Entrepreneurship education within the enterprise culture Producing reflective practitioners

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. Entrepreneurship education within enterprise culture 111 Each of these stakeholders charges enterprise with different, even potentially conflicting roles. So one primary issue to be resolved is to clarify how education “fits”, or can be fitted to satisfy these expectations. The second primary issue is 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 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).