Entrepreneurship and Professional Management: A Fatal Distinction

Abstract

TONY WATSON IS PROFESSOR OF Organisational and Managerial Behaviour at the Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, England. The arguments developed in the present paper began to emerge as the author considered the implications for smaller businesses of the significant problems found in the processes of 'professional management' encountered in the large organisation he studied for the book In Search of Management (Routledge, 1994). The paper argues that the key issue for large and small firms alike is the nature and quality of its management. The form that this issue takes may vary with the size of firm but to direct attention away from the question of the appropriate mix of the entrepreneurial and the administrative aspects for any given size of enterprise towards matters of identifying evolutionary stages of growth is to embark on an unfortunate diversion. And, more seriously, to analyse growth processes in terms of a movement from entrepreneurship to professional management is to use a potentially fatal distinction. A small firm lacking management may die, as might a large one lacking entrepreneurship.