Journal of Enterprising Culture

The area of entrepreneurship during the last fifteen years, has gained a reasonable acceptance as a discipline of its own and become a major component of the broader field of business management. However, to stand up as a distinct field of study and research by itself, it has yet to develop a consolidated framework and an articulated agenda of research. The paper suggests that to achieve such ends, students and researchers of entrepreneurship should launch a unified effort to make solid inroads into mainstream social sciences and to establish cross-fertilization of entrepreneurship research phenomena with major concepts, constructs, models and theories of other disciplines. Such a consolidated approach will be useful for overcoming the existing deficiencies of entrepreneurship research, enabling the development of convergent theories and broader frameworks to strengthen the base of entrepreneurship study and research.

This paper examines the economic development and changes in competitiveness in the economy of Hong Kong, and explains those changes in terms of Austrian entrepreneurship. It begins with Schumpeter’s conceptual distinction between ‘creative response’ and ‘adaptive response’, and between two corresponding modes of (Schumpeterian and ‘Austrian’) entrepreneurship. The experience of the economic development in Hong Kong indicates that since the 1960s, Hong Kong’s international competitive advantage has been based on unskilled labour-intensive exports. The ability of this city state to prosper on predominantly labour intensive activities is due to the efforts of its predominantly small-scale entrepreneurs. Hong Kong’s development has been promoted not by revolutionary (Schumpeterian) innovations undertaken by creative Hong Kong entrepreneurs, but rather by incremental and evolutionary innovations, such as product imitation, subcontracting, spatial arbitrage and diversification, undertaken mainly by adaptive ‘Austrian’ entrepreneurs in small-scale enterprises. Hong Kong’s experience suggests that ‘Austrian’ entrepreneurship can offer significant potential benefits to other developing countries.

This paper brings together the importance of intellectual property protection (IPP) and entrepreneurship in economic growth. The paper surveys the economic literature on what factors are important to growth. The focus is on recent models of endogenous growth which reflect on the role of investment, technological change and education. Secondly, publications, which measure the impact of IPP on some of the growth elements identified are reviewed. The third section deals with IPP and the entrepreneur as an important agent and facilitator of growth. It discusses the nature of IPP as an incentive in not only stimulating the development of new technologies and processes but also the dissemination of existing technologies. Using the surveys as background, short case studies for India and Brazil are presented on IPP as a stimulus and application of research and development. The last section summarizes the previous sections and draws some conclusions with respect to policy.

This study focuses on the emerging ’women entrepreneurship’ and ’womenowned businesses’ in Brunei Darussalam. It first examines the demographic background, personal competency, reasons behind the choice of ’selfemployment career,’ and management style of the businesswomen. Secondly, it looks into the main sources of finance, lines of merchandise, size of the work force, and problems of the women-owned enterprises. The sample consists of 50 businesswomen. In manufacturing, retail, and service businesses. These businesswomen have gone through the formal education process and are in their thirties. Their reasons for doing business are independence and an opportunity to use their knowledge and experience. The popular types of business activities for these businesswomen are retailing and services. They practise a centralised decision making style. Their businesses are generally in the start-up stage and the predominant source of capital is personal savings. Most of the businesses employ less than 10 workers and the major problems of the businesses are labour shortage and strong competition.

In December 1994, Mexico suffered a deep financial crisis which caused a sustantial devaluation of the peso. The new government as well as millions of entrepreneurs were caught by surprise. This paper will review: 1. An austerity measures, changes in attitude, adaptability and other adjustments forced by this crisis on several representative Mexican family businesses. 2. Conflicts within family members owning to financial, succession and psychological factors. 3. Evolving corporate and family strategies being used by several businesses for survival. 4. Effects of this situation on women entrepreneurs, both in their businesses and in relation to their families. The author will focus on several financial strategies, boards of directors and advisors of family businesses and their effectiveness in conflict resolution and strategic planning.

This paper is based on author’s exprience with several dozen firms in Mexico, before and during this still ongoing crisis. Changes in attitudes, family dynamics and management strategies forced by this unexpected “meltdown” will help viable companies survive and grow in the next generation. Moreover, it could mean an important starting point for entrepreneurs and their families everywhere who wish to embark in new ventures in these turbulent times.

This article analyses the transition of the Estonian enterprise sector in the twentieth century. The starting shot was first fired for the transformation of the Estonian enterprise sector when the country gained its independence from the Russian Empire in 1918. The independence was followed by a 20-year-long transformation of the enterprise sector, which was, however, ended by the Estonian annexation to the Soviet Union in 1939. The incorporation of Estonia to the Soviet Union signified the beginning of a completely reverse transformation. The third important period of transformation in the Estonian enterprise sector began at the end of 1991 when Estonia separated from the disintegrating Soviet Union. The purpose of this article is to describe these periods mentioned above and draw a summarized comparison between the first and the present transformation. Integrating a historical approach to this contemporary transformation may facilitate in comprehending the present trends of development and even predict the future.