Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Theory and

Perspective. Introduction

The creation of a country’s wealth and dynamism depends upon the competitive-
ness of its firms and this, in turn, relies fundamentally on the capabilities of its en-
trepreneurs and managers.

The essence of the modern firm lies in the specialization of functions. “The
businessmen” that manage economic activity are, in the strictest sense, both
managers and entrepreneurs, the latter in a double sense: the individual
businessman (independent) and the “corporate entrepreneur” who, without
participating significantly in terms of capital, controls the firm.

Studying offers of business capabilities requires the differentiation between the

functions of entrepreneur, manager and capitalist, although in many cases, the
same person may perform all three (table 1).

The individual entrepreneur detects or creates business opportunities that he or

she then exploits through small and medium-sized firms, normally participating in
funding the capital for that firm, carries out the role of arbitrator or simply “sells
the idea” of the business project. The “corporate entrepreneur” or the chief execu-
tive of large firms must also be considered. This figure is no longer limited to effi-
ciently managing the firm’s assets and coordinating and controlling its activities;
in the current climate, he or she must anticipate, articulate and manage change. In
other words, they must reinvent the firm on a daily basis, creating new enterprise
(spin-offs) and develop company networks. When discussing the figure of the cor-
porate businessman, one must also consider the key shareholders that take an ac-
tive part in the firm, along with managers that share in making up the firm’s basic
competences.
 Table 1. Entrepreneurs, managers and capitalists

ENTREPRENEUR CAPITALIST MANAGER

CHARACTERIZED Discovers and exploits Capital owner: Administrates and
BY opportunities shareholders manages resources

A creator who initiates Controlling share- An administrator

and motivates the process holder
of change Passive share-
holder

BEHAVIOUR Accepts risks Aversion to risk- Aversion to risk-

taking taking
Uses intuition, is alert,
explores new business Assesses alterna- “Rational” deci-
tives sion-maker. Explotes
Leadership, initiates business
new ways of acting
Creates and main-
Identifies business op- tains competitive ad-
portunities vantage
Choice of venture
Creation of new Enter- assets Creates trust to en-
prise hance cooperation

Supervision of the
administrative process

However, the manager’s function is first and foremost to supervise the process of
combining resources, and efficiently manage the firm’s business portfolio. They
have a key function when, as is normally the case, firms do not operate efficiently
(Leibenstein, 1979), and instead are a long way short of their production bounda-
ries. A second but fundamental task of the manager is to build up a reputation and
an atmosphere of trust that transforms a conflictive system (individuals with con-
flicting objectives) into a system of cooperation. Managers should create a climate
of trust so that employees will not tend towards opportunist behaviour, even when
it suits their short-term interests, as well as achieving a greater degree of effi-
ciency by reducing supervision and agency costs.

Finally, the capitalist is the provider of the firm’s funds, either in the form of a
passive shareholder (in the case of small shareholders or institutional investors) or
as a majority shareholder or active shareholder who, in many small and medium–
sized firms, assumes both the entrepreneurial and managerial functions.
About entrepreneurship

The entrepreneurial function implies the discovery, assessment and exploitation of

opportunities, in other words, new products, services or production processes; new
strategies and organizational forms and new markets for products and inputs that
did not previously exist (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). The entrepreneurial op-
portunity is an unexpected and as yet unvalued economic opportunity.

Entrepreneurial opportunities exist because different agents have differing ideas

on the relative value of resources or when resources are turned from inputs into
outputs. The theory of the entrpreneur focuses on the heterogeneity of beliefs
about the value of resources (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2001: 756).

Entrepreneurship –the entrepreneurial function- can be conceptualized as the

discovery of opportunities and the subsequent creation of new economic activity,
often via the creation of a new organization (Reynolds, 2005).

Due to the fact that there is no market for “opportunities”, the entrepreneur must
exploit them, meaning that he or she must develop his or her capabilities to obtain
resources, as well as organize and exploit opportunities. The downside to the mar-
ket of “ideas” or “opportunities” lies in the difficulty involved in protecting own-
ership rights of ideas that are not associated with patents or copyrights of the dif-
ferent expectations held by entrepreneurs and investors on the economic value of
ideas and business opportunities, and of the entrepreneur’s need to withhold in-
formation that may affect the value of the project.

