Leadership and management: an activity-based perspective

Leadership is central to understanding the growth of entrepreneurial ventures since growth opportunities cannot be identified and exploited without the facilitation of individuals and teams. Entrepreneurial leadership has been defined as “influencing and directing the performance of group members toward achieving those organizational goals that involve recognizing and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities”.

Effective general management such as human resource management processes provide a foundation for all forms of growth where it contributes to profitability. Social networks are also of critical importance for entrepreneurial performance. In this project, we will examine the interactive effects of skills and networking in influencing growth using an activity-based perspective.

We will be using data from the earlier leadership and management skills research work we undertook in 2015. . These are large cross-sectional samples with good measures of underlying constructs in management and leadership within SMEs.

The project potentially has significant implications. Since entrepreneurs are the key decision-makers for their organizations, their influence on the performance of their business cannot be over-estimated. The management of SMEs matters greatly for their economic performance and by extension influences consumers and other companies within their ambit.

Research Showcase. June 2017

The ERC held a Research Showcase on June 20th 2017 at RSA House in London.
The agenda of the day reflected the range of research we are currently undertaking at the Centre. The aim was to share our research insights and ideas with our key stakeholders, and to engage in dialogue with them about these.

During the afternoon session we launched four new projects, with stakeholders feeding their ideas to help us shape future research questions and approaches.The showcase generated lively discussion and we are very grateful for the excellent engagement from our stakeholders, whose insights will shape and strengthen the final project outputs.