Entrepreneurship and Small Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Entrepreneurship and Small Business - Essay Example Small businesses are also innovative as they are responsible for many of the new products or services on the market (Fucini and Fucini 1985). These factors have a knock-on effect of increasing employment opportunities, particularly amongst women and minorities who find this as an alternative avenue into business. This can be demonstrated by the high number of Asian, Chinese, Italian and other restaurants across the country. Women are also likely to start their own business as they are sometimes discriminated against when they take maternity leave. As small businesses are mainly innovative or arise from this situation, their organisational culture is of great importance as it influences whether they business can react to its environment; and whether the business can survive int the current environment. Organisational culture is a system of shared values, assumptions, beliefs and norms about the way things are done, and it is often referred to as corporate culture (Bird 1989). Culture is also important to small businesses as it has an impact on organisational effectiveness (Bartol and Martin 1998, Mullins 1999). ... Direction refers to the degree to which a culture supports rather than interferes with, reaching organisational goals (Hisrich and Peters 1995). Small businesses have to maintain a culture that is focussed as they are often striving to achieve growth levels and increase profits. This would not be possible without a direction or focus for the organisation to maintain. Pervasiveness addresses the extent to which a culture is widespread among members, as opposed to being unevenly distributed (Hisrich and Peters 1995). Small business will look at employing individuals who share similar drive and ambition to the entrepreneur. It would defeat the purpose of the small business if individuals who are not passionate about the innovation are employed. Strength refers to the degree to which members accept the values and other aspects of a culture (Hisrich and Peters 1995). The employees also have to believe in the innovation or the small business concept for it to be effective. These three factors embedded in organisational culture demonstrate how important it is for small businesses and entrepreneurs to adopt an enterprise culture, as it will determine how well they can react to factors present in the external environment in which they operate. This paper will briefly demonstrate the characteristics of enterprise culture and how this culture can be affected by the external environment. Enterprise culture Most successful organisations foster an adaptive entrepreneurial culture in which members view growth and change as desirable and believe that they can affect the competitive environment to their advantage, which differs to bureaucratic organisations which are more likely to have members who prefer the status quo and have little faith in their ability to