Entrepreneurship is often discussed under the title of the entrepreneurial factor,

the entrepreneurial function, entrepreneurial initiative, and entrepreneurial behav-
iour and is even referred to as the entrepreneurial “spirit. The entrepreneurial factor
is understood to be a new factor in production that is different to the classic ideas
of earth, work and capital, which must be explained via remuneration through in-
come for the entrepreneur along with the shortage of people with entrepreneurial
capabilities. Its consideration as an entrepreneurial function refers to the discovery
and exploitation of opportunities or to the creation of enterprise. Entrepreneurial
behaviour is seen as behaviour that manages to combine innovation, risk-taking
and proactiveness (Miller, 1983). In other words, it combines the classic theories
of Schumpeter’s innovative entrepreneur (1934, 1942), the risk-taking entrepre-
neur that occupies a position of uncertainty as proposed by Knight (1921), and the
entrepreneur with initiative and imagination who creates new opportunities. Ref-
erence to entrepreneurial initiative underlines the reasons for correctly anticipating
market imperfections or the capacity to innovate in order to create a “new combi-
nation”. Entrepreneurial initiative covers the concepts of creation, risk-taking, re-
newal or innovation inside or outside an existing organization. Lastly, the entre-
preneurial spirit emphasizes exploration, search and innovation, as opposed to the
exploitation of business opportunities pertaining to managers.
 All this explains why entrepreneurship is described in different ways. The busi-
ness process includes the identification and assessment of opportunities, the deci-
sion to exploit them oneself or sell them, efforts to obtain resources and the devel-
opment of the strategy and organization of the new business project (Eckhardt and
Shane, 2003). Entrepreneurship is “a process by which individuals –either on their
own or within organizations– pursue opportunities” (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990:
23). It has recently been claimed that if the managers and businessmen of many of
our firms were to adopt entrepreneurial behaviour when developing their strate-
gies, firms would be facing a much brighter future than current perceptions sug-
gest (Lee and Peterson, 2000).

The entrepreneur’s central activity is that of business creation, which can be

studied at an individual and/or group level –analyzing psychological aspects and
social variables of education, background or the family- either at an environmental
level using variables that enable business development, or by analyzing aspects of
the economic, social and cultural environments.

The study of entrepreneurs as individuals analyzes the variables that explain

their appearance, such as personal characteristics, the psychological profile (the
need for achievement, the capacity to control, tolerance of ambiguity and a ten-
dency to take risks) or non-psychological variables (education, experience, net-
works, the family, etc.).

Equally, socio-cultural and institutional focuses underline the role of exclusion

and social change as motivators of the entrepreneurial function in minority or
marginalized groups. Studies on environmental variables emphasize culture or
shared values in society, institutions linked to the legal framework, variables of
the economic environment (demand) and the financial one (venture capital and
cost), along with the spatial environment (clusters and economies of agglomera-
tion).

Therefore, there are three basic ideas that explain the appearance of entrepre-
neurial activity. The first focuses on the individual, in other words, entrepreneurial
action is conceived as a human attribute, such as the willingness to face uncer-
tainty (Kihlstrom and Laffont, 1979), accepting risks, the need for achievement
(McClelland, 1961), which differentiate entrepreneurs from the rest of society.
The second fundamental idea emphasizes economic, environmental factors that
motivate and enable entrepreneurial activity, such as the dimension of markets, the
dynamic of technological changes (Tushman and Anderson, 1986), the structure of
the market –normative and demographic- (Acs and Audretsch, 1990) or merely the
industrial dynamic. The third factor is linked to the functioning of institutions, cul-
ture and societal values. These approaches are not exclusive (Eckhardt and Shane,
2003: 2), given that entrepreneurial activity is also a human activity and does not
spontaneously occur solely due to the economic environment or technological,
normative or demographic changes.
 When referring to entrepreneurs, there is normally a differentiation between in-
dividual entrepreneurs or businessmen (independent) and corporate entrepreneurs
or businessmen associated with the higher echelons of a firm’s management. Dif-
ferent names have been used to describe the latter such as “corporate Entrepre-
neurship”, “corporate venturing”, “intrapreneurship”, “internal corporate entrepre-
neurship” and “strategic renewal”.

