Example Answer to Exam on Entrepreneurship - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2432 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Business Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? Many academic studies have tried to offer an explanation to why people engage in entrepreneurial activities and what factors influence individuals to decide to become entrepreneurs. The answers range from individual characteristics like genetic reasons (Nocolaou et al., 2008), the possession of balanced skills (Lazear, 2005), psychological and personality traces (Zhao and Seibert, 2006) to environmental factors like institutional settings (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994), geographic inertia created from social embeddedness (Sorensen and Sorensen, 2003) and the industry structure (Glaeser et al, 2009). Acknowledging those differences Thornton (1999) suggests that the entrepreneurship literature can be classified into two distinct schools: one called supply-side perspective and the other demand-side perspective and even though both are concerned about the same phenomena they use different approaches. According to Thornton, while the first is focused on the individual charac teristics of entrepreneurs, the second is concerned with the influence of the contextual factors on the creation or restriction of entrepreneurial behaviors. A careful and impartial analysis of the arguments presented by the different theoretical trends leads to the conclusion that it is not possible to isolate a single concept able to cover all different individual and environmental dimensions described in the entrepreneurship literature. In doing so researchers have behaved like the proverbial blind men trying to describe an elephant, with some concepts treating entrepreneurs like ropes, others like threes and still others like snakes (Carland and Carland, 2004). Thus, in order to have a full picture, or at least a better one, of the entrepreneurship phenomena it is advisable the use of more than one analytical level (e.g., individual and environmental). For example, while the founding of a firm may be understood as an act heavily dependent on the individual entrepreneur, as would be suggested by a supply-side approach, it is also very clear that a single individual is very unlikely to successfully mobilize without the necessary infrastructure, as suggested by the demand-side perspective (Thornton, 1999). This way, even though the isolation of specific factors can offer an efficient alternative to advance the entrepreneurship literature, it is important to keep open the possibility for the use of integrative frameworks. Venkataraman (1997) points out that the main concerns observed in the entrepreneurship literature has been clustered on three points: (1) How and why opportunities for the creation of goods and services arise in an economy (entrepreneurial opportunities); (2) How and Why some individuals are able to discover and exploit these opportunities while others cannot or do not, and, (3) what are the economic and social outcomes of an entrepreneurial act (for both the society and the individual entrepreneur). Trying to follow an integrative approac h some authors (e.g., Venkataraman, 1997; Shane, 2000; Chiles et al., 2007) suggest that the Austrian Tradition offers a comprehensive view that fits well with the different dimensions that encompass the entrepreneurship phenomenon. Notably two of the strongest contributions emerging from that theoretical school are Schumpeter and Kirzner (Chiles et al., 2007). Following the ideas of those theorists organizational scholars developed two different, but deeply correlated perspectives. The first is based on the Schumpeterian tradition and sees entrepreneurs as innovative and creative individuals that disrupt the economic order through a process that Schumpeter describes as creative destruction. And the second, following Kirzner, considers entrepreneurs as individuals who discover opportunities emerging from incorrectness and disequilibrium conditions and exploit them by moving the market toward an equilibrium condition (even though the equilibrium is never reached). Surprisingly, it is possible to observe a supplementary nature between those two perspectives, since the Schumpeterian entrepreneur would be the cause of disruption in the economic system that consequently will generate market failures, while the Kirznerian entrepreneur makes corrections (by acting entrepreneurially and taking advantage of market failures) and drives the economy to converge toward equilibrium again, creating suitable conditions for a new disruption (Chiles et al., 2007). The paragraphs that follow will try to discuss how those approaches can be used to consider and analyze issues regarding entrepreneurship. Following many of the assumption found in the Austrian School, Shane (2000) starts his approach to explain how and why entrepreneurs exist by describing entrepreneurial opportunities as opportunities for bringing into existence goods, services, raw materials and organizing methods that allow outputs to be sold by a price superior to their production costs. Moreover, according to him, the existence of market failures and information asymmetry are some of the two main determinants for the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities in an economy. The presence of market failures implies that resources are being misallocated and not put into their best use (Casson, 1982) and therefore there are possibilities for reorganization or creation of new ways for their use (an entrepreneurial act) (Cantner et al., 2007). A simple example of market failure that could generate an entrepreneurial opportunity would be the case of some unattended demands caused by a misalignment between the demand and supply for a specific good; in this case entrepreneurs would be inclined to enter this market and expand the offer (of the good in question) by means of satisfying the consumers needs and use the opportunity to generate and appropriate profit. Regarding the influence