Public Entrepreneurs: Who They are and How They Operate

This “bias” is reflected in a recent book containing excellent articles that review the state of knowledge in this field. See Kent C.A. Sexton D.L. Vesper K.H. , eds., Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982). Except for one or two articles, the others pertain to entrepreneurship in the United States, and therefore the emphasis on private entrepreneurship is quite understandable.

See Vesper K.H. , New Venture Strategies (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).

See Rainey H.G. Backoff R.W. Levine C.H. , “Comparing Public and Private Organizations,” Public Administration Review (March/April 1976), pp. 233–244; and Fottler M.D. , “Is Management Really Generic?” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1981): 1–12.

See Palmer M. , “The Application of Psychological Testing to Entrepreneurial Potential,” California Management Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1971); and Liles P. , New Business Ventures and the Entrepreneur (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1974).

Vesper K.H. , “Introduction and Summary of Entrepreneurship Research,” in Kent Sexton Vesper , eds., op. cit., p. xxxi.

Schumpeter J.A. , Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1947).

Chandler A.D. , Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962).

Sloan A.P. , My Years with General Motors (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1963).

Collins and Moore would label this kind of entrepreneur the “administrative entrepreneur,” contrasting him with the “independent entrepreneur.” See Collins O.F. Moore D.G. , The Organization Makers: A Behavioral Study of Independent Entrepreneurs (New York, NY: Meredith, 1970). Schollhammer discusses the former type in his article, “Internal Corporate Entrepreneurship,” in Kent Sexton Vesper , eds., op. cit., pp. 209–230. However, most studies tend to focus on the independent entrepreneur.

Cole A.H. , Business Enterprise in its Social Setting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1959), p. 7.

New York Times, July 30, 1981. For excellent studies of Robert Moses, see the monumental work of Caro R.F. , The Power-Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) and Walsh A.H. , The Public's Business (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), pp. 211–224.

For a most insightful and critical assessment of Enrico Mattei, see Votaw D. , The Six-legged Dog—Mattei and ENI: A Study in Power (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1964).

Fortune, August 22, 1983, pp. 170–171.

See Ramamurti R. , “Strategic Behavior of State-owned Enterprises in High-Technology Industries,” doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1982, chapter 6, for an account of how this turnaround was achieved.

Ramamurti R. , State Timber Corporation of Sri Lanka (A) and (B), Boston, MA: Harvard Case Services #0-382-018 and 0-382-019.

See Ramamurti R. , Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica, S.A., Boston, MA: Harvard Case Services #9-383-090 (1982); and Ramamurti R. , “SOEs in High-Technology Industries: The Case of Embraer of Brazil,” in Negandhi A.R. , eds., Multinational Corporations and State-Owned Enterprises (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1985).

The “independent entrepreneur” is more different from the public entrepreneur than is the other variety of private entrepreneur known as “organizational entrepreneur.” The former was chosen as the basis for comparison merely to highlight differences between public and private entrepreneurs.

For a list of the kind of characteristics normally attributed to private entrepreneurs, see Hornaday J.A. , “Research About Living Entrepreneurs,” in Kent Sexton Vesper , eds., op. cit., p. 26.

See, for instance, United Nations, Public Industrial Management in Asia and the Far East (New York, NY), especially chapters V, IX, and XL See also National Economic Development Office, A Study of UK Nationalized Industries (London: HMSO, 1976), Volume I, pp. 34–35.

However, Moses was reportedly extravagant in the use of expense accounts. Reported in the New York Times, July 30, 1981.

See Ramamurti , Empresa, op. cit., p. 16.

This same point is made in Tendler J. , Electric Power in Brazil: Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 29, 175.

Votaw , op. cit., p. 6.

McClelland D.C. , The Achieving Society (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1961).

Ramamurti , Empresa, op. cit, p. 16.

See Ramamurti R. , State-Owned Enterprises in High-Technology Industries: Studies in India and Brazil (New York: NY: Praeger Publishers, 1986).

Gillis M. Jenkins G.P. Lessard D.R. , “Public Enterprise Finance: Towards a Synthesis,” in Jones L.P. , ed., Public Enterprise in Less-Developed Countries (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 257–280.

See Hornaday , op. cit.

Ulman N. , “Brazilian Oil Company Has Much of the Clout of Government Itself,” Wall Street Journal, November 17, 1983, p. 1.

Votaw , op. cit., p. 10.

Walsh , op. cit., p. 210.

See Aharoni Y. , “State-Owned Enterprise: An Agent Without a Principal,” in Jones L.P. , ed., op. cit., pp. 67–76.

This is consistent with Cyert and March's reasoning for why organizations settle for quasi-resolution of conflict, as presented in their famous work, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963).

For a short and comprehensive piece on the subject, see Kotter J.P. , “Managing External Dependence,” Academy of Management Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1979). In the public enterprise context, see Aharoni Y. , “Managerial Discretion,” in Vernon R. Aharoni Y. , eds., State-Owned Enterprise in the Western Economies (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1981).

For a discussion of these methods, see Pfeffer J. Salancik G.R. , The External Control of Organizations (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 210–213.

Votaw , op. cit., pp. 16–17.

Ramamurti , Empresa, op. cit., pp. 5–7.

Murray M.A. , “Comparing Public and Private Management: An Exploratory Essay,” Public Administration Review (July/August 1975), pp. 366–367.

Votaw , op. cit., p. 93.

Zif J. , “Managerial Strategic Behavior in State-Owned Enterprises,” Management Science, Vol. 27, No. 11 (November 1981): 1326–1339.

This point was made in a paper presented by Zvi Adar and Yair Aharoni at the second BAPEG conference on state-owned enterprises, Boston, 1981.

Bower describes the public manager as one “with an early deadline to meet.” See Bower J.L. , “Effective Public Management,” Harvard Business Review (March/April 1977), p. 135.

Bower J.L. , “Managing for Efficiency, Managing for Equity,” Harvard Business Review (July/August 1983), pp. 82–90.

This method has been used with considerable success by the General Accounting Office in the U.S. For a description of the technique, see Churchill N. , “Developments in Comprehensive Auditing and Suggestions for Research,” Symposium on Auditing Research, II, Department of Accountancy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1977.