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Entrepreneurship education
within the enterprise culture
Producing reflective practitioners
Sarah L. Jack and Alistair R. Anderson
Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Aberdeen, UK
Keywords Education, Entrepreneurship, Universities
Abstract The enterprise culture is founded on the premise that entrepreneurship is the engine
that drives the economy. One aspect of this cultural pervasion is the increase in the numbers of
educational institutions teaching entrepreneurship courses. Yet this hegemony of the
encouragement of new business start-up, almost for its own sake, needs to be critically reviewed.
One aspect is the enigmatic nature of entrepreneurship itself; what is it, and can it be taught?
Another aspect is the very different expectations of those stakeholders promoting entrepreneurship
education. Argues that the process of entrepreneurship involves both art and science; consequently
our students need more than SME management skills. Graduating enterprise students must be
innovative and creative to satisfy the need for entrepreneurial novelty – the art. Yet, paradoxically,
they also need to be competent and multifunctional managers – the science. Explores both these
areas to argue that theory can bridge the art and science. The final section explains briefly how the
recent research and practice at Aberdeen University attempts this synthesis. The intended outcome
of our educational process are reflective practitioners, fit for an entrepreneurial career.
Introduction
With the advent of the enterprise culture there has been widespread acceptance
that entrepreneurship, which is about the creation of new organisations to
create or extract value, is the engine that drives the economy of most nations
(Keats and Abercrombie, 1991; Gormon et al., 1997). Small independent firms
have been heralded as the great hope for economic growth in the developed
economies (Barrow, 1997). The enterprise culture resonates with this heroic
view of entrepreneurship, so that industrial bases are renewed and modern
industrial structures are maintained. New industries, employment and wealth
are created and entrepreneurship is seen to be a mechanism for economic and
social adjustment. These anticipated outcomes are a weighty ideological load to
place on the entrepreneurial process. Not least among the burden is the different
expectations of the various “stakeholders” – that is, those such as the
government, business and not least the students themselves in enterprise
creation. These include:
• job creation;
• new industry formation;
• the incorporation of innovation; and
• the re-energising, even the renewal, of the commercial base.
International Journal of
Entrepreneurial Behaviour &
Research, Vol. 5 No. 3, 1999,
pp. 110-125. © MCB University
Press, 1355-2554
This article is part of a special issue of papers entitled “Papers from the 2nd Enterprise and
Learning Conference”, edited by Alistair R. Anderson and David Deakins.
Each of these stakeholders charges enterprise with different, even potentially Entrepreneurship
conflicting roles. So one primary issue to be resolved is to clarify how education education within
“fits”, or can be fitted to satisfy these expectations. The second primary issue is enterprise culture
whether the university sector should be pursuing these aspirations. For
example, are we maximising our unique resources by teaching the instrumental
skills of small business plans and enthusing students to start low value-added
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new ventures?
It is unsurprising that the development, and indeed the pervasion, of the
enterprise culture has attracted academic interest. Since the 1980s the number
of entrepreneurship courses available to students has been increasing but this
raises issues of what precisely we expect to be the outcome of our efforts. Can
we possibly satisfy all these different expectations? Indeed, is this an
appropriate role for academic institutions?
Addressing the research question, “how can we improve the way we teach
entrepreneurship?”, this paper considers these issues and argues that there is a
useful role for academic institutions. However, the focus of this role should be
enhancing entrepreneurship and not about a production line for the creation of
low value SMEs. Our strengths, as universities, lie in developing higher level
skills and nurturing analytic ability. In short, the production of reflective
practitioners. We consider reflective practitioners to be individuals who,
through their knowledge and critical ability, are capable not only of starting
new businesses but also of ensuring the continuing viability of businesses by
enhancing the capacity for them to develop through a richer understanding of
the entrepreneurial process. In addition to small business development, these
abilities will be transferable to new project creation and intrapreneurship within
larger existing businesses. Accordingly these graduates will be “fit” for an
entrepreneurial career.