that information asymmetry has on the creation of opportunities for entrepreneurs, it is possible to infer that if all individuals had the same level of information (about market conditions and characteristics) at the same point in time (perfect information) they would be more likely to recognize the same opportunities and consequently would end up competing on price (those that decided to take advantage of that opportunity), what would reduce the incentives that individuals have to become entrepreneurs. Supporting this perspective Kaish and Gilad (1991) argue that entrepreneurs are opportunistic learners that act combining the search for information (opportunities) with the opportunistic reactions to chance events. This way, according to this perspective the presence of information asymmetry and the existence of market failures are critical determinants for the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities and therefore the very existence of entrepreneurs. The arguments above are only concerned with contextual explanations (present in the environment) while individual reasons were not discus sed, which at the very best produces an incomplete approach. In order to have a more comprehensive perspective Shane (2000) also concentrated his arguments on the fact that individuals are not equally likely to discover the same entrepreneurial opportunities. He tried to explain why individuals become entrepreneurs by suggesting that the possession of idiosyncratic information allows people to see particular opportunities that others cannot see. Considering that individuals have different stocks of knowledge formed from professional experiences, academic background, socio-economic context and situations that people pass over their lives, each individual is expected to be more likely to find certain opportunities and unlikely to find others. An important moderator present in the relationship between the discovery of opportunities and the possession of idiosyncratic knowledge is the very nature of the knowledge accumulated by an individual, since a person is more likely to find an opp ortunity to become an entrepreneur in areas related to the ones he already possess knowledge about. For example, an individual with an academic degree and professional experience in engineering will be more likely to identify an opportunity (originated from a market failure) to offer a product or service in areas related with building and construction instead of entertainment. Supporting this perspective, Cohen and Levinthal (1990) claim that in order to enter a new market it is necessary to overcome knowledge-based barriers since to access those markets it is first necessary to recognize and interpret new external information. Consequently, prior knowledge represents an important selection mechanism for what individuals will be able to identify and take advantages of emerging opportunities. A whole picture of this perspective could be described as differences in idiosyncratic knowledge among individuals as the driver of the likelihood that one person will identify a market failure (entrepreneurial opportunity) that others are not able to; this condition will be enhanced by the existence of information asymmetry. A relevant point that emerges from the arguments above is the fact that characteristics like genetics or personality traces are not among the reasons to explain why some individuals become entrepreneurs while others do not. In fact it seems that this theoretical trend tends to refuse or neglect the arguments that individual characteristics, other than the possession of idiosyncratic knowledge, can explain the existence of entrepreneurial acts. On the other hand, following the Schumpeterian tradition, it is possible to observe a description of situations in which entrepreneurs do not necessarily start their activities based on a market failure. Those situations are likely to be observed when an entrepreneurial act is associated with the creation of a completely novel good, new method of production, new market, new source of supply andor a new form o f industry organization (Schumpeter, 1934, p. 66). While entrepreneurs that build their activities on a market failure are more likely to be found in ordinary and existing markets, this second type of entrepreneur is associated with completely new ideas, concepts and acts of creativity. The definition of entrepreneur proposed by Schumpeter can be easily linked to this second type of individuals described here. According to Schumpeter . . . the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on (p. 132). Going deep in the description offered by Schumpeter it is possible to observe that despite the fact that the starting point for an entrepreneurial activity was not a market failure; the e xpected outcome of an entrepreneurial act is indissociable from the destruction of the established economic order, which acts moving the economy away from the steady state. Therefore, the theoretical evidences support that if entrepreneurs do not originate from market failures they are very likely to lead the economic system to a situation of disequilibrium. An interesting point regarding this theoretical trend is the sharply divergences from Kirzner, since the Schumpeterian entrepreneur is described as a heroic figure who will create and introduce revolutionary combinations into the market (Chiles et al., 2007), considered by Schumpeter as differentiated individuals when compared to the whole society. Additionally, considering the magnitude of the impact that an entrepreneurial outcome generate in the economy, according to this perspective entrepreneurs have necessarily to be individuals rarely found, or at least the outcomes originating from an entrepreneur cannot be ordinary happ enings, other way the economic system would be driven into situation of complete chaos (by the effect of a continuous process of creative destruction). An important issue that emerges from the analyses above is the fact that even though innovations have been extensively described as the key function