Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management

Task 1: Specialising start-up businesses

Concept of SME

Small and medium sized entrepreneurs or SME are the business leader who encompasses micro, small and medium sized business with specific numbers of employees. The micro business firms has less than 10 employees and an annual turnover under €2 million and small firms have less than 50 employees and an annual turnover under €10 million. On the other hand, the medium sized business are characterised by less than 250 employees and an annual turnover under €50 million (Choudhary et al., 2019). Generally, SMEs are individual firm with less than 50 employees, where the business entrepreneurs focus on arranging capital and develop creative ideas to establish the firm strategically by hiring the efficient employees and managers. It favours flexibility and innovation with cooperative working practices, where the entrepreneur of the SMEs focuses on creating a more competitive and healthier economy (Choudhary et al., 2019). There is great contribution of the SMEs in the economy across the globe and the government is also influencing small size entrepreneurs to develop individual firm to support the economy and employment. The entrepreneurs are trying to adopt creative business solutions for generating profitability as well as they try to provide the best quality products and services to the customers.

Financial contribution of micro, small and medium private organisations to the UK Economy

Financial contribution of SMEs in the UK is significant to ensure economic growth and social development with 99.9% of the SMEs. There are 5.94 million small and medium sized organisations in the UK in the recent years. Total employment in the SMEs of the UK was 16.8 million and yearly turnover is approximately more than £2.3 trillion (52%). Employment of the small business was 13.3 million with a turnover of £1.6 trillion (Choudhary et al., 2019). Hence, the SMEs are contributing with high turnover and employee generation in the UK that further enhances economic growth and social development across the countries. The private organisations are hereby expanding their operations across the UK with government legislative structure and employment rules, in order to run their business ethically (Rowe-Haynes, 2017). The entrepreneurs of the SMEs are innovative to start up their business and run the operations efficiently for which the SMEs are contributing in the UK economy for sustainable growth and social development.

Comparing the impacts of SME on UK regions

As per regional development, London has more than 1.1 million private sector organisations that are operating under SMEs. On the other hand, the south east of the UK has more than 932,000, business firm operating across the cities, in order to generate profitability and creating gross domestic products (Al Abdulrazak and Razak, 2020). The major causes of the contribution of the SMEs in the UK economy are such as value added to GDP, innovative business solutions, creativity in developing the best quality products and services, as well as boosting local communities, helping morale ethics, technological advancement and business expansion. There is revenue generation and profit maximisation in the SMEs which enhances economic growth and social development across the UK (Saeed and Ziaulhaq, 2019). The SMEs are hereby successful to generate profitability in different UK regions by exploring creative solution and strengthening their customer’s base. Across London and north eastern region of the UK, there is increasing numbers of SMEs where the entrepreneurs try to renovate their organisational activities for contributing in national economy under government rules and ethical practices.

Comparing effects of SME on retail and restaurant industry of the UK

The percentage of SMEs in the restaurant chain is increasing and in the last year there is 58% SMEs in the restaurant chain in the UK. On the other hand, the percentage of SMEs in the wholesale and retail industry is increasing to 60% with profit generation and employment creation in the UK economy. Total volume of retail sales is increasing over the period of time in the UK, however due to COVID pandemic situation; the growth rate fell by 1.9%. Profitability and sales volumes are also increasing over the period of time (Saeed and Ziaulhaq, 2019). There are increasing amount of SMEs in the retail industry of the UK which contributes positively in the UK economy (Rowe-Haynes, 2017). The major causes of business expansion of the SMEs in restaurant industry of the UK are innovative services, technology, easy to book for hospitality services, as well as diversify products and services and affordable prices, for which the sales volume is increasing over the period of time, the retail industry is also growing in the UK where more than 60% companies are operating under small and medium sized business.

Comparing impacts of SME on EU countries

Italy is one of the active members in the EU, where SMEs generate 66.9% of overall value added in the Italian non-financial business economy. This exceeds the average valued added amount of 56.4% in the EU. The share of employment generation is also increasing in Italy with more than 78%, where the employees are efficient to contribute efficiently in the SMEs to create values and maximise the organisational profitability. Hence, the SMEs are playing crucial role in the Italian economy to increase overall Gross Domestic Products and maximise employment generation with the expansion of small and medium sized business (Al Abdulrazak and Razak, 2020). Germany is another EU nation, where SMEs are expanding their business activities across the cities. SME plays a big role in Germany to create employment and provide job opportunities to the employees promotes stability and development of the regional economies with creative services and innovative products that contributes in ensuring economic progress. About 37% of total corporate turnover in Germany is generated by the SMEs (Rowe-Haynes, 2017). Hereby, it can be stated that, small and medium sized entrepreneurship are beneficial for the business leader to create unique business solutions and contribute in the economy for securing future business sustainability.

