WHERE IS THE TEAM ENTREPRENEURSHIP? A critical evaluation of philosophical roots of entrepreneurship and entrepreneur education

”MISSÄ TIIMIYRITTÄJYYS – Yrittäjyyden eetoksen ja yrittäjyyskasvatuksen filosofisten lähtökohtien kriittistä arviointia” Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kriittisesti yrittäjyyden eetosta ja etenkin yritystalouden koulutusohjelmia, joissa ei tutkijan mielestä ole tavoitettu yrittäjyyden syvintä olemusta ja sen alkuperäistä ideaa. Edellisen mukaan yrittäjyyttä ei tulisi ymmärtää pelkästään taloudellisen toiminnan tai suorituskyvyn kannalta, vaan yrittäjyys on parhaimmillaan paljon muutakin. Kasvatustieteilijät ja organisaatiotutkijat ovat jo pitkään puhuneet ”yrittäjämäisestä ilmapiiristä tai ”kasvuorientoituneesta” ilmapiiristä. Tällä he ovat tarkoittaneet, että organisaatiossa vallitsee hyvä ”tekemisen meininki”, ”draivi”, jonka avulla hommat hoituu ja ihmiset saavat positiivisessa mielessä toteuttaa itseään. Paradoksaalisesti tällainen ”tekemisen meininki” tulee nyky-yhteiskunnassa parhaiten esiin päiväkodeissa, urheiluseuroissa ja erilaisissa talkoohommissa, mutta vain harvoin pienyritystoiminnan yhteydessä. Onko asia todellakin tällä tavalla? Mistä tämä mahdollisesti johtuu? Näihin kysymyksiin tutkimuksessa on haluttu löytää vastauksia. Kautta aikojen yrittäjyyden ilmiö on ollut sidoksissa amerikkalaiseen kulttuuriperinteeseen. Näin myös yrittäjyyden koulutusohjelmissa on vahvasti painotettu managerialistista ajattelua ja yrityksen suorituskykyä on arvioitu puhtaasti ekonomististen mittareiden avulla. Vaikka erilaiset taloudelliset ja resurssien hallintaan liittyvät taidot ovat toki oleellisia yritystoiminnassa, niin ne eivät takaa yrityksen kehittymistä ja kasvua maailmanluokan yritykseksi. Pikemminkin päinvastoin. Esimerkiksi Applen perustaja Steve Jobs toteaa muistelmissaan, että Applen ensimmäisen rajun nousun jälkeen uuden yritysjohdon palkkaamat managerit saivat muutamassa vuodessa yrityksen konkurssin partaalle. Jobs lupautuikin yhden dollarin kuukausipalkalla palauttamaan Applen yrittäjä-mäiseksi kasvuyritykseksi. Kuten tiedetään – tässä hän onnistuikin varsin hyvin. Väitöstutkimuksen mukaan kasvuun liittyvät ongelmat sekä yhteiskunnassa että yritystoiminnassa näyttävät olevan selvästi sidoksissa managerialistiseen perusasenteeseen ja suoritetun filosofisen analyysin mukaan angloamerikkalainen ajattelu sisältää ison joukon ”kummallisia” käsityksiä ja uskomuksia ihmisestä. Vaikka osaa niistä voidaan pitää valistusajan ja humanistiseen perinteeseen kuuluvina ”totuuksina”, niin tällaisessa (kartesiolaisessa) maailman-kuvassa esiintyviä ihmisen kasvuun ja kasvamiseen liittyviä uskomuksia voidaan pitää todella outoina. Mielenkiintoista asiassa on myös se, että jo 2500 vuotta sitten antiikin Kreikan suurilla filosofeilla, Sokrateella, Platonilla ja Aristoteleella oli täysin tästä poikkeava käsitys ihmisestä Edelliseen nojautuen väitöskirjatyössä on tultu siihen tulokseen, että länsimaissa omaksuttu subjektivistinen maailmankuva perustuu oleellisella tavalla virheellisiin käsityksiin ihmisestä sekä puutteelliseen tietoon ja ymmärrykseen niistä ehdoista, joiden mukaan ihmisen - aristoteelisessa mielessä - ajatellaan kasvavan ihmiseksi. Tällaiset asenteet tulevat näkyviin niissä käytännöissä, joiden avulla mm. juuri yrittäjyyttä on yhteiskunnassa pyritty edistämään. Silmiinpistävää on myös se, että edelleen yliopistojen ja korkeakoulujen koulutussuunnitelmista näyttää puuttuvan sellaiset yrittäjyyden edistämisen muodot, jotka tulevat viitteellisesti esiin sekä Applen tarinassa ja joiden avulla tällaisten kasvuyritysten menestymistä voidaan ylipäätään selittää ja ymmärtää.After acting actively as an entrepreneur some twenty years ago, I noticed that the word “entrepreneur” impressed quite different meanings to scientists who worked with business or educational branch. Previously my own experience in entrepreneurship was involved strongly with social and interactive actions, which have created abundantly a grown oriented atmosphere, thrive, which John P. Kotter had earlier named as an “entrepreneurial spirit”. So, from the beginning the fundamental issue of this dissertation has been a question what is the point of this kind of entrepreneurship and how to lead the enterprise if targeting such kind of atmosphere? The key issue of this kind of entrepreneurship was personnel’s strong commitment to company goals and the ability to focus their psychological energy to achieve these goals. Afterwards I noticed that this was likely the same phenomenon, which Steve Jobs has stressed in his story of Apple success. Initially my intention was to construct the key elements of “team entrepre-neurship” and bring out the basic scientific principles of this kind of enterprise form - emphasizing that this construction would give us better understanding to implement the adequate educational methods as well. Furthermore I have noticed that most studies of entrepreneurship in business sector didn´t recognize my problem at all. It looked like that my idea of “grow-oriented enterprise” or “grow-oriented atmosphere” tended to be too idealistic or even in some way a weird target among business scientists. After all I have been able to trace some scientific reports, which have included theoretical frameworks of empowerment