of entrepreneurship, empirical evidences give contradictory results. While it is very tempting to describe entrepreneurs as very creative individuals able to revolutionize the economic system, Singer (1990) argues that entrepreneurial acts can be classified in a continuum that ranges from completely new and innovative to the replication of existing products, services and process. In fact, most of the innovations inserted into the market are heavily based (if not all innovations) on ideas and items already invented, and despite of the lack of originality those products and services can be considered the vast majority of what is brought into the market by entrepreneurs. Shane (2008) giv es a good picture of this fact by describing what he calls the the myth of entrepreneurship. Shane gives four important evidences: 1- Individuals who change jobs more often or who are unemployed are more likely to open their own business, configuring what Block and Sandner (2009) describe as necessity entrepreneurs, characteristic that does not match with the heroic individual; 2- Around 35 to 40 percent of all business started in US each year are concentrated on construction, retail and professional services, which historically are characterized by the low rate of creation of new products, services or organizational forms; 3- Individuals are more likely to start their own companies in poorer and agricultural places than in richer and more industrialized places, which interestingly suggest that entrepreneurs are more likely to emerge in environments with more scarce resources (This is not the case for some specific sectors like software or biotech, but in more traditional and ordina ry ones that seems to be); and finally 4- Considering the percentage of the working-age population it was possible to observe that, in 2002, around 30% of the Turkish individuals, 18% of Spaniards, 10% of Germanys, 8% of Danish and 7% of Americans were self-employed, and the results are even more interesting in pointing out that as much as 40% of the US population will be self-employed at some point of their life. Additionally, it is also possible to observe that each year in the US more people starting their own business than getting married or have children (Shane, 2008, p. 3). Those evidences indicate that entrepreneurs are not very rare individuals with special characteristics, but are very present in the day to day activities of the economy. Although the empirical evidences described above seem to give support to the arguments proposed by authors like Venkataraman (1997), Shane (2000), Chiles et al., (2007) and Cantner et al., al (2007) the attempt to explain why some indivi duals become entrepreneurs solely based on market failures, information asymmetry and prior knowledge presents some limitations. The most notably one is the lack of efforts to incorporate alternative explanations that are not necessarily competing ones, but complementary. For example, the argument that the individuals with prior and related knowledge are the most likely ones to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities is not necessarily contradicted by the existence of genetic predispositions, balanced skills or psychological traces. While the possession of prior knowledge gives an individual great part of the necessary conditions to take advantage or not of an opportunity, it is necessary to explain why some individuals decide to take advantage of it and why others decide not to do that. In the end the ultimate analytical question relies on the decision, since an individual can always choose not to become an entrepreneur even possessing all the necessary conditions. Moreover, the assu mption that a person will always exploit any entrepreneurial opportunity that he/she can identify is highly unrealistic. Additionally, a similar logic can also be applied to the environmental and contextual factors that influence the emergence of entrepreneurs, since the explanations presented here do not provide a more comprehensive description for what industry, institutional or regional settings and conditions can favor or hinge the emergence entrepreneurial opportunities. This way, trying to offer a more realistic framework, the analyses that follow will adopt part of the Austrian tradition assumptions as a baseline to build on and integrate it with complementary explanations. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Example Answer to Exam on Entrepreneurship" essay for you Create order

Employees Payroll Schlumberger Example

Essays on Employees Payroll Schlumberger Research Paper Employees and Payroll Compensation is twofold: it can be a salary or a wage. Firstly, the salary is the amount of money paid for a particular job irrespective of the hours worked while wage is the amount received on the prospect of hours worked (Priz, 2005). On the monthly basis, salaries shall be payable in respect of the normal payroll strategies. For instance, the initial term executive base salary was US $ 108,334.00 on the other hand the secondary term was $ 81,250.00 per month. Moreover, annually, the executives participated in health, insurance and welfare programs that are stated as US $ 1,300,000. Eligibility to accrue benefits and profit sharing program during the term of office for the executive shall be US $ 1,300,000 on an annual basis. Executives will participate in incentives plan during the initial term at a 100% basic pay level range however; there will be no participation during the secondary term (Veinot, 1999). In the normal operations of duty in regard to the company the executive will be reimbursed for any amounts incurred such as travel expenses under his duty at work. Intended to retain trained, experienced and able employees, attract new others and stimulate the active interests of persons is an options plan. Three members were appointed by the board of directors where neither of them is neither an officer nor an employee of the company and no eligibility to receive stock options under his tenure (Nehauser Donovan, 2007). Persons who are to participate are to be employees of the company or a subsidiary corporation. In case of retirement or where on is involved in a detrimental activity, it is the discretion of the committee to forfeiture the options. 