Enterprise and Culture

Citation

Down, S. (1999), "Enterprise and Culture", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 67-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijebr.1999.5.2.67.2

Starting this book, I had high expectations. It is an important statement by Colin Gray, who has for some time been one of the more thoughtful scholars within the fragmented field of small businesses studies and should be read by all those interested in SMEs. I did, however, expect more. Gray’s purpose in writing this text was “to examine to what extent public policy can influence or shape popular attitudes and cultural values concerning work and such personal matters as ambition, expectations and business behaviour” (p. 1). The book begins with a broad ranging discussion of the politics and underlying philosophies of the “enterprise culture” (chapters 1 and 2), which was the name assigned by Tory governments between 1983‐1991 to a range of policies aimed at regenerating the UK economy. He then evaluates the empirical record of small enterprise more broadly, and the specific policies of the enterprise culture aimed at small enterprise (chapters 3 and 4). This provides the business undergraduate, graduate and research reader a useful source of current statistics. Gray then introduces a theoretical discussion of alternative development models (i.e. behaviourism, Marxism and others) (chapters 5 and 6) before expanding upon his own ideas centering on the importance of culture and individual psychology of small enterprise owners (chapters 7 and 8). Finally, Gray ponders the implications for the future of small enterprise development (Chapter 9).

Early on in the book Gray uses the story of successful entrepreneur Roger McKechnie (of Phileas Fogg crisps fame) to illustrate his contention that enterprise culture policies of the 1980s and early 1990s were aimed at the wrong people (McKechnie had worked successfully in corporate environments prior to his starting his own company). The stated aim was to support existing and generate new entrepreneurial small firms, in fact, it merely provided an enterprising rhetoric for a generation of the rapidly expanding self‐employed. Gray exposes the labour casualisation inherent in the enterprise culture policies, which in reality attempted to replace the lost stable and full‐time manufacturing employment with grey, black and other forms of marginal employment. Claims that the enterprise culture has brought about an expansion of entrepreneurial small firms are refuted: “as the number of small firms has grown, their average size has decreased, suggesting that the proportion of entrepreneurial small firms in the UK has been declining despite overall impressive growth in the sector” (p. 38). Gray concludes that the 10‐25 employee size firms have the most growth potential (pp. 43‐4). Interestingly, in the light of current managerial, training and growth‐oriented policies, 44 per cent of the fastest growing firms are in London and the South East. This suggests that if the current government were exclusively interested in supporting growth firms, they should direct their resources in these areas. Thankfully, or perversely (depending on your view on these matters), government policy has other socially and employment‐oriented objectives too.

The book therefore successfully de‐bunks many aspects of policy towards small firms. Underlying the enterprise culture is the central theme of policy innovations based on improving the efficiency of the capitalist system. Gray rightly points out that this does not mean accepting “the currently prevailing neo‐classical model of economic and individual behaviour” (p. 6). Gray then questions the usefulness of the obsession with entrepreneurism. He feels that “this line of inquiry is almost impossible to operationalise in research terms because it reduces to a rather meaningless search for the “correct” bundle of traits or regular behavioural features” (p. 21). Put another way, this type of analysis constricts our understanding of the enterprise founding processes, where “skills in managing social relations are the key to business success and that entrepreneurs can have legitimate personal aims other than profit maximisation” (p. 16). Thus, the individual entrepreneurial profit maximisation motive of neo‐classical economics is also judged lacking in analysing the behaviour of small firms and as a base ideology for a truly enterprising culture.

Gray then expands on the personal and socially inclusive nature of entrepreneurs by incorporating the collectively oriented theoretical alternatives of Marx and Schumpeter. This is perhaps the most useful of myriad different theoretical analyses in the book. It is also good to see an established business and management scholar not running scared from Marxist analysis into the arms of the type of philosophical hallucinations favoured by post‐modernism. In applying Marxist analysis he states insightfully that:

Enterprise culture policies appear to be designed more for sustaining capitalism’s “reserve army of labour” (pre‐capitalist remnants, blue‐collar unemployed and the lumpen proletariat) and the distressed “petit bourgeoisie” (the self‐employed, white‐collar unemployed and small business owners) than for encouraging new capitalist (p. 84).

In using Schumpeter’s definition of an entrepreneur ‐ “a person who initiates some form of change in order to gain an advantage over the competition” (p. 88) ‐ Gray stresses the importance of personal motivation and the interaction of economic and social/cultural aspects, while identifying “clear criteria for identifying entrepreneurial behaviour” (p. 91). Having successfully demonstrated the reductionism inherent in the enterprise culture and the neo‐classical economics on which it is loosely based, Gray then elaborates on the individual, social and cultural aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour in chapters six to eight. These chapters (entitled “The importance of culture”, “The small enterprise owners” and “The entrepreneur: nature of nurture?”) draw on a complex and eclectic discussion of culture, class, family, motivation and learning. Gray concludes that the solutions to creating greater entrepreneurial behaviour in the UK are to be found in “long‐term, innovative social and educational policies aimed at fostering an enterprising and co‐operative culture rather than short‐term, limited management skills training courses and advertising slogans aimed at promoting an individualistic culture of the entrepreneur” (p. 171). Therefore, Gray favours certain aspects of the current collectively‐oriented “network approach” (p. 185) which emphasises management and human resource development, while cautioning against being over‐optimistic about enterprise training.

Dick Hobbs has written of the enterprise culture that: “It is ironical that this reviewer sat down to confront his task just as British enterprise culture was discovered floating belly up in the Atlantic” (1992, p. 303). This raises the question of why Gray is writing about the enterprise culture if it has mostly been written before? I do not believe Gray adds any fundamentally new insights. This is not to say that the magpie‐like use of theories and ideas from an impressively broad range of social science disciplines are not interesting, or that there is not much with which to agree and build on. Gray should perhaps have concentrated on more contemporary and less moribund policy targets: the final chapter is frustrating in that he notes the usefulness of his analysis to the current situation, but fails to expand on it. He states himself that the book is a first step (a well‐trodden one perhaps?). I look forward to reading a subsequent text which expands on where we are going, not where we have come from.

There is also a flaw in Gray’s argument. He seems to assume that government had (and was able to act on) some sort of grand plan based on a consistent ideological base. This is overstating the case. In the case of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme for instance, a crisis of unemployment led to practical policies. It was not derived from the ideology but fashioned in the image of it. Gray claims that the enterprise culture was “an attempt at social engineering” (p. 19). Yet he later acknowledges political expediency as a starting point when he suggests that “to many observers … the underlying policy target was a net reduction in the massive unemployment spawned by the collapse of large manufacturing industries” (p. 27). The intention of purpose inherent in a policy designed to socially engineer a population does not sit well with reactive and event‐contingent reality of political expedience. The enactment of policy must surely be more complex, confused and multi‐dimensional. There are numerous reports and articles which have demonstrated the vacuity and error of the Conservative government’s persistence with voluntarist and individualist policies (Curran and Blackburn, 1991; and Coffield, 1992, for instance). If the enterprise culture was so clearly an ill‐founded idea, more of a rhetorical cover for political expediency, why bother writing a book about it? Enterprise culture is a very elegant and well engraved hammer to crack a rather large but hollow nut. Gray’s analysis is streets ahead of the usual small business fare and is an important contribution to the field.