Journal of Enterprising Culture

This paper discusses the differences and similarities between the attitudes of entrepreneurs in four distinctly different localities of the world, with regard to the traits they believe to be important to their success as entrepreneurs. Over four hundred entrepreneurs were studied in four different countries: The United States, Singapore, Russia, and Kazakhstan. The US represents a more developed and established training environment. Singapore is one of the exciting "Tiger" countries and is embarking on a major thrust aimed at developing indigenous entrepreneurs. Russia and Kazakhstan are countries struggling to develop entrepreneurship as they attempt to enter the international market economy. Kazakhstan, though a much smaller country, is making far better progress in developing entrepreneurship than is Russia. The findings reveal the differences in attitudes and traits of entrepreneurs in differing ambiences of experience, economic development, and cultural experiences. In the increasingly smaller global business climate of today, this is important information to consider. As is the case with the authors of this study, business owners and entrepreneurs are all interacting with entrepreneurs in other countries of the world, and we must discover how we are similar, and how we differ, if we are to successfully interact and build a powerful entrepreneurial economic future.

This paper presents a generic model of entrepreneurial behaviour utilising the Catastrophe Theory. The properties of the Cusp Catastrophe are adopted to illustrate the discontinuous nature of entrepreneurial behaviour. The model integrates an entrepreneurial characteristic or value set with an individual's environment on a three-dimensional behavioural surface. This paper establishes an initial hypothesis that human beings acquire and develop entrepreneurial characteristics through their life experiences and consequentially have the potential to behave entrepreneurially.

To test this hypothesis, a survey was conducted in the West of Scotland (n = 10,000) using a set identified by Timmons as committment and determination, opportunity obsession, tolerance of risk and uncertainty, self-motivation, creativity and innovation, self-leadership. The results from this survey support the initial hypothesis.

The environmental factor was derived from a theoretical construct of four dimensions: family, social, spiritual, work. These in combination will influence an individual's disposition to behave in a particular way through the formation of neural networks otherwise known as human values. This paper discusses value formation and its influence on behaviour.

The Cusp catastrophe, depicting the three-dimensional entrepreneurial behavioural surface, adopts the set of entrepreneurial characteristics as the splitting factor and the environmental dimension as the normal factor. The model can then be constructed for any individual and, hence, their propensity to behave entrepreneurially can be determined.

The business world today is characterised by a high degree of globalisation and internationalisation - a phenomena which affect all firms irrespective of size. After a summary of current learning theories, and the representation of an SME as a 'potentially unique problem type', the paper offers a critique of previous studies on internationalisation. A research methodology of 'bootstrapping' is utilised to develop a framework for explaining how SMEs in Malaysia identify, then tackle, opportunities and threats in the international arena. A broad analytical framework is developed, combining partial frameworks of insight from the literature in a range of academic disciplines (SMEs, strategic management, internationalisation and learning theory) with insights from key informants in current empirical work. The value chain is an essential component of the overall framework, underpinned by an organisational learning perspective. Our initial findings are only tentative. We do not present a 'model' of good business practice, rather a conceptual framework to examine how SMEs learn to develop in an international sense. This framework is helpful in explaining the development of firms encountered in our empirical research.

The entrepreneurial role of a manager depends on the entrepreneurial culture. Developing entrepreneurial culture assumes the importance of Human Resource Development (HRD). It is the function of the general climate, development mechanisms and the value base. The present work is based on an indepth study conducted by the author to examine the impact of prevailing entrepreneurial culture in selected Indian Commercial banks. They are: State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank (PNB), Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), and Dena Bank (DB). The entrepreneurial climate leading to entrepreneurial culture has been studied under three broad aspects: (i) general climate, (ii) development mechanisms, and (iii) the value base. The value base forms the main focus of the study. The effectiveness of the value based entrepreneurial culture has been judged in relation to the level of satisfaction enjoyed in all the banks covered under study. The study reveals the existence of an intimate relationship between entrepreneurial culture and employee satisfaction which is supported by the level of mean scores obtained for both the variables in these banks. While the entrepreneurial climate for SBI, PNB, OBC and OB has been estimated at mean score levels of 3.49, 3.41, 3.88 and 2.84 respectively, the corresponding satisfaction level has been calculated at mean scores of 3.84, 3.63, 4.01 and 3.06 for these banks.

"Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) form the largest pool of enterprises in most countries. Asian governments have developed a plethora of SME assistance schemes but not many do not appear to be effective. One reason for this may be a potential clash in policy objectives. This paper develops a taxonomy for classifying SME assistance schemes based on four broad policy orientations - welfare, efficiency, building champions and transactioncost-reduction. This taxonomy may be used as a basis for the development of propositions which can be tested so that a tool can be developed for evaluating the effectiveness of government initiatives in the development of SMEs."

The Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, have traditionally been successful business owners. From various studies, personal characteristics and management styles, as well as social and cultural values, have been cited as reasons that contribute to the success of Chinese business owners in general, and to the prosperity of Singaporean Chinese entrepreneurs in particular. This article, aims to identify such success factors and to outline the evolution of Chinese-Singaporean culture, which at times impede entrepreneurship, and suggest ways to remedy the situation.