Bengt Johannisson

Recruiting outside board members in the small family business: an ideological challenge

The focus of this paper is to explore how contrasting ideologies influence the selection process of outside directors in the small family business. Small family businesses donot just represent smallscale economic activity but they are the outcome of entrepreneurial ambition and family involvement. This means that willpower and emotional commitment blend with calculative considerations. As emotional as well as cognitive constructs the family, management and entrepreneurship each represent an ideology: paternalism, managerialism and entrepreneurialism. The proposed ideological framework is positioned against alternative approaches to the study of board selection processes. Two sets of data are presented. A piloting survey of 12 family businesses is used to substantiate the theoretical assumption that entrepreneurial firms avoid having outside directors and managerial firms welcome outside directors, leaving paternalistically-run family businesses ambivalent. Repeated in-depth interviews in two family businesses, one founder-managed and entrepreneurial, the other established and traditional, reveal how the professionalization of the board enforces managerialism, challenging thus far dominating ideologies, entrepreneurialism and paternalism. The outcome of this ideological contest, if properly orchestrated, is an energized and more competitive family business.

Community entrepreneurs: networking for local development

In the face of structural economic changes in Western industrialized countries, ensuring the survival of communities requires local mobilization. Using the example of Sweden, the present research focuses on the initiation and management of local efforts for economic development and argues that local mobilization calls for community entrepreneurs. Community entrepreneurs are those who facilitate entrepreneurial events rather than promoting the individual business ventures. They bridge business and community values and practices by making the individual would-be entrepreneurs aware of how their capabilities as members of the local community can be turned into business ventures, and by providing the emotional commitment needed for action. Socioeconomic networks are very crucial organizational devices in community entrepreneurship. A case study of a small Swedish community of Maleras illustrates the argument that the most fundamental mission of the community entrepreneur is to develop and maintain a socioeconomic network as a resource pool for autonomous entrepreneurs. At the end of the 1970s, the towns dedicated community entrepreneur, Mats Jonasson, began to vitalize the elaborate social networks by linking the few existing local businessmen and other community members, ex-residents, and cosmopolitan immigrants with entrepreneurial talents, as well as by approaching banks, local authorities and various organizations. As a result, over a period of five years, the number of companies and the number of locally employed had more than doubled in Maleras, the glassworks returned to local ownership, and the population increased. The research further examines the differences in sections of the community and the environments on which autonomous and community entrepreneurs focus. Two main empirical sources are used to examine those differences: one survey concerning would-be and new independent entrepreneurs in different regions of Sweden, and another survey concerning community entrepreneurs in a nationwide study. The most striking finding is that networking is the most crucial organizing vehicle in entrepreneurship, and that it is even more important to community entrepreneurs than to autonomous entrepreneurs. One implication is that the increasing number of local projects led by community entrepreneurs indicates a need to bridge commercial and social entrepreneurial endeavors. (AT)

Beyond Anarchy and Organization: Entrepreneurs in Contextual Networks

Three phenomena have dominated the interface joining research, management practice and public industrial policy during the 1980s: the revival of industrial districts, the creation of science parks and the promotion of corporate entrepreneurship. As a contribution to the understanding of the potential of entrepreneurship in such close settings, in its «context’, a conceptual framework is presented that elaborates upon the functions of the context as an intermediary between the individual venture and the global environment. These organizing functions are represented by the personal networks of the entrepreneurs. Both business and social strands of network ties are identified in an operational model and applied to Swedish entrepreneurial contexts: an industrial district, a science park and a corporation. The network data are scrutinized through graph analysis, providing different structural features of the three empirical contexts. A contextual approach for economic development through small-scale venturing ...

University training for entrepreneurship: Swedish approaches

Empirical research in Sweden on business venturing suggests that qualified experience and social skills are more crucial to success than formal education. Adopting an action perspective on entrepreneurship, a framework for identifying competences needed for an entrepreneurial career is provided. It is argued that entrepreneurial training calls for a contextual approach, implying, for example, that the social resources included in the personal network will supplement personal and organizational resources. Within such an entrepreneurial-learning framework, different Swedish academic programmes aiming at enforcing or supplementing management skills in small firms are presented. The reported courses include a MBA-programme with internship and training programmes for established entrepreneurs. Implications of the Swedish experiences for career management, the general school system and the re-training of management for entrepreneurial initiative are discussed.