Task 2: Analysing Deborah Meaden entrepreneurship

Concept of an entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship refers to the concepts of developing and managing the business venture in order to maximise profitability by taking several risks in the corporate world. The six concepts of entrepreneurship are change, need resources, exploring creative solutions, managing stakeholders, creating values and develop strategic planning to run the business strategically. The entrepreneur of the business firm tries to identify the risk factors and develop innovative concepts for effective strategic planning, so that the organisation would be able to renovate their activities and achieve the brand objectives successfully (Portes and Guarnizo, 2019). Innovative concept generation and exploring the risk mitigating strategy are the major role of the business entrepreneurs, who try to run their business creatively and achieve future success. The material skill of the entrepreneurs and creative leadership style are helpful to run the employees and develop creative solutions for the business (Park, Lee and Kim, 2020).

Business oriented concept and creative ideas of the entrepreneurs are also beneficial to establish the business uniquely in the market and hire the efficient employees to run the business operations in a systematic way. Hence, the entrepreneurs are responsible to explore good strategic planning and improve organisational capacity to meet the strategic aim of the business. There are different types of entrepreneurship such as small business, large company entrepreneurship, and scalable start up, international entrepreneurship, environmental and technical entrepreneurship. As per the business size and activities, the entrepreneurs try to develop the action plan and arrange adequate capital for establishing the organisation with creative ideas. In this context, the entrepreneurship of Deborah Meaden will be evaluated, where Deborah Meaden studied in the business college with the aim of becoming entrepreneurs of own business. She has very little capital and launched her own glass and ceramics import company supplying the upmarket stores like Harvey Nichols. Through creative business solution and strategic planning, Deborah Meaden aims at establishing her own organisation and maximising networks in long run.

Explaining the difference between an entrepreneur and a manager

The major difference between entrepreneur and manager is their roles in the organisation; the entrepreneur is the owner of the company, whereas the managers in the company are the employee who handle the operations and other employees in the workplace to meet the organisational aim and objectives (Bismo, Halim and Erwinta, 2021). The entrepreneur is visionary and bears all the financial risks related to the business, on the other hand, the manager’s work in the firm for salary and do not have any financial risk. The entrepreneur focuses on starting up the business activities and develops expansion strategic with innovative business ideas. The managers focus on daily smooth functioning of the business in order to run the operations efficiently. The entrepreneur provides rewards to the employees for their efforts in the business and aim at maximising own profitability in order to manage other stakeholders of the business. The managers gets remunerations for their contribution and their motivation comes from the power they have in the firm and the financial rewards for them (Tsvetkova and Partridge, 2017). The entrepreneur motivation is the business achievements and profit maximisation, so that the aim of establishing the business can be fulfilled. Managerial concept is much more formal and structured as compared to the entrepreneur, where the entrepreneur is strategic orientated with new opportunities in the business. The managers are driven by the organisational resources and maintain single staged commitment upon decision. As per reward philosophy, the entrepreneur get rewards from the business through value driven, performance based activities and team oriented achievements (Park, Lee and Kim, 2020). On the other hand, the managers get reward through security driven, resource based and promotion decision in the workplace. Hence, there are differences in the roles of an entrepreneur and the managers in the company, where the entrepreneur is the owner of the company and develop strategic decision to support the business activities. The managers mainly follow the decision made by the entrepreneur and strategies the operational activities for meeting the business objectives.