and functions linked closely to leadership efforts in companies - just like cases of organizational changes de-picted by Kotter earlier. Also these themes of empowerment have arisen prom-inently in discussions of Beairsto and Ruohotie, when they established theoretical frameworks of learning and leadership in organizational context. However, eventually the link between entrepreneurship and empowerment looked like theoretically to be too thin or at least too weak. So, it was needed more research based knowledge and deeper understanding of leadership functions and how these functions affect the atmosphere in companies. By then I was graduated a doctor of philosophy in Turku University (2011). The doctoral thesis included the main principles how to lead the companies and what kind of leadership efforts could yield the targeted empowerment and at-mosphere of entrepreneurship in organizational context. My report based widely on Kotter´s studies in 1980´s and the key results of his empirical studies, which indicated what kind of leadership was needed when empowering people in successful companies. The key result of my dissertation was that the critical issue in organizational change was the leader´s pedagogical competence to upgrade suitable learning tasks - usually the major changes maintained in companies demanded huge amount of different and multilevel learning tasks. The main target in leadership was then how to make the personnel to understand the key elements of compa-ny´s new direction and how to learn and qualify these new aims. Also - according to my statement - the most essential thing in pedagogical work was the leader´s ability to get rid of the managerial mindset and solid intention to understand the learning issues much wider than ever before. At that time it was almost impossible to find any leadership themes, suggested by Kotter, in SME research context. Also the political programs did not rec-ognize the themes of “entrepreneurial spirit” in educational context. It looked like the ontological beliefs of entrepreneurship and entrepreneur as an individual were locked tightly in Cartesians worldview, and also the perceptions of man´s ability to learn and grow up to human being are severely constrained. So theoretical tools to construct the key elements of team entrepreneurship was then quite limited after all. However in organizational context, the phenomenon “entrepreneurial spirit” was more familiar, and many educational scientists have characterized it as a grow-oriented atmosphere. Professor Pekka Ruohotie has considered “leadership” as a pedagogical task, which enables person to grow up and finally aims to psychological empowerment. Still it was very demanding to establish an adequate research frame, because the “entrepreneurship” itself was understood so versatile in scientific literature. So, from the start my big interest has been why the phenomenon of “entrepre-neurship spirit” has been so overlooked. And what is the basic nature of entre-preneurship and what kind of beliefs and assumptions we could find behind the entrepreneurship education as well. These research questions demanded obviously a philosophical attitude. It was seen that analysis based on existence-phenomenology could yield an explicit ontological answer and by that we could get comprehensible answers of entre-preneurship itself and entrepreneur as a person. Also this could yield some out-lines to critical fundamental pedagogical questions of entrepreneurship. Conducting this research it has been able to find several Cartesian beliefs based on the traditional subjectivism of human being. It has been also possible to analyze why these beliefs have moved gradually to academic world and to scientific research as well. Especially the idea of an autopoetic person has come up in American entrepreneurship research, but also in educational efforts in Finland and statements produced by EU. One of the most interesting findings in this study is that the basic idea of team entrepreneurship has roots in thoughts conducted by philosophers in an-tique Creek. Following their thoughts, the idea of the entrepreneurship atmos-phere is “a mission impossible” if we are not able to get rid of the subjective view of world or human being. Still it seems that nowadays practices in the en-trepreneurship education are not based on applicable pedagogical efforts which could yield to a person to grow up adequately. Also the most research settings in the entrepreneurship research tended to be false - or at least adequate, because of the paradigmatic commitment to the subjectivist assumption of human being. So we can say that the existent practices in the Finnish school system do not provide entrepreneurship competencies which are needed when establishing businesses like Apple or Nokia. Still there are their own positions for ordinary neo-classic entrepreneurship in society and economic world, but also it is important to notice that - in educa-tional means - every entrepreneurship form demands diverse kind of pedagogical tools. Because of these paradigmatic differences in ontological view, it is not sensible to put them to “the same basket”. After all a remarkable question still exists: why there is no effort to upgrade “team entrepreneurship” education in our school system and universities