Entrepreneurship is gaining greater interest around the world and many governments are "interested in the creation of cultures that would promote enterprise and create new ventures" (Kirby, 2004, p.510). According to Kanter (1984, p 354) "because of profound transformations in the economic and social environment it should be a national priority to release and support the skills of men and women who can envision and push innovation." This is the case in Singapore where the Government is attempting to change the attitudes of young people so they seriously consider entrepreneurship as a career choice. Although the Government is making major changes in the country's education system to achieve this, it remains unclear how it should be done. Although there have been many studies of the skills of entrepreneurs (for example, Kemelgor, 1985; Appell, 1984; Kirby and Fan, 1995) and the methods of acquiring them (for example, Knowles, 1972; Gibb, 1987), they are mainly in a western context and may not be applicable to other cultures, for example Chinese entrepreneurs in Singapore. Indeed, there is no known study of the identification of key entrepreneurial skills of successful male Chinese founder entrepreneurs and their preferred methods of acquiring these skills. Therefore, this thesis examines, for the first time, the key skills of successful male Chinese founder entrepreneurs in Singapore, and how they acquired them. / The research uses a contextual stepwise approach (Siu and Kirby, 1999) comprising a literature review; ethnographic research into 42 published interviews; and face-to-face interviews, comprising open-ended questions and survey research questionnaires, with 44 entrepreneurs. The thesis identifies 10 key entrepreneurial skills of successful male Chinese founder entrepreneurs in Singapore (Opportunity Recognition Skills; People Handling Internal Skills; Marketing Skills; People Handling External Skills; Networking Skills; Communication Skills; Decision Making Skills; Judgement Skills; Leadership Skills; & Persuasion and Influence Skills) and 5 preferred ways of acquiring these skills (Doing; Experience; Observing; Listening ; & Asking). / The thesis findings imply that a person would be likely to increase his probability of business success if he possessed these 10 key entrepreneurial skills. This would suggest that these key skills should be taught to young adults if the aim is to create more successful entrepreneurs. The findings with respect to how these skills are acquired, however, suggest that if this is to occur, the methods of teaching entrepreneurial skills in Singapore's educational institutions may need to change. Most entrepreneurship studies in Singapore are conducted using traditional methods of teaching, through lectures and tutorials. The research suggests that entrepreneurship studies should incorporate new methods of teaching compatible with the preferred methods of acquiring these skills, which would mean incorporating practical aspects of learning through doing with the more traditional theoretical classroom learning. / Future questions that need to be addresses are whether the findings are applicable to entrepreneurs from different cultures (both western and eastern), different genders (Female) or different financial outcome (unsuccessful entrepreneurs). Another possible future question is whether external factors (business environment, state of the economy etc) affect the findings. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2005.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267453 |
| Creators | Sim, Heng Chye Matthew. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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