The Fourth Economic Factor - Entrepreneurship

The last Economic Factor - Entrepreneurship

In the past three days, I have looked at Economic Factors  Land, Labor, Capital and today, Entrepreneurship.

Economic productivity is built on these four factors.  If you have land, you can grow crops or have livestock; you can also build and sell houses or rent buildings to businesses. Labor does the work - working the land, working in the businesses, being productive.  The use of money - capital - for investments, to make our work more productive.

Now Entrepreneurship.

“Entrepreneurial economics is the study of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship within the economy. The accumulation of factors of production per se does not explain economic development. They are necessary factors of production, but they are not sufficient for economic growth.”

I’ll call this ‘management’ as well as ‘entrepreneurship’.  So what that you have land, and you have people willing to work, and you even have money - but without a business plan, without leaderships, with management at the top - there will be nothing to be produced.

There are plenty of management theories out there.  We have Business Schools, have Management majors, and graduate Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees.  Technically, my Ph.D. is in Business (I don’t know - does that qualify me to talk about management? But, let’s modify that a little - it was a focus on Management Information Systems with a minor in Management Science).  

I like Henry Mintzberg’s ten roles of managers:

He wrote that managers have three roles:  Interpersonal, Informational, and Decisions.

Interpersonal Role:

Figurehead - the head of a business (from small to giant) becomes the image of the enterprise.  If you will, the President of the United States represents the whole country.

Leader - the manager is the leader, the person with vision, the person who says “yea” or “nay” to plans

Liaison - the manager interfaces with the internal staff and the external aspect.  

Informational Roles:

Recipient - The manager gets the information

Disseminator - the manager sends out the information

Spokesperson - the manager speaks for the business

Decision Roles:

Entrepreneur - looks for ways to improve the business, for ideas and vision

Disturbance Handler - finds solutions inside and outside the business

Resource Allocator - every enterprise has limited resources (mostly capital) and the entrepreneur/manager has to allocate those resources around

Negotiator - the manager has to find consensus and work for solutions

Obviously, we can’t cover all of these aspects here.

But, these are aspects of a good manager

Lead by example.

Do your job.

Be transparent with your team.

Be constructive while criticizing.

Be motivating and inspiring.

Allow employees to participate in management.

Manage your time.

Don't overstress yourself.

And, as I am prone to do, a few Bible verses about management:

“A wise man will hear and increase learning, And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel.”  Proverbs 1:5

“Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”  Proverbs 11:14

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil 1 Timothy 6:10 

*****

So, a quick four days into economics - and the four economic forces:  land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship.

We are in a society, we are in various enterprises - our employment, even our churches, synagogues, social groups, and more.  Understanding economics can be valuable to our places in society.

So, what lessons am I learning?  Maybe that we are all working together.

Hugs!!

Karen

(Tomorrow, I’m going back to history - and maybe an insight into disillusionment!!!)