Entrepreneurial management can be considered as being different to traditional

ways of managing organizations. Many managers are looking to new ways of
making their organizations more entrepreneurial in many aspects, from a general
strategic orientation to reward schemes (Brown, Davidsson and Wiklund, 2001).
Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) emphasized a positive relationship between the in-
tensity of corporate entrepreneurship and the intensity of the search for opportuni-
ties, strategic adaptation and value creation. As pointed out by Hitt et al. (2001:
488) “firms need to be simultaneously entrepreneurial and strategic”.

Entrepreneurship is an essential element for economic progress as it manifests

its fundamental importance in different ways: a) by identifying, assessing and ex-
ploiting business opportunities; b) by creating new firms and/or renewing existing
ones by making them more dynamic; and c) by driving the economy forward –
through innovation, competence, job creation- and by generally improving the
wellbeing of society.

Entrepreneurship affects all organizations regardless of size, or age, whether

they are considered a private or public body, and independently of their objectives.
Its importance for the economy is reflected in its visible growth as a subject of in-
terest for the economic press and in academic literature. For this reason, it is a
matter of interest to academics, businessmen and governments the world over.

The study of entrepreneurship leads us to attempt to answer a series of ques-

tions such as: What happens when entrepreneurs act? Why do they act? and How
do they act? (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990). Why, when and how do opportunities
for the creation of goods and services come into existence? Why, when and how
do some people and not others discover and exploit these opportunities? And fi-
nally, why, when and how are different modes of action used to exploit entrepre-
neurial opportunities? (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).

We have limited knowledge of the opinion of entrepreneurs, business opportu-

nities, the people that pursue them, the skills used for organizing and exploiting
opportunities and the most favourable environmental conditions for these activi-
ties. .Moreover, studies are carried out at different levels; individual, firm, sector
and geographical space. There is no basic theory for carrying out this type of
study, resulting in approximations based on casuistry, anecdotes or fragmented
reasoning (Eckhardt and Shane, 2003: 12). The black box of entrepreneurial func-
tion is yet to be opened (Fiet, 2001).
 The problems involved in a study of “entrepreneurship” are linked to the need
to delimit the field of study and rely on a conceptual structure that enables the ex-
planation and prediction of empirical phenomena that are not explained by other
fields of knowledge; it is necessary to generate a paradigm, to develop a set of
testable hypotheses, to overcome the existing casuistry and description and look
further into longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis.

Despite all this, a considerable body of literature has accumulated on the sub-
ject of entrepreneurship to the point where, just as has happened in other fields, a
sizeable number of entrepreneurship-related studies have been published in jour-
nals in the areas of administration and management, while other journals that spe-
cifically specialize in topics related entrepreneurship have appeared. The role of
the entrepreneur has been analyzed in special issues in journals such: Strategic
Management Journal and Journal of Management (Audretsch et al., 2005), Acad-
emy of Management Journal and Journal of International Marketing (Coviello
and Jones, 2004). Almost a hundred journals can be adjudged to have published
work related to entrepreneurship (Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of
Management, in research carried out in the summer of 2006).

The differentiation of the field of entrepreneurship from other areas depends

upon the object of the research, the methodologies and the problems researchers
are attempting to resolve (Bruyat and Julien, 2000). Busenitz et al., (2003: 286)
underline the importance of recognizing “entrepreneurship as a field of study
within management”, a field of knowledge that upholds the development of entre-
preneurship. It is on these fundamental ideas that we base our reflections.

The study and teaching of entrepreneurship and the role played by professors
dedicated to teaching and research on this topic are of growing importance, as re-
flected by the boom in courses and chairships in entrepreneurship in the United
Status in the last few years (Finkle, Kuratko and Goldsby, 2006). The University
of Valencia has joined this trend through the creation of the first chairship of this
kind in Spanish universities: the Bancaja Chair for Young Entrepreneurs, dedi-
cated to the study, research and development of aspects related to entrepreneur-
ship.