To substantiate the argument the paper begins by discussing
entrepreneurship, the nature of which is seen as enigmatic (Kets de Vries, 1977;
Rosa and Bowes,1993), but which can be conceptualised as a process which is
both an art and a science (Kasarda, 1992; Bridge et al., 1998). Moving to consider
how these aspects can be taught, the science of SME management is seen as
teachable within a conventional pedagogic paradigm. However the art is seen
as more problematic; it is experiential, founded in innovation and novelty but
based on heuristic practice. As academics we cannot replicate the experiences
of successful entrepreneurs, but we can use their experiences to develop theory
and this theory will help to bridge the abyss between the art and the science of
entrepreneurship. The theoretical discussion is followed by an outline of our
experiences at Aberdeen University, including some action research directed
towards improving our entrepreneurial pedagogy.
The rationale and the irrationality of teaching entrepreneurship
I would suggest that successful entrepreneurship is an art form as much as, or perhaps more
than, it is an economic activity, and as such it is as difficult as any other artistic activity to
explain in terms of original method or environmental influence (Livesay, 1982, p. 13).
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This section explores the quandary of entrepreneurship as practice and the
pedagogical issues of transmitting, informing and developing entrepreneurial
ability. A tension arises in the differences between SME management as a
functional role and enterprise creation as a creative role. The essential element
of the dilemma appears to be the rather intangible qualities of successful
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a process which has been described as
holistic, dynamic, unique and sensitive to a number of antecedent variables
(Hofer and Bygrave,1992). But entrepreneurship is also an enigma, each
entrepreneurial event is unique and probably idiosyncratic and the
entrepreneurial process is the crystallisation of complex and contingent
variables. The entrepreneurial event is therefore unpredictable and could be
perceived as a phenomenon. Consequently, “how can one analyse and teach acts
whose nature is not yet known and whose effectiveness relies to a considerable
degree on the difficulty others have in foreseeing them?” (Baumol, 1983, p. 30).
This notion is taken even further by Casson (1995, p. 83) who argued that “it is
the perception, as well as the reality of problems which is important”. Shackle
(1979) made a similar point regarding the subjectivity of problems and the
limitations of a narrow view.
Traditional management education is positivistic, as Outhwaite (1986)
indicated: “positive knowledge, so called to distinguish it from the theological
and metaphysical conceptions of the world from which it emerged, yields a
methodologically unified and hierarchical conception of science, based on
causal laws of phenomena, derived from observation”. Yet entrepreneurship is
anti-positivistic and entrepreneurial knowledge may be soft and personal
(Johannisson, 1992). Furthermore new business creation must also be inductive,
requiring leaps of perception, and the ability to see things in a different way.
Thus we see the limitations of the science of management education in dealing
with the unknowability of entrepreneurship. As Casson (1995, p. 80) argued,
“Judgmental decisions are decisions for which no obvious correct procedure
exists: a judgmental decision cannot be made simply by plugging available
numbers into a specific formula and acting on the basis of the number which
comes out”.
According to Engelwall (1982), management education is torn between the
liberal and the utilitarian concepts, hence he claimed advantages in decoupling
management education and management practice. In turn, he argues that this
reflects the need for fewer skills and more analysis. However, conventional
management education – that is functional training as one would expect in an
MBA – is becoming more professionalised and therefore instrumental (French
and Grey, 1996). For these authors even the fundamental question of whether
management can be taught seems to be almost as important. Robert Locke
(1984) is particularly critical of what Winston Churchill called, “clear cut,
logical, mass production style of thought”, taught by American-style business
schools. In the USA, the business courses of many colleges and universities
have been criticised because of their lack of creativity and individual thinking
(Solomon and Fernald, 1991). The outcome of such courses being “tools”, rather
than practical advice, and “analytic smarts” rather than “street smarts” Entrepreneurship
(Wojhan, 1986). So for French and Grey (1996) the issue is whether knowledge is education within
an end (as Cicero claimed), or if knowledge is a means (as John Locke insisted). enterprise culture
Our view of entrepreneurship knowledge is that it must be a means. This seems
to be confirmed by Ronstadt (1990, p. 80) who stated that “Entrepreneurship
education should not be viewed as some mechanistic or technocratic process
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but as a holistic and integrative process; … entrepreneurship is not the sum of
the functional subdivisions of modern business education”.
