Who are entrepreneurs and what do they do? Who is an individual entrepreneur, definition

Peter Drucker

Management. Challenges XXI century

Preface

The most important tasks tomorrow

The reader, of course, immediately has a question: how can today's problems associated with competitive strategies, management, creativity, teamwork, new technologies?

Indeed it is key issues Today- And that is why I do not touch on them in this book. Instead, we will talk about issues that will become relevant Tomorrow- about the most pressing problems, the most acute, decisive, of those about which they say that this is a “matter of life or death.”

Will they? Without a doubt. I do not intend to make predictions or speculate abstractly about the future. Problems and tasks about which we're talking about on the pages of this book, every single one is already evident both in developed countries and in most developing countries (for example, in South Korea and Turkey). They can be observed, discussed, analyzed and tried to be solved. Some specialists and organizations are already doing this - so far, however, there are very few of them. But those who work today on the problems of tomorrow and thus prepare themselves and their organization for new challenges will take a leading position in the near future. Anyone who puts off addressing these issues until later will be left behind and may never be able to catch up.

Therefore, we can say that this book is call to action.

The problems we face tomorrow will be completely different from today's; perhaps they may seem strange and far-fetched to the reader. But we live in an era deep changes which in their scale and possible consequences exceed those that occurred as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century, and those caused by the Great Depression and the Second World War. I have no doubt that reading this book will excite and disturb many readers, for these are exactly the feelings I felt while writing it. This is as it should be: after all, most problems, for example, the decline in the birth rate in developed countries or the transfer of management principles from the sphere of activity of enterprises and organizations to the field of individual careers (this topic is discussed in detail in the final chapter), is caused by rapid changes in all modern life. Therefore, it is necessary to radically reconsider the political and economic strategies, developed over the last century. It also means that public institutions and individuals will have to fundamentally change their views on a range of issues.

However, this book is about management. I intentionally don't touch business issues- even such important ones as the question of whether the euro will replace the American dollar as the main world currency or what will replace the most successful economic invention of the 19th century - commercial and investment banks. I deliberately do not raise economic issues - although many changes in management (in particular, the transformation of information into one of the main resources) will undoubtedly entail radical changes in economic theory, as well as in practice. I am not going to talk about politics - even about such important issues as, for example, whether Russia can (and will) regain its political, military and economic power. The book concerns only problems and challenges of management.

There are good reasons for this. I intend to talk to you about the problems that arise due to the emergence of new social, demographic and economic realities; Therefore, no one can solve these problems. government. Indeed, much of what you read about in the pages of this book will have a significant impact on politics, and yet these are not political issues. Nor are they problems that can be solved by the free market. They have nothing to do with economic theory, nor with economic policy. These problems can only be understood and solved knowledge workers, scientists and managers, armed management theory. It won't be long before these problems full force will manifest themselves in the domestic policies of all developed and developing countries. And each organization will have to solve them independently, and the solution will have to be developed by the management of these organizations - and by each individual knowledge worker (and especially by each individual manager) of this organization.

Mostly, of course, it will be commercial organizations. And the vast majority of specialists who will be affected by the problems under consideration will be in one way or another connected with business. And yet this book is more about management in general, than about business management. The issues addressed in it concern all structures modern society. Moreover, some of these problems are more relevant to the non-profit sector, if only because a significant number non-profit organizations- universities, for example, or hospitals, not to mention government institutions, - are not as mobile and flexible as commercial ones; the ideas, traditions and policies of yesterday and even - if we talk about universities - the day before yesterday (that is, the 19th century) are much more deeply rooted in them.

How to read this book? It's best to do one chapter at a time, as they are quite large. Each chapter is devoted to one complex problem. After reading, ask yourself: “What implications does this issue have for your company and for you personally as an employee and/or manager?” Having answered this question for yourself, ask the following: “What must we do - our entire organization and personally me, its employee and / or leader - to cope with this problem and find a solution that would open up new opportunities for the organization and for me personally?"

And then - to work!

Peter Drucker

New management paradigm

Inextricable connection between management and business

The only correct type of organizational structure

Only The right way personnel management

Specification of technology and forms of end use of products

The scope of management activities is legally limited

The scope of management activities is politically limited

Field of activity of management - internal environment companies

Key ideas about the realities of management

The paradigm of any social science, and management in particular, is based on ideas about reality. They are formed by scientists, writers, teachers and practitioners. But the ideas themselves have a decisive influence on the fact that in a given industry knowledge is considered reality, - more precisely what scientists, writers, teachers and practitioners mean by reality. Ideas about reality that exist within a given discipline determine its content. They define what a given discipline considers to be “facts” and how the discipline treats itself. Moreover, ideas about reality largely determine what a given discipline pays attention to and what it ignores or dismisses as “unfortunate exceptions.”

