to an array of factors the untrained mind can only begin to imagine.

Saying someone is an entrepreneur, for instance, is different than saying someone is involved in a particular entrepreneurial event. Henry Aaron is a home run king, but he no longer hits home runs. His 755 events made him the "king." Each home run event was brief in duration, but part of a fabric of thousands of games constituting a career. As with athletes, managers face settings in places and times during their careers where they can behave entrepreneurially or some other way, which is interdependent with the setting, where everything is also evolving through space and time. The right combination of managed and random interactions produce the patterning of the great gazelle, it also produces the sustaining bureaucracy or some other form of successful organization that is part of the progressive rhythm of organized man. The right combinations are exciting and refreshing; the wrong combinations produce disorganization, and eventually bankruptcy. But, can you imagine a way how the worst loser stories might have attributes that would be deemed entrepreneurial by someone. Even if we limit ourselves to imagining successful entrepreneurial organizations, we must appreciate that entrepreneurs can be like dive bombers, B-52 bombers or even stealth bombers, depending on the demands of the setting relative to the organization and its goals; and then they can go through metamorphoses.

3. How do individual entrepreneurs grow organization and economic opportunity? Organizations typically form around an entrepreneurial nucleus and grow more differentiated through time based on individual management interventions intent on profit, domination and growth in some niche. This initial “rooting” is essential, and becomes the foundation for all future growth. A typical growth process for an American entrepreneurial firm might be first the seed of an idea, which impassions the individual proprietor to contemplate succeeding in a local market; then they actually plan; then they go through the process of starting an enterprise and sequentially it grows into a family business, partnership, corporation, conglomerate and finally a global conglomerate. This expansion process occurs at different metabolisms as the organization capitalizes itself, enters and dominates new market niches, adds specialists at the boundary and metamorphoses into a larger organized social and economic phenomena. Most businesses begin with one, or a few key people, and then gradually reform their systems to keep out competitors and capture new ground as they endeavor to set higher goals about growth and boundary advance. Freshly learned managerial behaviors and events drive the transformation process in truly entrepreneurial growth, as virile organizational phenomena build on each other to sustain organizational mass, and perhaps even reach “gazelle” proportions. The advance of managerial behaviors through stages may not always be entrepreneurial. Furthermore, entrepreneurial styles may not always be best, but it seems clear that entrepreneurship must never be eliminated as a part of the managerial mix in a growth-oriented organization.

4. How many behavioral and psychic factors (variables) constitute the concept of individual entrepreneurship? Is entrepreneurial management a parsimonious concept associated with only a few attitudes, predispositions or orientations in the person, or is it richly multivariate, interconnecting in many ways with setting and group dynamics? Systems thinking, again leads us in both directions. The systems in which we manage are infinite, but yet must be managed with a feel that is connected to some simple orientation based on assumptions about a principled implicative order. So the answer is many and few. It depends on how much detail you want in a given context and person.

5. Is entrepreneurship good or bad? Again, can it be both? If it is both, then how do we know its true nature and value in any given time? In systems thought, entrepreneurship is generally deemed good or bad, depending on the fit of the strategic management style with the situation. Also, it seems that we have to assess intentions. A well-intentioned steward must be looked at differently than an ill-intentioned crook, regardless of appearances or outcomes. In the simplest formula, we must explore if the entrepreneurial events are well connected to society and important stakeholder perspectives, and then if they lead to “good” system growth and sustainability before we can judge a system on its entrepreneurialness. But, again, what is “good” comes under considerable debate these days.

6. Is entrepreneurship an independent, or dependent, variable? This is a special twist to the underlying controversies of equilibrium versus disequilibrium and nature versus nurture that I have frequently discussed, and will continue to discuss from varied perspectives. Dependence relates to the specific temporal positions of the variables in a given entrepreneurship equation (situation). In other words, how much do the forces of entrepreneurship influence the events of life versus how much life’s forces influence entrepreneurship. Again, we come to a similar conclusion as we did with the person-centric versus the environment-centric views. The further we move away from a balanced view the less likely we are to see the true reality of forces. For instance, Gartner (1988) suggests that the trait approach is not very fruitful for understanding entrepreneurship. He then moves on to the behavioral approach, because it is about whatever translates into action. This theatrical step is quite an advance; because it’s more attuned to larger systematic interrelationships, which when analyzed produce a more fruitful way to study real entrepreneurship. We know there is an intimate link between entrepreneurship behavior and the supportiveness of intellectual, genetic and socio-economic conditions, but we do not have solid theory about the dynamics of the interrelationships relative to causal and temporal sequences. The hierarchical and causal links that lead to ultimate outcomes is still a mystical symphony.

7. What role do intentions play in entrepreneurship? Do well thought-out intentions, purpose, orientation and objectives drive entrepreneurial behaviors, processes and outcomes (especially stewardly, ethical and moral objectives or high-performance and profit objectives)? Furthermore, must entrepreneurial intentions come to fruition or produce some other salient marker? Bohm (1965) suggests that the thought-world is a vital part of every organized system. Our thoughts are part of everything. It is therefore important to explore how entrepreneurial values, beliefs, attitudes and intentions differ from other types or styles of management, and how do these unique orientations efficiently and effectively fit into the whole system of economic organization, in a practical sense, at any given place and time. The reality of intentional, dynamic, collective thoughts add a highly abstract and subjective aspect to understanding entrepreneurship, especially in the gazelle, where charismatic and successful behaviors are often labeled many things they are not, or are erroneously credited as the causes of escalating successes.