Entrepreneurial Typology: The Case of Owner-managers in China
Abstract
53 Entrepreneurial Typology: The Case of Owner-managers in China SAGE Publications, Inc.1995DOI: 10.1177/026624269501400104 Wai-sum Siu INCE SMITH (1967) DISCOVERED THAT there are two robust categories of entrepreneurs - the craftsman and the opportunist - the entrepreneurial typology research has grown continuously (Scase and Goffee, 1980, 1982; Goffee and Scase, 1985; Woo et al, 1988; McClelland, 1987; Ginsberg and Buchholtz, 1989). Woo et al (1988) argue that the dichotomy of two entrepreneurial classes is incredulous and low in predictive validity. Dunkelberg and Cooper (1982) reveal three types of entrepreneurs, namely growth-oriented, independence-oriented, and craftsman- oriented by principal components analysis. Chell et al (1991) use the artificial neural network approach for entrepreneurial categorisation. Despite the proliferation of research studies, fundamental research problems still exist. They include a lack of an agreed definition of entrepreneurship (Kilby, 1971; Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986; Carsrud et al, 1986), the absence of universally applicable entrepreneurial paradigms (Wortman, 1986; Kirby, 1992) and the inability to build new theories and models based upon earlier research (Sexton, 1987). Moreover, further problems arise in the categorisation process. First, it is very difficult to construct a set of well-defined characteristics for categorisation. Effective entrepreneurial categorisation, like segmentation in marketing research,