Theoretical perspectives on public entrepreneurship

Abstract

Purpose The interest in entrepreneurship in the public sector is recognized as an emergent phenomenon in the field of entrepreneurship. Existing theoretical work is limited in helping understand how entrepreneurship in public agencies occurs. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper which develops the literature. Findings Building on the work of Klein et al. (2010) this paper contributes to theoretical development by providing an overview of public sector entrepreneurship (PSE). Although, there are similar features shared by private and PSE, it is proposed that there are significant differences between them, particularly in that public sector enterprise can be seen as entrepreneurship without entrepreneurs. Research limitations/implications As a conceptual paper on PSE the literature is predominantly UK based. Practical implications This paper brings entrepreneurship from the periphery to the core of the theoretical debates, as it is an under-researched area. Moreover, theoretical development has implications for policy and practice as existing research is disparate. Originality/value The paper considers how entrepreneurship and enterprise in the public sector is formulated. The significance of the paper is to highlight the importance of public entrepreneurs in working alongside a multitude of stakeholders to deal with numerous global and internal environment forces ethically amongst on-going budgetary and fiscal constraints. The contribution is the highlighting of the difficulties and concerns when uniting the discourse of market-based entrepreneurship and the discourse of public sector service provision.

Public entrepreneurship literature from 2010 to 2019: A systematic review

“…It has been perceived from a political or public entrepreneurial perspective to serve as a medium for individuals or group of individuals (public entrepreneurs) to exercising their responsibilities diligently and invent new ideas that will lead to effective service delivery (Diefenbach, 2011;Fuller & Dellsanti, 2017;Kearney & Meynhardt, 2016;Klein et al, 2010). It is also viewed as a policy instrument (policy entrepreneurship) that enhances the initiation of activities by the government for improved public sector productivity (Delabbio & Zeeering, 2013;Hayter, 2015;Klein et al, 2010;Liddle & McElwee, 2019;Prelipcean et al, International Entrepreneurship Review R I E 2014). PE is conceived as corporate entrepreneurship (CE), that is, a combination of political/public entrepreneurial activities and policy entrepreneurship (Diefenbach, 2011;Najmaei & Sadeghinejad, 2016;Zampetakis & Moustakis, 2010).…”

Board behavior’s impact on entrepreneurial orientation in public enterprises

“…We build our reasoning by relying on the ideas of corporatization (Calabrò et al, 2013) and define public enterprises as those more than 50% owned by government but that are a separate legal entity. Therefore, we challenge the outdated view of the public sector being an entity (Liddle & McElwee, 2019) and follow endeavors to clearly define the sample's boundaries (Miller, 2011) by accounting for different ownership structures. A typical example of minority shareholders with increasing importance are hub firms, 1 as they are able to exert a far-reaching power on their network enterprises (Baudry & Chassagnon, 2012;Kolloch & Reck, 2017), implicating important effects on the governance system, as the different owners cannot be seen as an entity with common interests (Calabrò et al, 2013).…”

“…When examining the field of entrepreneurship research, it becomes obvious that it is biased toward the private sector (Smith, 2012). This results in public-sector research still dealing with fundamental questions of EO's relevance and applicability (e.g., Liddle & McElwee, 2019;Morris & Jones, 1999;Sadler, 2000). These questions include whether EO leads to higher performance in the public sector, even though performance indicators in the public sphere are determined by multiple, potentially contrary objectives such as public value and profitability (Bernier, 2014;Liddle & McElwee, 2019;Moore, 1995).…”

“…Such findings are strengthened by accounts describing politicians as largely delaying the strategic change of public enterprises when serving as board members (Calabrò et al, 2013;Padilla-Angulo, 2020) or-in simple terms-as the "essence of the problem" (Sørensen, 2007(Sørensen, , p. 1046. Despite the societal and democratic relevance of the BoD in public enterprises (Cahan et al, 2005) and board behavior potentially revealing differences in the public and private sectors being looked for (Hinna et al, 2010;Liddle & McElwee, 2019), empirical evidence is surprisingly lacking. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to answer the research question: To what extent does board behavior predict public enterprises' EO?…”

Reviewing Effectuation and Bricolage in the Context of Social Entrepreneurship Multisector Collaborations

“…Others have begun to explore the role that effectuation might play in contexts that, although involving innovativeness, are not the more traditional, entrepreneur-led venture creation contexts seen in the literature e.g., in the contexts of corporate R&D [9], knowledge management [10], natural disaster response [11], and business model innovation [12], where with the latter example in particular, this paper supports attempts to increase the generalizability of effectuation to what Futterer, et al [12] call a "theory of decision-making and action under uncertainty. Thus, it seems reasonable to explore the extent to which these alternative theoretical perspectives of entrepreneurship might be evident in such venture creation, and whether they are applicable and relevant outside the context of more traditional business venture creation, and especially in the context where entrepreneurship is occurring in the absence of entrepreneurs [13]! This is the crux of the present paper -non-traditional theories of entrepreneurship in the context of non-traditional entrepreneurship.…”