As an example, it is worth recalling what happened to one of the first (and most extraordinary) management specialists, Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933)1. Because her ideas about reality did not correspond to the ideas prevailing in the science of management, which was just emerging in the 1930s and 1940s, Follett became a “nobody” even before her death, and her work was practically not remembered for a quarter of a century. But now we understand that many of her views on society, man and management are much closer to reality than those on which the participants in the management process themselves relied - and mostly rely today.

Despite all their significance, ideas about reality are rarely analyzed, studied and revised - they rarely even receive clear formulations.

For social science, which is management, ideas about reality are much more important than for natural sciences. A paradigm - in other words, a system of concepts accepted in a given science - does not affect the objective physical world. Whatever theory we accept, for example that the Sun revolves around the Earth or, conversely, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, this will not affect either the Sun or the Earth. Natural sciences study behavior objects the surrounding world, and social sciences such as management deal with behavior person And public institutions . Consequently, management practitioners act as they are told by the ideas about reality that underlie management theory. More importantly, the reality on which they rely natural Sciences- the physical world and its laws - is unchangeable (more precisely, it takes eons to change it, and not centuries, not to mention decades). There are no analogous “natural laws” in the social world. The subject of study is constantly changing. This means that ideas that were true yesterday can literally at one moment become untenable and, moreover, false.

An entrepreneur is a person who carries out entrepreneurial activities.

Each entrepreneur can have his own business or can help other entrepreneurs create businesses.

Terminology

An entrepreneur is rather a specialist, not always certified, engaged in activities related to property management. Unlike other managers, the goal of an entrepreneur is to generate profit for himself or for the group of co-owners of which he is a member.

The activities of an entrepreneur include:

A) awareness regarding the economic situation;

b) all preliminary considerations necessary for the production process to be economic, in other words, economic calculation;

V) act of will, through which goods of a higher order (and with developed relations of turnover, where any economic good can usually be exchanged for another, goods in general) are intended for a specific production;

G) observation for the most economical implementation of the production process plan.

Video on the topic

Right to do business

Right to entrepreneurial activity is a fundamental human right and is protected by Art. 34 of the Russian Constitution. This constitutional right is in fact inseparable from the right to freely dispose of one’s property and carry out economic activities.

Therefore, citizens who engage in business occasionally without having any documents giving them the right to engage in this activity, for example, persons who resell goods, also call themselves entrepreneurs.

This Law allowed individual labor activity in the field of handicrafts, consumer services population, as well as other types of activities based solely on the personal labor of citizens and members of their families. Documents certifying the right of citizens to engage in individual labor activity, were registration certificates or patents issued for a certain period.

Personal qualities that distinguish a social entrepreneur from an ordinary entrepreneur:

• Prosocial behavior is concern for the well-being and rights of other people, the desire to bring them some benefit,
• civic motivation - willingness to support one’s organization, going beyond the call of duty (this quality is more important for corporate social entrepreneurship),
• Personal proactivity - the ability to take the initiative into one’s own hands to change circumstances for the better.

The skills required of a social entrepreneur include:

• transformational skills - leadership, team building, change management;
• transactional skills - organization effective team, monitoring the work of volunteers and retaining them,
• skills social work- self-study, search

A modern company can be judged primarily by its entrepreneur. ⚡ Entrepreneur⚡ is an initiative person who takes responsibility and risk for business in the enterprise. To understand the essence of his activities, one should consider all types of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be classified on two grounds: the scale and nature of the activity.

1. Based on scale, initiative activities are divided into the following types:

• Individual entrepreneurship is any creative activity of one person and his family (trading shops, small pharmacies, dry cleaners, etc. are created).
• Collective entrepreneurship - a group is engaged in useful work. It includes small and medium business(in the USA, small businesses include enterprises with up to 500 employees, in our country - with significantly fewer); big business- usually huge joint stock companies numbering thousands of people.

2. By nature, entrepreneurial work has several forms. Non-profit entrepreneurship - not related to the sale of products for the sake of enrichment. Such charity conducted by cultural, educational and other organizations.

Commercial activity, or business (English business - business), is an income-generating activity. It includes:

• non-production business - professional sports, concert activities, etc.
• trading business - at trading enterprises
• business in the service sector, for example, travel services, law office
• manufacturing business is a profitable business in industrial enterprises, agriculture, construction, etc.

Entrepreneurship can manifest itself in any economic system. It can also be at a state enterprise. However, here the initiative of the head of the company is limited by the strict framework of orders and instructions from higher authorities. In market conditions, a completely different type of entrepreneurship brings success. Just as every person needs oxygen to live, so freedom is important for a businessman economic activity, i.e. the ability to use the property owned, leased or transferred for use at his own discretion, the freedom to determine what and how to produce, choose suppliers and consumers, set prices, dispose of the profit remaining after paying taxes, and resolve other production issues.

In recent decades, the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the growth of manufacturing in the West have greatly expanded entrepreneurial activity. Compared to the 1960s. the total number of businessmen has doubled in Japan and more than 2.5 times in the USA.

The numerical growth of initiators of new business ventures is combined with an increase in the role of the functions performed by business organizers.