Clearly the entrepreneurial process is recognisably different from
managerialism; in essence it is about creating something which did not exist
before. The process involves “the extraction of value from the environment”
(Anderson, 1995), and usually in a novel form. Hence it is about using resources
in a different, a Schumpertian, way. Furthermore, it has to be an inductive
process in conditions of uncertainty. It is a process of becoming, not the stasis of
being. Consequently it cannot be predictable; its generic form is unstructurable;
it is unknowable and hence unpredictable. Hence our principal dilemma in
teaching entrepreneurship is that enterprise is idiosyncratic, and therefore
closer to an art than a science; instrumental knowledge of managerialism alone
is insufficient.
Consider Nisbet’s (1976, p. 111) comments on rationality: “the imposition of
end means criteria not only upon thought but upon art, science … it implies the
exclusion from thought or act of all that is purely traditional, charismatic or
ritualistic”. He is clearly dissatisfied with this “scientism”; he derides it, as
science with the spirit of discovery and creation left out. He argued that “we live
in a world of ideas”. So entrepreneurial creation appears to share a great deal
with artistic production and might well be thought of as an economic art form.
Timmons (1994, p. 329) suggested that entrepreneurial resources are like the
paint and brush to the artist – they remain inert until the creative flair engages
with the canvas. So, as Chia (1996) stressed, the cultivation of the
entrepreneurial imagination is the single most important contribution of
universities and business schools. This eclecticism then is the irrationality
associated with teaching the art of entrepreneurship.
In spite of Leitch and Harrison’s (1998) telling point that “entrepreneurship
as a distinct field of study, or discipline, is still in the most part striving to meet
the basic requirements of a discipline”, the rationale for trying to teach
entrepreneurship is powerful. The “Enterprise Culture” (Keats and
Abercrombie, 1991) has generated increasing interest in entrepreneurship and
concern about its promotion. The rationale, which is often uncritical, and
appears to operate at almost an ideological level of taken-for-granted wisdom,
is based on the following assumptions. The USA (and much of the Western
world) is experiencing a dramatic transformation from a corporatebureaucratic to an entrepreneurial-driven economy (Kasarda, 1992). Within the
USA, frequently highlighted as the country from which the recent strive for
increased entrepreneurial activity originated, virtually all of the net new jobs
created have come from new and expanding firms (Timmons, 1994). Similar
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patterns have been found in both the UK and Europe (Storey, 1994; Roure,
1997). However, although entrepreneurship has always existed (Bridge et al.,
1998) in some shape or form[1], over the last decades the small business sector
has received growing attention (Wiklund et al., 1997). It is now widely
recognised that entrepreneurship provides benefits in terms of social and
economic growth and development; providing the seedbed of new industries,
renewal of industrial bases, job and wealth creation and social adjustment.
From the perspective of the individual, entrepreneurship is seen as overcoming
the barriers and obstacles of class, race and gender (Aldrich et al., 1983;
Stanworth and Curran, 1973; Waldinger et al., 1990; Hyrsky and Ali, 1996). It is
seen as a means of satisfying an individual’s “inner needs”, with notions of
satisfaction, fulfilment and achievement echoed through the literature, (Scott
and Anderson 1994). Entrepreneurship is thus perceived to bring benefits at
both the macro level of economic development and also at the micro level of
personal achievement and satisfaction (Anderson et al., 1998).
