Abstract
Research on the nature, scale and role of entrepreneurship in the socio-economic development is a multifaceted beast: the key concept of entrepreneurship still lacks a uniform definition, and related measurement methods, scope of survey, data sources and key indicators lack homogeneity. Often, this diversity leads to some confusion and misinterpretation, ‘lost in aggregation’ from the authors’ view, in comparative analysis. Cieślik’s book Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies has set itself an ambitious agenda. It aims to capture the role of entrepreneurship in the socio-economic development of emerging economies at the intermediate development stage, focusing on measurement methods and instruments which can be adopted within emerging countries’ institutional context. This comprehensive book offers an overview of his academic work on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship policy from the macroeconomic, country-wide perspective.
His core argument is that there are no ‘brilliantly simple recipes’ to stimulate entrepreneurial activities and solve urgent social problems for emerging economies, especially those at the intermediate development stage. Hence, according to his argument, ‘catching-up countries’ have to cautiously design their entrepreneurship policies in a proactive, evidence-based, diversified and well-coordinated way in order to exploit the ‘advantage of backwardness’.
Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies begins with a debate on key concepts relating to entrepreneur and entrepreneurship in socio-economic developments from an evolutionary view. To emphasize his main point, Cieślik cites Joseph Schumpeter, who stressed that the ‘[e]ntrepreneur becomes a creative destructor who manages to overcome hardship through remarkable commitment, coupled with individual persistence in the pursuit of the goals that they have set for themselves’ (p. 14). He then argues that (a) innovators and proactive imitators have equally significant effect on the technology diffusion processes as they create positive synergy; (b) entrepreneurship and innovation are distinct, but they are co-dependent factors in the development of an enterprise and the economy as a whole. He points out that launching Apple’s iPhone contributed to the GDP growth in the USA, but it would have been impossible without its intellectual entrepreneur Steve Jobs (pp. 71, 161). My personal favourites include Chapter 6.3.3. ‘Spillover Hunters’ because it gives an interesting example of Apple, Microsoft and Xerox in the 1970s showing how young founders (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates) recognised commercial potential of ‘free and unexploited’ inventions that others have ignored or failed to notice.
Cieślik delves into the significant contribution of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the creation of new jobs by posing the question—‘Who creates jobs?’ Chapter 5 captures the track changes in employment trends over decades, for instance, flexible forms of employment, and analyses various segments of them. It emphasizes the growth of ‘intermediate zone’ category, such as self-employed solo entrepreneurs, for further attention of policymakers.
The author seeks to understand the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship on international trade and economic cooperation in Chapter 7 with a case study of Poland. He argues that supporting ‘hidden champions’ or ‘junior global league’ with high export intensity is of utmost importance for emerging economies in order to stimulate the synergy between accelerated growth and internationalisation of local companies. He also highlights the importance of absorption capacity by local companies for facilitating foreign direct investment (FDI) spillover effects in emerging economies.
In the last chapter, Cieślik proposes a holistic framework of the National Entrepreneurship Systems (NES), that is, a ‘friendly institutional framework for doing business’, encompassing state supports programme and entrepreneurship policy that encourage the aspirations of entrepreneurs in order to achieve macroeconomic objectives including GDP growth, value added, employment and exports. For implementing the proposed approach, he provides the RSSG (Readiness® Stuck point ® Support
® Growth) model. In his model, selected support instruments will be provided after the beneficiary enterprise has reached the stage of readiness to transition to a higher stage of development and help them to overcome the ‘stuck points’—often due to the lack of skills, financing or access to information—in their individual development paths.
Thus far, the book covers interesting ground raising and asking questions of stylised concepts and practices and their use value in emerging economy contexts. The author attempts to accomplish this normative-evolutionary dialectic by looking at what he refers to as the ‘Essence of Entrepreneurship’ (Chapter 2), or the evolution of views, major issues in entrepreneurship research, an interesting debate on ambitious entrepreneurship, the process which identifies entrepreneurial opportunities in different types and at varied stages of development of an enterprise. The chapter ends with a consideration of policy issues. The resulting ‘setting of the scene’ paves the way for a wider interpretation of entrepreneurship in Chapter 3, a review of ways with which to measure entrepreneurship and what holds in varying contexts (Chapter 4), and the critical links between entrepreneurship and employment, innovation, internationalisation, ending with a fuller discussion on policy.
This solid overview of critical issues could have been enriched, however, with a more, nuanced and critical reflection on the arguments that are presented. For example, the rationale for the selection of ‘catching-up countries’ cases remains unclear, since the introduction does not specify why these cases were selected or in what ways Poland exhibits the role of entrepreneurship in the socio-economic development that are worthy of investigation. What about emerging economies outside Europe, which are the main contenders of the title? Why do they need to catch up? Why cannot they carve out their own paths in an increasingly quasi-state corporate-dominated economy that has unleashed its power across the glove? Such questions remain unanswered and critical aspects of selected ‘catching-up countries’ fall short in the monograph. By sticking closely to the standard themes of debate in so-called developed economies, the author is partly in danger of acknowledging that entrepreneurship follows only one path. Even Schumpeter had changed his mind from his faith in small, entrepreneurial firms to corporate behemoths as guardians of entrepreneurship.
In Chapter 7, Cieślik mainly refers to his own research on trends in the internationalisation of the Polish enterprise sector. Poland’s shift from the centrally planned to a market economy system reveals the progress of international economic integration and its impact on smaller companies, but it leads to overgeneralisations that mistake a particular case for general characteristics. To counter these overgeneralisations, it is necessary to acknowledge the limitations and specific context of the selected cases in explaining. In my view, doing so necessitates ‘catching-up countries’ continually providing a valuable policy lessons for both developed and developing countries.
Overall, Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies provides a very good overview of evidence-based research on entrepreneurship. The invitation to a dialogue across developed and developing economies should be taken up by a broad range of researchers pursuing new pathways of enquiry. The monograph brings together diverse dimensions of entrepreneurship and thus opens new horizons of thought about the nature, scale and role of entrepreneurship in the socio-economic development. The chief merit of this book is that it demonstrates this abstract possibility in a single monograph, cogently and concisely. Not many books on the subject achieve this simple but desired objective.