About the book

The book consists of 15 chapters grouped into three sections. These are: Concepts,
Theory and Perspective. Each chapter contains a published article that has played
a relevant role in the scientific consolidation of Entrepreneurship, which may be
so in the future or which presents some complementary element to the vision of
the field of Entrepreneurship. We are aware of the absence of some well-known,
highly-regarded texts. This is due to the fact that, in the difficult task of reducing
an original list of more than 100 references, we have opted for the complementar-
ity of the contents, thus avoiding any superfluous inclusions. The final choice of
articles inevitably reflects our own links with business management.

The first part of the book, Concepts, aims to provide a range of terminology and
conceptual ideas, at the same time as giving an account of the historical evolution
and theoretical location of the different approaches to Entrepreneurship. This first
section consists of four chapters.

The first chapter, contributed by Professor Veciana, is the updated version of a

study carried out in 1999. It presents, describes and classifies theories that have
been used to give structure to and formalize the field of study. For such a classifi-
cation, the author creates a matrix based on four theoretical approaches: economic,
psychological, institutional and managerial – and three levels of analysis within
entrepreneurship, micro, meso and macro. In the subsequent grid, twenty five
theories on entrepreneurship are located. The comprehensive bibliography is an
indication of the extensive and fruitful academic and research activity of one of
Europe’s pioneers in the study of entrepreneurship.

The second chapter contains the oldest of the texts that appear in this book, but
it is one that has also had huge repercussions in the history of the field, in terms of
citations. Carland et. al. present entrepreneurship as being independent from capi-
talists and from management, and discuss the contribution of entrepreneurship to
small businesses and to the economy as a whole. The authors underline the impor-
tance of the difference between entrepreneurial firms and new or small firms.
They propose a criterion for identifying entrepreneurial firms, which consist of
complying with at least one of the four conditions that, according to Schumpeter
(1934), reflect entrepreneurial behaviour: the introduction of new products, the in-
troduction of new modes of production, the opening up of new markets or an in-
dustrial reorganization with sufficient conditions to classify a firm as being entre-
preneurial.

The third chapter, provided by Sharma and Chrisman, addresses the problem of
the differences that exist in the terminology used to describe entrepreneurship,
with the idea of reducing the confusion that surrounds the field and reconciling
differences between existing definitions. The authors provide a definition both for
entrepreneurship and for the entrepreneur. For Sharma and Chrisman, entrepre-
neurship covers the occurrence of organizational creation or innovation that occurs
inside or outside the existing organization, whilst entrepreneurs are individuals or
groups of individuals that act independently, or as part of a corporate system, that
create new organizations or instigate renewal or innovation within an existing one.
The authors analyze Corporate Entrepreneurship and, following a discussion on
internal and external firm creation, provide a classification of internal firm crea-
tion, with a particular focus on structural autonomy and the degree of the relation-
ship with the lines of business of the firm that motivates such a creation.
 In the fourth chapter, which concludes the first section, Aldrich and Fiol, point
out the high levels of risk undertaken by firms that are created in emerging sectors.
The text looks at certain procedures that can be employed in order for a sector to
obtain legitimacy at an institutional level. Several strategies are also presented that
have been used by particular firms in newly emerging sectors.

The second section of the book, which includes chapters five to ten, deals with
three important paradigms in the evolution of entrepreneurship and contributes two
theoretical viewpoints that, despite having a more limited scope, have the advan-
tage of strong links with other disciplines or bodies of knowledge.

Chapter five contains the work of Low and Macmillan, which appeared in 1988.
The authors propose the definition of the field of entrepreneurship as “the creation
of new enterprise” and from this standpoint, they suggest six requirements that re-
search on entrepreneurship should comply with: purpose, theoretical perspective,
focus, level of analysis, time frame and methodology. Having established these re-
quirements, they assess previously published research in order to evaluate to what
extent they comply and give guidelines for future research in the field.

