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...

Market Reaction to Rights Issue

Could not find too many articles on this topic, although the one below has a fairly extensive bibliography, which may yield some other ideas. You may need to start ( as I did ) with a clear idea of what a "rights issue" means, and think about how this may affect share values.


Announcement Effect of Rights Issue...
This paper examines ordinary share price abnormal returns reaction to announcements of rights issues in the Indian Stock Market. This paper also examines Information hypothesis, Price pressure hy...By: Malhotra, Madhuri; Thenmozhi, M.; Kumar, G. Arun. Journal of Services Research, Apr2007, Vol. 7 Issue 1, p215-231

Whistleblowers - public services or traitors ?

Those of you who are doing this topic are looking at the motivation of whistleblowers, and whose interest they might be acting in. I think it would be reasonable to consider the difference between a whistleblower in the social services and one in a corporation. The books which you can find on the library catalogue should be a useful starting point.

Credo Reference Database mentions, in one of it's may definitions of the word, the Public Disclosure Act (1998). This has been called the 'Whistleblower's Charter'.

We did not look at Acts of Parliament during our sessions, but they are easy to find using this site :

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts

On a similar theme the UK Parliament site could also be potentially useful. You would be able to identify occasions upon which the subject has been discussed in Hansard ( the written record of Parliament )

www.parliament.uk

This site will normally provide quite a lot of information, and will usually look impressive in a bibliography.

Is there a glass ceiling for women ?

For those of you doing this topic don't forget that books in the LRC should provide useful historical background material...

As this topic has quite a sociological slant you might also consider using the Sage Premier database. Credo Reference is very good for definitions of this term ( I like the one from the Gale World of Sociology ).

During the sessions we mainly looked at full-text databases, but I think that some UK material will be found if you look at British Humanities Index and

ASSIA ( Applied Social Sciences Index)