Paradigms and entrepreneurial networks–some methodological challenges

The use of network approaches to gain an understanding of business behaviour in general, and entrepreneurial action in particular, has increased. Research into entrepreneurial networking, however, varies considerably depending upon paradigmatic assumptions. In deterministic contexts networks mainly represent restrictions while in voluntaristic settings the network is the very instrument by which new ventures are realized. A subjectivist approach thus seems to be most able to exploit the potentials of the network metaphor in entrepreneurship research since venturing means organizing through personal networking. Yet both quantitative and qualitative tools may be adopted when mapping and interpreting the characteristics of entrepreneurial networks.

Learning as an Entrepreneurial Process

L’association Ile de Science, creee il y a une trentaine d’annees, regroupe aujourd’hui vingt-cinq organismes franciliens d’origines diversesxa0: universites, grandes ecoles, organismes de recherche ou centres de recherche prives. Elle organise chaque annee une manifestation sur le theme de la bibliotheque numerique, et a consacre son colloque du 10 mai 2004 a la bibliometrie et la scientometrie. Les outils de la bibliometrie, la facon de les utiliser, les criteres a prendre en compte sont pour les chercheurs autant de sujets d’interrogations auxquels cette journee se proposait d’apporter des elements de reponse.

Interstanding the industrial district: contrasting conceptual images as a road to insight

In this paper we offer an approach to learning about the unique features of industrial districts as a socio-economic phenomenon that is based on differences. Instead of searching for one generic theory that may explain the unique construction of an industrial district or one universal way of getting under the skin of its subjects we propose ‘interstanding’ as a road to insight. The title alludes to different relationships: between theoretical frameworks and empirical approaches, between writing and reflecting on the one hand, creating conversations, talking and listening on the other, between teacher and student, between the academic and business communities. In the paper this ‘interstanding’ perspective of knowledging is demonstrated in the context of an annual international doctoral course on SMEs in economic and regional development. The participating doctoral students are organized into research teams, each furnished with a specific theoretical perspective on localized economic development, and subsequently jointly brought to the industrial district of Gnosjö in Sweden in order to meet with owner-managers and further local stakeholders. The student groups report on their field experiences, thereby creating maps as diverse as the different theoretical frameworks being used. These contrasting images of the districts generic features and sustainability are used as an input to a conclusive polylogue seminar that offers an ‘interstanding’ that, on the one hand, reminds the participants that any, including scientifically investigated, reality is socially constructed, and, on the other, communicates that tensions between alternative conceptual constructs, especially if substantiated in empirical research, offer an inspiring road to knowledge.

Societal Entrepreneurship : Positioning, Penetrating, Promoting

Entrepreneurship generally is about creative organizing but with social enterprising this is especially so. Most social ventures cross the boundaries between the private, the public and the non-pro ...

Limits to and prospects of entrepreneurship education in the academic context

Abstract Process philosophy has drawn attention to the world as ambiguous and ever changing, however also enactable. This makes entrepreneurship a processual phenomenon, rightly addressed as ‘entrepreneuring’. Recognizing not only their cognitive, yet also affective and conative capabilities, makes it possible for human actors to mobilize forces that bring the world to a standstill long enough to create a venture for value creation. This, however, calls for the insight that is different to universal scientific knowledge – episteme and techne – namely, the situated insights that Aristotle addressed as mētis and phronesis. Mētis then concerns alertness and shrewdness and phronesis is about prudence in the context of action. Academic education can only provide these competencies needed to train for entrepreneuring by letting the students travelling across the boundaries of the university. In addition, the dominance of management as an ideology must be proactively dealt with. Three cases in academic training for entrepreneuring, all in the Swedish context, which show radically different ways of dealing with these challenges, are presented in a comparative analysis. The lessons are summarized in general conditions for providing training that advances entrepreneurship students’ situated and actionable insights.

The making of an intercultural learning context for entrepreneuring

Departing from the standpoint that internationalisation needs to become a more explicit part of assessing the quality of academic activity (i.e., education, research, and (business) community interaction), we elaborate upon how the intercultural composition of a student cohort could be leveraged as a road to the advancement of entrepreneurship education at the graduate level. We argue that the very heterogeneity of the students with respect to their socio-cultural background and personal experiences offers a rich potential for mutual social learning that reinforces formal education activities. Creating awareness of this collective resource opens up for self-organising processes among the students as they craft an entrepreneurial identity which guides them in their learning throughout the master programme.