In the sixth chapter, Stevenson and Jarillo begin by discussing the apparent con-
ceptual conflict between entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship. In order
to surpass theoretical tradition that attempted to explain the causes of entrepreneu-
rial behaviour, its economic and social outcomes or entrepreneurial activity in a
way that can be considered too independent, they accept the concept of entrepre-
neurship as a process via which individuals –either on their own or within organiza-
tions– look for opportunities without taking into account the resources they have at
their disposition at a given time. Using this definition, the subject may cease to be
an individual and become an organization. From thereon in, they apply their con-
clusions to corporate entrepreneurship, laying down the characteristics of the entre-
preneurial organization.

The seventh chapter corresponds to the study by Shane and Venkataraman, “The
promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research”. The authors consider the exis-
tence, nature and discovery of opportunities as the real core of entrepreneurship
and provide some reasons as to why certain people recognize these opportunities
while others do not. At the same time, they research ways of developing and mak-
ing the most of opportunities according to the form they take. By considering op-
portunities to be the core of entrepreneurship, they are indicating a specific field of
research and establish differences with the classical, psychological approach, the
strategic approach and that of economic equilibrium.

The eighth chapter constitutes a look at cognitive theory applied to entrepre-

neurship. Therein, Krueger proposes a cognitive model, based on intentions, that
processes the perception of opportunities and assesses their desirability and feasi-
bility. The article constitutes a detailed discussion on the importance of a strategic
orientation towards new opportunities, as well as its basic nature. Cognitive theory
is currently the main link between entrepreneurship and the science of psychol-
ogy.

In the ninth chapter, Alvarez and Busenitz propose a relationship between a re-
source-based theory and entrepreneurship. By doing so, they offer new perspec-
tives that extend the boundaries of resource theory while using such theoretical
trappings to address important questions concerning entrepreneurship. From the
perspective of a resource-based theory, they assess “the recognition of opportuni-
ties and opportunity-seeking behaviour” as a resource, along with “the process of
combining and organizing resources”. The article also includes a discussion on
cognition and business competence, the recognition of opportunities, strategic
complementarity and causal ambiguity with regard to the ex post limitations to the
act of competing.

In the tenth chapter, Gartner uses the six key recommendations for specifying
research into entrepreneurship provided by Low and Macmillan (1988), (purpose,
theoretical perspective, focus, level of analysis, time frame and methodology, in
order to analyze the article written by Shane and Venkataraman (2000), “The
promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research”. In other words, the methodol-
ogy proposed in chapter five is used to analyze the study in chapter seven, thus
demonstrating the usefulness of the methodology proposed by Low and MacMil-
lan and underlining the soundness of the ideas included in the study by Shane and
Venkataraman. It is their recommendation that communities of academics should
arise within the field of entrepreneurship that identify themselves with specific
questions and research topics.

The third part of the book is made up of five chapters, of which the first three
focus on presenting suggestions for future investigation in entrepreneurship, with
the aim of achieving consolidation as a scientific field. This section also includes
an international project on entrepreneurship and recommendations for analyzing
and facilitating the publication of research on entrepreneurship.

In chapter eleven, Davidsson and Wiklund, basing their ideas on the results ob-
tained by Low and MacMillan (1988), study the levels of analysis that have been
identified in studies on entrepreneurship. They then go on to provide defined ex-
amples of progress for specific levels of analysis: for example, individual and
team, firm, industry/ population, regional and national. The authors propose that
progress in the future will depend on a closer relationship between the theories of
entrepreneurship and levels of analysis.

Chapter twelve is a study created by a group of professors from the Entrepre-

neurship Division of the Academy of Management. They propose the existence of
three areas that are central to research on entrepreneurship: opportunities, ways of
organizing and putting into effect the exploitation of opportunities and the study of
the environment. They suggest that the most fertile ground is to be found at the in-
tersections of those areas and they locate both at the intersections and in the areas
themselves, a sample of 97 articles published in the main academic journals for
this topic. In addition, they use the same sample to assess the degree of consolida-
tion of the scientific field of entrepreneurship, as well as its level of scientific le-
gitimacy and the flow of exchange with other fields. The conclusions drawn from
this assessment are not particularly encouraging and, although significant ad-
vances are recognized, it can be ascertained from this article that any real consoli-
dation is still lacking in comparison with the enormous popularity and interest that
the subject of entrepreneurship attracts today.