12,000,000 shares of common stock issued at a par value of $ 0.01 will be subjected to the options plan. The initial term will begin on the effective date, February 9th 2010 till December 31st 2010. Similarly, the secondary term commences on January 1st 2011 till January 31st 2014. Executives affirmed to devote 100% of their time to the business of the company in the initial term. Comparatively, 50% time was to be devoted in the secondary term. There are a number of union labor agreements like the one formed in Egypt and Norway just to mention to cater for employee needs (Gunderson, 2000). The organization chart was descending with Paal Kibsgaard as the chief executive officer; below him was Simon Ayat, Chief financial officer and executive vice president. There were also three presidents, Aaron Gatt Florida, Jean Francois Poupeau and Patrick Schorn in charge of characterization, drilling and production respectively (Ball, 2002). In addition we had different presidents in charge of technology, operations and communication. The levels of education were university graduates to be able to understand the general operations of the company. The executives in the schlumberger limited are to enjoy insurance plans example medical, short and long term disability, welfare schemes and health benefits. Also, incentives plan of 100% on the base pay was enjoyed. Executives would receive cash within 30 days after the effective date during their vacation (Braggs, 2004). Work Cited Ball, C. A. (2002). Take charge of your workers compensation claim an A to Z guide for injured employees (3rd ed.). Berkeley, CA: Nolo.com. Bragg, S. M. (2004). Accounting for payroll: a comprehensive guide. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley Sons. Gunderson, M. (2000). Workers compensation: foundations for reform. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Neuhauser, F., Donovan, C. (2007). Fraud in workers compensation payroll reporting how much employer fraud exists : what is the impact on honest employers?. Sacramento, CA.: California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers Compensation. Priz, E. J. (2005). Entrepreneur magazines ultimate guide to workers compensation insurance: secrets for reducing workers compensation costs. Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Press. Veinot, S. (1999). Management review of the deferred compensation plan program. Seattle, Wash.: The Office. Top of Form

Characteristics of a close relationship Free Essays

Characteristics of a close relationship PSYCH/220 – Positive Psychology: What’s Right with me August 17, 2014 It is safe to say as I move along and our population grows we meet new and interesting people every day. Whether we encounter people on the subway, buses, or elevators we form a bond with people even if all we have in common is taking the same train or bus at the same time every day. These situations build comfort and security, the more and more we see each other eventually It would become a dally outing and a friendship or acquaintance can be formed. We will write a custom essay sample on Characteristics of a close relationship or any similar topic only for you Order Now As stated In chapter 1 1, an intimate relationship does not mean it Is physical or has the potential to become physical; an intimate relationship is structured by six components, an intimate relationship Is formed by Knowledge, Trust, Caring, Interdependence, Mutuality, and commitment. A perfect example for me of this relationship is the one I share with my father. I am 26 years old now and I have been married since I was 20 and I have two beautiful boys, and everything I set a new goal and challenge and I accomplish It I hank my dad because I feel he made me the man I am today. Growing up I was a bit difficult and to be quite honest I did not have much of a relationship with my dad, I was always well defended by my mom and I usually always stuck with her. My father was born on Dominican Republic, so his way of living and ways of being where different from what I seen here with my friends and even on Television. Since he had his way and I felt his way was a bad one we never seen eye to eye and we were choices in life, I noticed his happiness, then I started to realize that my father Just anted the best for all his kids, Just that his methods for expressing himself and actions where outdated. I turned over a new leaf with my dad, I consider my father my superhero, my mentor and best friend especially when I had kids of my own. I realized as a father everything my father did for me and my sibling to path the way for us to succeed. An intimate relationship relies on Knowledge, The knowledge of mutual understanding based on self-disclosure which consists on revealing personal details f one’s self to another. My father and I have reached, when I am in need of advice or help he speaks from experience, tells me if he had ever experienced a particular situation and how he responded to it. Aside from knowledge we must have Trust, in this case is the security that no harm will be done. I trust my father to give me advice and criticism which will better myself and with my best interest at heart. Now as a father I would assume that possessing the characteristics of caring should be unsaid cause it is a father son relationship, however in reaching a new level of appreciation for my dad I have realized that I not only care for my dad as my father but as a person, as another human being. I care for him because he cares for me and my children; he continues to be a great father and even better grandfather. These are Just a few of the many characteristics that my intimate relationship with my father consists of. Every day I am grateful to have established this level communication, comfort, and trust with one another. How to cite Characteristics of a close relationship, Papers