The Entrepreneur in History: From Medieval Merchant to Modern Business Leader PDF
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The Entrepreneur in History DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Tracy Shilcutt: Infantry Combat Medics in Europe, 1944–45 Asoka Bandarage: Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society, and the Economy Panos Mourdoukoutas: Intelligent Investing in Irrational Markets Jane Wong Yeang Chui: Affirming the Absurd in Harold Pinter Carol L. Sherman: Reading Olympe de Gouges Elana Wilson Rowe: Russian Climate Politics: When Science Meets Policy Joe Atikian: Industrial Shift: The Structure of the New World Economy Tore Bjørgo: Strategies for Preventing Terrorism Kevin J. Burke, Brian S. Collier and Maria K. 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Tally Jr.: Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World System Benno Torgler and Marco Piatti: A Century of American Economic Review: Insights on Critical Factors in Journal Publishing Asha Sen: Postcolonial Yearning: Reshaping Spiritual and Secular Discourses in Contemporary Literature Maria-Ionela Neagu: Decoding Political Discourse: Conceptual Metaphors and Argumentation Ralf Emmers: Resource Management and Contested Territories in East Asia Peter Conn: Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History Niranjan Ramakrishnan: Reading Gandhi in the Twenty-First Century Joel Gwynne: Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 The Entrepreneur in History: From Medieval Merchant to Modern Business Leader Mark Casson Professor of Economics,University of Reading and Catherine Casson Research Fellow, Winton Institute for Monetary History, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford and Teaching Fellow, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 © Mark Casson and Catherine Casson 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 ISBN 978–1–137–30581–7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-45492-1 ISBN 978-1-137-30582-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137305824 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. www.palgrave.com/pivot Contents List of Tables vi Preface and Acknowledgements vii 1 A New Research Agenda 1 2 Perspectives on Entrepreneurship 12 3 The Historical Significance of the Entrepreneur 42 4 Case Studies: The Entrepreneur in Context 67 5 The Social Embeddedness of Entrepreneurship 120 Index 135 DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 v List of Tables 1.1 Different ways in which entrepreneurs have been defined 6 3.1 Schumpeter’s classification of innovations 55 3.2 Three types of knowledge exploited in innovation, and generated by different types of people 56 3.3 ‘Revolutions’ as clustered innovations 59 3.4 Some terms potentially designating an entrepreneur 62 3.5 Obstacles allegedly overcome by entrepreneurs in effecting revolutions 63 3.6 Historical research on entrepreneurship: scope and limitations of primary sources 64 vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 Preface and Acknowledgements This book was written especially for the Palgrave Pivot series. It sets out a new research agenda and reports some key findings. It is intended to be authoritative but also provocative. We are grateful to Virginia Thorp of Palgrave Macmillan for her support and encouragement. The research for this book involved an extensive review of the literature, which led to the identification of a set of 60 key articles. These articles, together with selected book excerpts, are reprinted in a research collection, The History of Entrepreneurship: Innovation and Risk-taking, 1200–2000, which can be studied in conjunction with this book. Parts of Chapter 2 were presented at a conference organ- ised by the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Henley Business School, University of Reading, 2012; parts of Chapter 3 at the Annual Conference of the Association of Business Historians at Reading, 2011; and parts of Chapter 4 at the Conference on New Business History at the University of York, 2012. Valuable comments were received from discus- sants in each case. Some of the material has formed the basis for lectures to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham and the Henley Business School, University of Reading. We are grateful to the students and to colleagues for their positive feedback and for the suggestions they have made. Last but not least, we are indebted to Janet Casson for proof-reading the manuscript and for moral support. DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 vii 1 A New Research Agenda Abstract: Entrepreneurship is of contemporary interest. The self-employed entrepreneur is an aspirational figure and one that many students in particular wish to emulate. Despite this, there is still relatively little study of entrepreneurship in the era before the rise of the modern corporation. The introduction explains how the book is grounded on two principles. Firstly, that the theory of entrepreneurship needs to be presented in a rigorous fashion which explains why it is valuable to the economy. Secondly, that the study of entrepreneurship needs to be examined over a long historical perspective. The introduction then outlines the methodology used in the rest of the book. Casson, Mark and Casson, Catherine. The Entrepreneur in History: From Medieval Merchant to Modern Business Leader. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. doi: 10.1057/9781137305824. DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824 The Entrepreneur in History 1.1 Aims of the book Contemporary enterprise culture promotes the entrepreneur as a role model. The self-employed entrepreneur is an aspirational figure at a time when there are limited vacancies in established firms. For those seeking to start their own business, the image of the entrepreneur is very attrac- tive. The successful entrepreneur personifies the positive qualities of the sort of person they would like to become. These ambitions are reflected at university. Many students decide that a degree in business studies will be the best route for becoming an entrepreneur. Such a degree offers practical training and the oppor- tunity to cover the cost of rising tuition fees by earnings from future employment. Entrepreneurship has become part of the business studies curriculum, but it is sometimes taught in a superficial way that relies on popular stereotypes rather than rigorous analysis. The study of business his- tory has become disconnected from the study of entrepreneurship. In entrepreneurship studies the emphasis is usually on the independent judgement of the entrepreneur and their willingness to pursue oppor- tunities overlooked by other people. In business history, by contrast, the emphasis is often on the emergence of the managerial corporation; the intellectual challenge is to explain the emergence of large bureaucratic businesses in the early twentieth century rather than the re-emergence of vibrant small businesses in the late twentieth century. This is not a particularly interesting question for many students today, because they do not aspire to work in such firms. Managers in these large corporations were expected to conform in their thinking and to take decisions using prescribed procedures rather than by exercising their own initiative. This is not an attractive career model for today’s students. In contrast, students today would prefer to set up their own business rather than become a ‘well-suited’ executive in a large firm. They would also rather work in a business that pursues ecologically sound and sustainable objectives rather than one that appears to be dedicated to maximising short-run shareholder value. Business history is changing, and there is now much more empha- sis on small firms, and in particular on clusters of small firms associ- ated with industrial districts. Change comes rather slowly, however. There is still relatively little study of entrepreneurship in the era before the rise of the modern corporation. Where such studies exist DOI: 10.1057/9781137305824
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