Nature of Entrepreneurship

You don't learn to be Alan Sugar at school. Either you are an entrepreneur or you're not.

Discuss.

This question is really looking at what makes an entreprenuer ? Which skills be learnt at Business School. Lecturers will not want you to get sidetracked with the lives of Alan Sugar or Richard Branson, but reading a little about their lives may give you a flavour of how their background has shaped their success.

The book by William Bygrave & Andrew Zacharakis ( 2008 ) Entrepreneurship, John Wiley

has a chapter on the entrepreneurial process, good definitions, and the 10 D's of successful entrepreneurship.

Dream, Decisiveness, Doing, Determination, Dedication, Devotion, Details, Destiny, Dollars ( it's a US book ), and Distribution.

How many of these skills do you think could be learnt ?

Glass Ceiling

If you are searching Business Source Premier, or other Ebsco Databases for material on the Glass Ceiling, and possible solutions to it's existence it is worth trying to get to know the subject terms which the database prefers. For example

to find material on Flexible Working in the UK

flextime SU Subject Terms

great britain GE Geographic Terms

This gives several relevant pieces which seem quite current. I particularly liked

Brocket, J (2008) Flexibility measures to go ahead despite economic gloom

People Management 14(5) p.7

Business Ethics

For those people attempting the question on the ethical behaviour of small and large firms this journal is well worth a browse. It's a UK based publication, and covers issues in an easy to-understand manner. There's a recent issue ( 2009 ) all about CSR and ethics in small and large corporations

Corporate Social Responsibility

As well as several books in the LRC this seems to be a topic on which there are several fairly serious articles available through Newsbank. Choose your sources carefully, but the majority of sources seem to be from papers such as the Guardian. Lots of discussion about whether CSR is meaningful or simply a gimmick. 'Greenwash' as it has been labelled...