The conditions of the 1990s and the changing political and economic
environments, have meant that small business and entrepreneurship are no
longer seen as marginal to modern economies (Kasarda, 1992; Goffe and Scase,
1995). For instance, the political upheaval in central and eastern Europe is
opening the door to entrepreneurial activity (Kasarda, 1992). Within eastern
Europe, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial business are charged with the role of
economic reconstruction (Twaalfhoven and Muzkya, 1997). Hence,
entrepreneurship is no longer purely associated with western societies. Its
importance in sustaining economies and producing prosperity is now widely
recognised. But, to ensure that this approach is not just a vogue, we need to
cherish it, to sustain it, to expand it and to carry the entrepreneurial momentum
forward, procreating the enterprise culture (Keats and Abercrombie, 1991). In
consequence the rationale for encouraging entrepreneurial education is
powerful, and is evidenced by the rise in the numbers of educational institutions
teaching entrepreneurship courses.
The demand for entrepreneurship education
The 1980s and 1990s have seen an unprecedented growth in the demand for
enterprise education which has been matched by a corresponding growth in the
number of courses offered by both academic institutions and by enterprise
agencies of one sort or another (Sexton and Smilor, 1997). We wish to argue that
this development is a consequence of a variety of interrelated changes in the
national and international economy. We have identified three sources of
demand:
(1) governmental;
(2) students; and
(3) education.
However, we have become acutely aware of the potential conflict between these
areas. In part this is a consequence of the woolliness of the entrepreneurial
concept. Entrepreneurship has become an omnibus word, an overloaded Entrepreneurship
concept and one that carries a variety of meanings which pundits pick and education within
choose from at will. Its meaning ranges from small business operation, through enterprise culture
new venture creation to innovation and individualism. As a heuristic the
breadth of the concept allows it to be used in diverse rhetoric, explanation and
justification. (Anderson 1995). To borrow an expression from Eagleton (1991),
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“it has become a text, woven from a tissue of conceptual strands”.
The first source of demand we have identified is governmental. This is
primarily economic and driven by the shift towards a post-Fordist economy.
Flexible specialisation, and corporate downsizing; business re-engineering
coupled with individualism, are seen to be a solution to the failures of the old
collectivisms. This “new capitalism” is identified by the Marxist, Harvey (1989,
p. 174), as Schumpertian innovation, the driving force of the post-industrial
paradigm. Fitzgerald (1993, p. 77) noted the importance of management
education for national economic health. He pointed out that the Braverman
(1974) deskilling thesis has never been validated and that, on the contrary, has
been inverted by the need for enhanced skill levels. Cannon (1991, p. 149)
suggested that enterprise provides the government with “a quick publicly
demonstrable, transaction based reaction, not a strategic response”. In contrast
it has been argued that enterprise culture develops naturally (Hynes, 1996).
However, given the recognition of its importance we cannot solely rely on this
passing on of knowledge, resulting in the need to intervene to promote an
entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial knowledge.
Job creation is a major focus of this element. Timmons (1994) in the USA,
Storey (1994) and Roure (1997) all build, though critically, on Birch’s (1979)
seminal analysis that new jobs in the economy are most likely to arise from
entrepreneurial small firms. Innovation is also important; Johannisson (1987)
noted that innovation cannot be planned by large corporatist institutional
processes. Drucker (1985) reinforced the point that innovation and
entrepreneurship go hand in hand. All this strengthens the argument that the
conditions of the 1990s mean that small business and entrepreneurship can no
longer be seen as marginal to modern economies. According to Hynes (1996) the
emergence of an SME economy leads to the need to prepare and educate
potential entrepreneurs to identify opportunities in the environment, and
provide them with the knowledge and skills necessary to capitalise and manage
these opportunities. The process of enterprise development and enterprise
education is not so much the process of developing individual businesses, but
the process of developing, first, people who potentially own and actually run
these businesses and, second, the people who may work in these businesses
(Rosa, 1992). If we take Scotland as an example, the low level of new businesses
being created has caused political concern. As a consequence the Scottish birth
rate strategy was initiated (Scottish Enterprise, 1995 and 1996) with the aim of
creating an “enterprise culture” throughout Scotland.
We also detect a subsidiary thread to the political economy of
entrepreneurship education – the production of “the friendly face of capitalism”.
