THE CONCEPT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP
Scholars have provided varying definitions of the concept of strategic leadership. However, they all seem to revolve around the same theme of vision, change, people and performance. Strategic leadership is the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility and empower others to create strategic change, strategic leadership is multifunctional in nature and involves managing through others, managing an entire enterprise and coping with change that is the order of the day especially in the twenty first century. The landscape of business has become complex in nature and there is a growing need to learn how to influence human behavior in the uncertain environment. A firm’s ability to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above average returns is compromised when strategic leaders fail to respond appropriately to change in the complex competitive environment. As a result there has been a growing movement by scholars to combine the areas of entrepreneurship and strategic management and hence the concept of strategic entrepreneurship. This new development is defined by the fact that in the new competitive landscape entrepreneurial strategies are becoming more and more important for both entrepreneurial ventures and corporate. Entrepreneurial strategies are said to be related to better company performance, the aim is to build on identification of opportunities and develop them towards competitive advantage. (Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2002).
There is diversity of theories that form the foundation of entrepreneurial leadership. “Entrepreneurship is the dynamic process of Vision, change, and creation. It requires an application of energy and passion towards the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions. Essential ingredients include the willingness to take calculated risks- in terms of time equity or career; the ability to formulate an effective venture team; the creative skill to marshal the needed resources; the fundamental skill of building a solid business plan and finally the vision to recognize opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction and confusion. Kuratko & Hodgetts (2007), Kuratko&Covin (2008) created a two dimensional; entrepreneurial grid with the number or frequency of entrepreneurial events on the vertical axis and the extent or degree to which these events are innovative, risky, and proactive on the horizontal axis. Noting that the amounts and degrees of entrepreneurship are relative and that any given individual or organization could be highly entrepreneurial at some time and less entrepreneurial at others. Depending on the individual’s activity or the organizations activity, different points on the grid define their entrepreneurial intensity and it is this level of entrepreneurial activity that forms the basis for assessing entrepreneurial leadership.
To create value for the firm and improve performance, entrepreneurial firms as well as corporates need to act strategically, in other words entrepreneurial leadership is in every sense strategic leadership.
At King Ceasor University these are the concepts that we endeavor to impart to our students, in order for them to develop an entrepreneurial mindset as well as develop them to be effective strategic leaders.