Thinking about Entrepreneurship: A Fuzzy Set Approach

Abstract

The popularity of in academe has unleashed a deluge of think pieces about the subject (Hisrich 1988, Sexton 1988, Brockhaus 1988, and Wortman 1986), all of which lead back to the fact that there is no accepted definition--working or otherwise--of the terms entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.'' Textbook writers usually finesse the point by listing a catalog of different ways to look at (Vesper 1990, 1-28). But the lack of consensus on what activities can be considered to be ensnares nearly every empirical or theoretical research effort. Michael Porter, for example, relies on in all nations to get things going throughout The Competitive Advantage of Nations, but never stops to define the term. Gartner (1990) attempted to organize the confusion with an elaborate Delphi study. Using 44 definitions of elicited from 44 respondents, he identified 90 attributes. After two Delphi rounds with 34 of the respondents, Gartner claimed that eight themes emerged after clustering his 90 attributes using factor analysis. In the end, however, Gartner conceded that his data only demonstrated that there is no agreement on a definition of entrepreneurship. He concluded that writers and researchers must continue to spend time making explicit what we are taking about when we talk about entrepreneurship (Gartner 1990, 28). In other words, everybody can use the term in any way they choose so long as they provide some kind of definition. Is this the best we can do? After all, this is not merely a sterile academic argument. If is of vital importance to economic development and growth (most of us believe that it is), then it must be distinguishable from other concepts. The failure of Soviet-style central planning in Europe and the desperate desire for economic growth among developing countries has placed the spotlight squarely on as a major factor in the success of capitalist economies. Unfortunately, those of us accultured to capitalism cannot decide upon a reasonable explanation of what we mean by entrepreneurship. How then can we expect those accustomed to command economies or to cultures hostile to capitalism to make the political and economic changes necessary to foster entrepreneurship? Leaders in countries attempting to switch to market economies have serious questions for us about entrepreneurship. They want to know what it is and what it isn't. Deluged with advice about managing macro-economic development, developing capital markets, and strategic management of large organizations, they want to know more about the role of entrepreneurship. They start with the question: What is entrepreneurship? CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP For help in dealing with the complex conceptual problems in entrepreneurship, we need to turn back to the work of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History at Harvard by a group of scholars including Joseph A. Schumpeter, Arthur Cole, and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Headed by Cole for the ten years of its existence, the Center made a serious effort to deal with the theoretical and empirical problems of research from an economic, sociological, and historical perspective. The emphasis was upon the real world of actual activity, not the rigidly defined theoretical constructs of mainstream economics (Aitken 1963, Cole 1959). The center published a journal, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, which should be required browsing for aspiring scholars who wish to avoid re-inventing the wheel. One point on which the center participants agreed was that the search for real entrepreneurs was futile. They recognized the utility of theoretical entrepreneurial types in economic and sociological theory. But in the real world they felt that attempting to identify individuals as was a waste of time. …