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The ideology of capitalism had suffered in the post-war years so the enterprise
culture provided an opportunity to reassert its value. Curran and Burrows,
(1987, p. 180) referred to the “remoralisation and recapitalisation of capitalism”.
Burrows, (1991) claimed that this discourse has become, “one of the major
articulating principles of the age”. Goss (1991), however, rather cynically notes
that the enterprise culture’s affection for small business is rooted as much in the
latter’s intangible qualities as in precise measures of its effectiveness.
The second source of demand is that of the students. Young (1997) suggested
that there are two sets of reasons why students may want to study
entrepreneurship. First, the student may plan to start up their own business;
second, they may wish to acquire knowledge which will be helpful in their
careers in larger organisations. Tan et al. (1995) even proposed that some
students may be attracted to enterprise learning as an insurance against an
economic downturn. Furthermore, as Timmons (1994, p. vii) noted in the USA,
about one in eight is self-employed and the vast majority of the two million
“millionaires” in the USA have accumulated their wealth through
entrepreneurial acts of self-employment. Thus it comes as little surprise to find
that the Gallup Report (1994) claimed that 85 per cent of its respondents
indicated a desire to learn more about entrepreneurship – a desire confirmed by
the cross cultural study by Weihe and Reich, (1993). Obviously this must be set
in the context of the reported changes in career structures – the end of jobs for
life.
The third source of demand for entrepreneurial education is business itself.
Ian Grant, the managing director of Aberdeen Enterprise Trust (1993), put this
plainly: “It is important that universities search for excellence, but at times the
university may omit to provide an understanding of basic commercial issues …
it is important for graduates to leave being “street wise”. In particular we see
being ‘street wise’ ” as being aware of the non-linearity of entrepreneurial
learning (Berger, 1968). Another aspect is the need for a creative attitude to
work, but its acquisition and development is a quality rarely taught by
professional educators (Pietrasinski, 1969). Time and time again we hear the
business community complain, perhaps with some justification, that our
graduates have no real business knowledge. So enterprise learning is
specifically charged with the duty of providing graduates “who can hit the
streets running”. To this we must add the shortage of managerial skills in
SMEs. Traditionally, able graduates have been attracted to careers in larger
organisations, but given the significant role of SMEs in the economy, it seems
important to raise students’ awareness of the potentials for self-development
within this sector. This can be achieved by improving the human capital
resource base.
Our argument centres on the difficulty of trying to reconcile these different
demands for enterprise education, in particular the different expected outcomes.
Consequently we wish to argue for a different overarching approach, one which
appears to capitalise on our academic skills to build critical human capital
within our graduates. The enterprise programme, probably best described as
an entrepreneurial project, should focus on developing knowledge about Entrepreneurship
entrepreneurship, rather than simply the mechanistic business start-up education within
training. The anticipated outcome should be reflective practitioners – that is enterprise culture
graduates who can usefully apply theory in a variety of contexts, who are
equipped for an entrepreneurial career.
Teaching entrepreneurship
Gormon et al. (1997) referred to the work of Bandura (1986), who argued that
education can serve as a preparatory function in relation to new venture
initiation or start-up, whereby the transfer of knowledge and the acquisition
and development of relevant skills would be expected to increase the selfefficacy and effectiveness of the potential entrepreneur. They continued that
this preparatory role can be extended to include preparation for small business
management of existing owner/managers, as well as potential entrepreneurs.
After all, not all individuals who take a course in entrepreneurship wish to be
entrepreneurs: some may wish to explore entrepreneurship on an intellectual
level; others may recognise the need for entrepreneurship in society, and attend
a programme so as to better understand this discipline (Block and Stumpf,
1992). Thus, educational process and structure should also be important
variables for inquiry. For instance, we might expect the entrepreneurial
learning process to be enhanced through the provision of role models, the
expansion and strengthening of personal networks, and through temporary
apprenticeship placements. For both employers and employees economic
security will increasingly depend on skills, ideas, and the ability to learn and to
adapt to meet changing requirements. These represent a social and economic
challenge (Bridge et al., 1998). However, skills can be demonstrated through the
application of doing something and therefore can more easily be differentiated
from knowledge which can be elicited as well through the more abstract means
of conversation, questioning and discussion. These are closely interrelated. The
application of skills is always contextual, influenced by collective and
individual knowledge pertaining to a specific situation; yet the practice of skill
always has a knowledge content and behaviour (embodying knowledge) nearly
always involves interpersonal skills (Gibb, 1997).