Chapter 13, written by Aldrich and Martinez, presents three tendencies ob-
served in the last decade: a) a switch from the theoretical emphasis on the charac-
teristics of entrepreneurs as individuals to the consequences of their actions, b) a
deeper understanding of how entrepreneurs use knowledge, networks and re-
sources to create businesses, and c) a more sophisticated taxonomy of the envi-
ronmental forces at different levels of analysis (population, community and soci-
ety) that affect entrepreneurship. The authors believe that progress has been made
with regard to knowledge of the “process” of entrepreneurship, but that a better
characterization of the “entrepreneurial context” is still needed, along with an
analysis of a resource-based interaction of process and context. Together with a
more sophisticated assessment of strategy and the environment, the authors sug-
gest that progress can be made by creating theoretically derived hypotheses, add-
ing longitudinal information and applying modern statistical techniques.

Chapter fourteen, provided by Morales and Roig, analyzes the influence of the
main factors that appear in the relevant literature on the decision to start a new
firm; identifying the perception of business opportunities, making use of the
knowledge of other entrepreneurs and the perceptions held on the necessary skills
as crucial elements of the process. They also analyze an aversion to risk-taking,
especially when it affects the family’s expectations for the future, as well as higher
income and a higher level of academic studies as limiting factors to the likelihood
of starting a new firm. The conclusions are drawn from the database published
with the results of the GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor), which contains
information from 29 different countries.

Chapter fifteen contains the ideas developed by Ireland, Reutzel and Webb, edi-
tors of the Academy of Management Journal, on the evolution of research on en-
trepreneurship published in this prestigious journal, in clear competition with re-
search in other areas of management. This study offers some expectations for
research into entrepreneurship that the AMJ might publish in the future, at the
same time as calling for greater attention to technical statistics, such as measure-
ments of validation and the interpretation of facts and results.
The relevance of these articles to the field of
entrepreneurship

The selection of articles included herein are, without doubt due to personal choice
and are the sole responsibility of the editors, though attention has been paid to im-
pact factors and citation indices, mainly the ISI/JCR and EBSCO. The impact of
the journals, the authors and the articles on academic activity can be identified
through measuring how widely they are used, thanks to the number of times they
are cited in subsequent studies. For some time now, total numbers of citations
have been considered an important yardstick for gauging the quality of an article,
the relevance of the author’s work, and the status of the journal where the articles
appeared (Garfield, 1972, 1979; Chandy and Williams, 1994; Jonson and Podsa-
koff, 1994; Knight, Hult, and Bashaw, 2000).

However, with regard to this field in particular, we have found two relevant bi-
ases; on the one hand, citation indexes have led to a surfeit of articles with a larger
financial component, giving priority to those of an informative nature or to the
detriment of those that are more theory-based. On the other hand, it is natural for
older articles to have received more citations than recent publications and thus the
influence of more up-to-date studies cannot be demonstrated by using citation
counts, although there are a few exceptions, such as the case of Shane and Ven-
kataraman (2000).

Articles published between 1945 and 2005, in journals appearing in the ISI un-
der the categories of “business”, “management” or “economics” were chosen. If
they appeared before 1991, they had to have received at least five citations accord-
ing to the database of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), which provided an
initial sample of 2,564 articles. In turn, these articles contained 102,331 citations
pertaining to a total 61,336 different documents.

Table 1 lists articles from the initial sample published in academic journals and
placed in order of decreasing number of citations received according to the data-
base of the Social Science Citation Index. These are all ISI articles cited in ISI
journals. It is, in our opinion, an endogamous selection from an extremely limited
sample and consequently is not representative of the population of documents that
form the basis of research.
The fifty most frequently cited articles from the sample are shown, taken from
the SSCI database between 1945 and 2005. In this listing, the time lapse between
the publication of an article and the first citations can be clearly seen. Moreover,
the older articles have had more exposure to new generations of authors and thus
are more likely to receive a greater number of citations. This makes it appropriate
to subdivide the citation according to when they were published