Ondernemerschap: een bedrijfskundige benadering

Contemporary management literature often addresses the question of which factors determine the success of business enterprises. Research findings show that the "quality of entrepreneurship" significantly contributes to business performance. Other research findings show that entrepreneurial companies make a significant contribution to employment growth. These empirical findings are consistent with the theory of economic growth regarding entrepreneurship as the key to investment in expanding production capacity. In the past decade or two, governments of several countries have initiated special measures and incentive programs to facilitate the start-up of new business ventures. Research findings by the Dutch venture capital association NVP as well as by others show however that the entrepreneur-venture capital dyad does not guarantee good performance or continuity of the entrepreneurial business, especially during the early stages of the life cycle of the business venture. Despite the importance of entrepreneurship, and despite the relative vast amount of research that has been conducted in this field, economic theory has yet to adequately explain the process by which entrepreneurship springs forth and contributes to business performance. Contemporary economic literature indicates that the findings of research into 'succesful entrepreneurship' are often of a contradictory nature. Judging from the numerous lists containing different sets of combinations of 'unique' personal characteristics that represent most of contemporary researchfindings into 'succesful entrepreneurship', it does not appear that the field is getting anywhere. Apart from the statistical methodology that is often being used in entrepreneurship research, the absence of a (general) framework from where to conduct entrepreneurship research can be indicated as one of the possible causes. The problem thesis of this present research concerns the development of such a framework.