This general approach to knowledge about entrepreneurship reflects the
conceptual difficulty in determining the nature of the phenomenon. Gartner
(1990) found some 90 different attributes which seem to be associated with
entrepreneurs and, as he stated in his earlier work, “the differences between
entrepreneurs and among their ventures is much greater than one might expect;
in fact, the diversity may be larger than the differences between entrepreneurs
and non-entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurial firms and nonentrepreneurial firms” (Gartner, 1985, p. 696). Evidently, the entrepreneurial
condition has several dimensions. The rationality of entrepreneurship is action,
however, the lack of experience in academe combined with lack of student
experience might lead to overreliance on theory, when what is needed is
practice. Previous research (Anderson and Jack, 1998; Anderson et al., 1998) has
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shown that in teaching enterprise creation, students often lack good business
ideas, resulting in a tendency for low skill, low barrier to entry ideas to be
proposed and developed. This may be a reflection of the limitations of the
student’s own experiences, but to create businesses which can truly contribute
to economic growth and expansion in terms of manufacturing capabilities,
employment and wealth creation we need to push students beyond the
boundaries of convention. There are limits of course (for instance one group of
our students has proposed the manufacture of tartan condoms!). One way in
which this problem of variability may be overcome is by getting students to
co-operate and work with students from other faculties and to work with
practising entrepreneurs. This allows exposure to a range of contexts, and a
variety of applications of entrepreneurial knowledge.
Nevertheless, the role of universities is to provide a theoretical
understanding, a conceptual grasp of the phenomenon, so we must also
question the relevance and value of an overtly theoretical approach to a subject
which appears to deal almost exclusively with action. This raises the issue,
however, of whether the successful entrepreneur is defined by action or by the
process through which action occurs. Entrepreneurial education could be
considered as the structured formal conveyance of entrepreneurial knowledge
(Young, 1997). Entrepreneurial knowledge is the concepts, skill and mentality
which individual business owners use or should use. Yet the experience,
knowledge and skills may not be readily acquired through conventional
pedagogic routes. Furthermore many influences interact to cause a particular
individual to become a business owner; there is a wide variation in the kinds of
new ventures started, environments are inconsistent, different kinds of
entrepreneurs exist and there are many ways to become entrepreneurial (Cooper
and Dunkelberg, 1981; Gartner, 1985). Entrepreneurship seems more likely to
occur when a number of these influences are brought together. Thus raising
awareness of these different aspects and developing students’ understanding of
these dimensions and contingencies will increase the potential for a satisfying
entrepreneurial career.
It appears then that teaching entrepreneurship involves both the art and the
science[2]. Obviously this hinders the use of the more traditional approaches to
teaching and learning. The science, largely seen as functional small business
management, can be taught with conventional pedagogy. Gartner and Vesper
(1994) made the salient point that students enrolled in university
entrepreneurship courses lack basic business knowledge (and are likely to lack
entrepreneurial experience). Block and Stumpf (1992), for example, showed that
entrepreneurship education involves: the use of the knowledge acquired in
many different business school courses such as accounting, financial analysis,
marketing, information systems, leadership, and general management.
However, they too noted that the need for an ability to integrate the functional
knowledge of business into a holistic activity requires exercising the skills of
analysis and synthesis.
Nevertheless, the art, the very nub of entrepreneurship of creation and of Entrepreneurship
innovation, does not appear to be so amenable to teaching. This aspect is education within
inductive and in bold contrast to the rational deduction of resource enterprise culture
management. It is highly subjective and involves perceptual leaps which may
transcend a conventional economic rationality. It is this vital aspect which is
caricatured by Schumpeter’s oxymoron, the “creative destructor”. As
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academics we have to accept that we cannot directly provide, or teach this skill
– it is fundamentally experiential. One suggestion of how to overcome this is
that students should work in small business, thus learning by doing (Zeithaml
and Rice, 1987; Gibb, 1993). Students who work with entrepreneurs will
encounter the risks and ambiguity of the unstructured situation experienced by
most entrepreneurs (Sexton and Bowman, 1987). After all, true entrepreneurial
learning should encompass both concept and procedure, so people should be
encouraged to use their own initiative to secure their economic future (Young,
1997; Bridge et al., 1998).
According to Robinson and Haynes (1991, p. 51) an area which needs to be
addressed is “tying academic learning to the real world”, linking pedagogical
theories to actual business methods. They proposed that mentoring may be one
such avenue. However before we become too entangled in pure experience alone
we would do well to recall Locke’s (1993) argument, that the business
educational paradigm for the nineteenth century was the British model of
learning by doing. This model – one of training, rather than education for a life
role – had, in his opinion, the effect of limiting economic development. Nelson
(1993, p. 174) made a similar point when he attributed John Davidson
Rockefeller’s (1855) success to experiential learning but contrasts this to the
success of his son (John D. Jr). This he attributes to training for management,
the mastery of theory as well as technique. From a British perspective Gibb
(1993, p. 18) noted that the small firm itself is a learning organisation and that
the learning environment is “learning by doing”. More formal knowledge is
therefore “adapted” as appropriate for business needs. Hence the model he
proposed emphasises self-discovery, what he calls an “enterprise” style of
learning, in opposition to a more formal didactic approach. This model meshes
well with our expected outcome of a reflective practitioner.
Moreover the integration of these elements is difficult. It is not enough to
simply use case studies or “listen to very successful entrepreneurs recount how
they had launched their ventures” (Fiet, 1998). We need to teach students theory
to support their practical learning experience. We need to provide a conceptual
background which allows students to understand and to engage with the real
business world. Fiet proposed that if we are to improve the substance of what
we teach to students studying entrepreneurship, we need to:
• pursue theory-driven research agendas and be actively seen to do so; and
• expose students to theoretical explanations of why some entrepreneurs
succeed and others fail.
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Much more of our research should be theory-driven rather than descriptive and
we should integrate research findings and theory in a way that can be
understood and applied by students (Fiet, 1998). Fiet (1998) claimed we become
irrelevant as teachers when we fail to apply theory as a tool to answer student
questions. Thus research and teaching should be theory-driven rather than
descriptive and we should integrate research findings and theory. Much of this
argument is not new. Porter and McKibben (1988) drew attention to this
question of academic drift from the real business world. Furthermore, the
Carnegie Foundation (1990) argued that there is a need to synthesise business
practice and teaching by ensuring that students continue to learn beyond the
walls of academe (Gibb 1996). Research (Gorman et al., 1997) has indicated
considerable consensus that teaching methods can be enhanced through active
participation.
Thus, in summary, we see the science of conventional business education as
a fundamental but that conceptual development promotes business
understanding. Theory produces a critical awareness, and experience, albeit
second-hand and vicarious, is the steel to whet and hone the rougher edges of
students’ knowledge. The emerging picture of the mandate for teaching
entrepreneurship is one of academic knowledge, both conceptual and analytic,
as providing a sound platform. It is from this platform that we launch our
students into the turbulent and untidy world of small business experience.
Hynes (1996) may have claimed that understanding is derived from personal
experience, and learning is obtained through doing, but Rosa’s (1992) point
seems very pertinent that although entrepreneurs must have “enterprising”
attitudes to want to start the businesses in the first place, they must also
possess the “enterprising” attitudes and competencies to enable the person to
thrive in business once the firm has got off the ground. The “rite de passage” of
experiencing the real small business world is not enough, in itself, to produce
the outcomes we seek. However it is within this experiential element that we
need to loosen our academic apron strings to let our students’ imagination soar.
Hence it is the combination of the science of business management knowledge,
the dirty-handed world of business experience and the inspirations of our
students which will develop the enterprising student. It was Socrates who
described himself as a midwife, helping people to give birth to their ideas
(Gosling, 1996). We would do well to emulate him.
What we do at Aberdeen
Aberdeen University is an old traditional university, with the implications of the
associated cultural ramifications. For example, we do not have a business
school but instead a Department of Management Studies. There is a “hesitancy”
about the value associated with teaching a vocational subject. (However this is
in spite of teaching medicine, law and divinity for centuries!) We have had to
work hard to convince our colleagues, particularly outside our own faculty, of
the value and appropriateness of our courses. This said many other faculties
now share our enthusiasms. We teach entrepreneurship to bio-medic PhDs,
pharmacologists, environmental scientists and zoologists. Next year we are to Entrepreneurship
have final-year medicine students for an eight-week block of enterprise.
education within
Our teaching follows the typical patterns of entrepreneurial education in enterprise culture
respect of SME management but we emphasise theory in all our entrepreneurial
courses. We also realise the limitations of our own experience so we attempt to
bridge this gap between theory and entrepreneurial practice using a number of
121
techniques. To compensate we capitalise on rich external sources of
entrepreneurial experience. We have many visiting entrepreneurs; we advise
students on research in small business and encourage students to engage with
small business and entrepreneurs at every opportunity. We ask our students to
talk and listen to practising entrepreneurs whenever they can. At the same time
we attempt to build theory into every learning activity as a critical framework,
aiming to develop the students’ understanding of entrepreneurship. One
important aspect of this is the students’ final dissertations where we expect
them to use theory to critically review current entrepreneurial practice.
The Centre for Entrepreneurship is also involved in a number of activities to
link our students to the practices and experiences of the business community[3].
Briefly, these include:
• mentoring, where each postgraduate student is supported by an
entrepreneur to provide real experience and a counterpoint to “ivory
towerism”;
• our steering committee which consists of both academics and members
of the local business community to focus the development of
entrepreneurship knowledge from a commercial perspective;
• “visiting entrepreneurs” who talk to students about their experiences,
“life as it is, warts and all”, and who are subjected to a critical analysis of
their activities;
• the entrepreneurship dinner which provides a relaxed forum for
discussion and the exchange of ideas, sponsored by local business to
allow discussions between students, entrepreneurs, members of the local
business community and academics;
• student presentations where students are invited to present their work
throughout all the courses offered by the Centre for Entrepreneurship
both internally (to staff) and externally (to members of the local business
community).
Conclusions
There are many dimensions to enterprise and we should not aspire to satisfy all
the different requirements of stakeholders with an interest in enterprise
education. As academics we should recognise that entrepreneurship is both an
art and a science, so that our contribution should be to build critical theoretical
knowledge about entrepreneurship and to endow students with the
management skills necessary for an entrepreneurial career. In practice raising
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awareness of entrepreneurship is relatively straightforward and can be
achieved through teaching examples, case studies and by bringing
entrepreneurs into the class. Similarly teaching entrepreneurial theory and
good management skills conforms to academic norms. However there are
pedagogic difficulties in teaching the practice of enterprise. In part this is due to
the variability within enterprises (Freel, 1998), in part because entrepreneurship
is a process rather than stasis. Hence we can only glimpse a snapshot of the
movie. Our role is to enable students to be able to stand back and to
knowledgeably scan the entrepreneurial landscape. Consequently the outcome
of entrepreneurial education should be the creation of reflective practitioners fit
for an entrepreneurial career.
Notes
1. Tom Cannon makes the interesting point that entrepreneurship was the driver in all the
industrial revolutions; all that is different about our current “IT” revolution is that it is
knowledge which entrepreneurs use, rather than iron or electricity.
2. See Anderson and Jack (1998) for a fuller account of some of these issues and the way in
which one institution is attempting to overcome them.
3. For a fuller discussion see Anderson and Jack (1988); Anderson et al. (1998).
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