Utilising the Big-5 Model and assessing Deborah’s entrepreneurial personality

Through the Big-5 Model, it is possible to assess the individual personality of an entrepreneur, in order to analyse and evaluate the entrepreneurship style and approaches to run the business efficiently. As per the Big-5 Model, the five factors are such as Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Openness, and Stress Tolerance that provides a scope to evaluate the personality of the entrepreneur in establishing the business systematically (Julien, 2018). Agreeableness is the tendency of the individual with respect to the social harmony and this trait reflects the ways the individual gets along with other, how cooperative they are and how they might interact with a team. For the entrepreneurship, it is important to give the personality of agreeableness to cooperate and communicate with others in the organisation, in order to develop a strong team in the workplace and lead the team members efficiently towards achieving the future success (Akpan, 2020). Careful to others, disciplined and impulsive behaviour ate there in the entrepreneur, which leads the entrepreneur to structures the business activities by involving the employees and leading them strategically. Deborah Meaden is an efficient business woman with the aim of developing the organisation creatively and achieving high competitive advantage in the market. She is cooperative with others to develop strong team in the workplace, so that the business operations can be handled proficiently. With high cooperation and team work at the organisational workplace, Deborah Meaden aims at improving internal bonding and developing strong corporate relationship with the managers and other employees at the organisation in order to strategize the operations to serve the ultimate customers across the international market. She becomes a successful business entrepreneur with creative thought and ideas where she is able to cooperate with others and develop strong team where involvement with the staff, empowerment of the managers in the corporation as well as collaborative decision making practice are helpful for Deborah Meaden to achieve the business aim.

In addition to this, consciousness is the measure of how careful, self-disciplines, organised and deliberate an entrepreneur towards the business so that he or she can lead the employees towards achieving the organisational success through performance management (Linton and Solomon, 2017). Employee productivity and performance depend on the personality of the entrepreneur, as the entrepreneurship style motivates the staff members and encourage their creativity towards the business activities. Deborah Meaden is efficient to manage the employees and she focuses on developing her own business since she was a student. With the aim, she tries to develop strong team to run the operations of the business and establish the glass and ceramic importing company in the market, so that the business can gain high competitive advantage and secure future sustainable development. She is conscious towards her employees and managers and care for them by providing them monetary and non-monetary rewards. She tries to be self-disciplined and visionary to run the business strategically. She also tries to communicate the vision of the company and values with the employees so that the employees and managers can understand the perspectives of the business and contribute positively in running the operations strategically. Extraversion is another factor as per Big 5 model, where the entrepreneur with high extroversion is related to sociable outgoing and energetic (Mallett and Wapshott, 2020). Deborah Meaden shows her personality towards high extraversion to support the employees and managers in the business. Being extrovert, she tries to share her perception with other board members and managers, in order to discuss over the business ethics and creative operations, so that cooperatively she can achieve the business success. She is energetic and self-disciplined to run the business efficiently and she tries to continuously motivate the team members for better management and leading them with strategic aim and creative solutions. Openness and stress tolerance further help her to work with others and develop strong bonding with the employees in the organisation. She can manage stress, empower the employees, create values for them through involvement and providing rewards in order to manage the staff members and guide them to maximise their performance.

Utilising Maslow’s Pyramid for determining correlation between entrepreneurial characteristics and entrepreneurial success

Maslow’s Pyramid is an effective model to identify the personal needs and the characteristics of the entrepreneur in order to manage their business activities and gain achievements in near future (Burrows and Curran, 2018). As per the Maslow’s Pyramid, there are five needs, psychological, safety needs, love and belongingness, self-esteem and self-actualisation. As per the psychological needs, the person tries to meet the basic needs including clothing, food, water, shelter and air, as well as safety needs are also essential to maintain personal security, health, property and employment. The employees try to secure their future through health and safety, job security and gaining high salary to meet the basic needs (Kumar et al., 2021). These factors are useful to reshape the characteristics and develop strategic planning to handle the employees. Additionally, love and belongingness in the organisation is crucial to develop corporate bonding with others at the workplace and on the other hand, the entrepreneurs also focus on self-esteem and self-actualization by gaining respect, status in the society, freedom to work, promotion and recognition in the workplace. Deborah Meaden is efficient to promote self-esteem and self-actualisation in her organisation by supporting personal and professional growth of the employees, and also guiding them to increase their productivity and performance.

Meaden has specific ambition with self-confidence, she also tries to get degree in business management and fulfil the aim of becoming business entrepreneur with the ability of developing strategic planning, exploring creative solutions and running the business proficiently. Trust and respect for the team as well as providing continuous support and guidance to the staff are helpful for her to meet the strategic business aim.in this regard, the entrepreneurship characteristics of Meaden are helpful for her to create values for the employees and lead them successfully with high performance and productivity. Meaden is successful to develop entrepreneurship characteristics and understand the requirement of the employees at the workplace, which further influence Meaden to develop employee management by providing them monetary rewards and meeting the five needs as per the Maslow’s pyramid that further provide her a scope to develop strong employee base and run the business activities strategically. Hence, there is interlink between the entrepreneurial characteristics and entrepreneurial success, Meaden is efficient to meet employee needs and create values for them to improve their performance so that it would be possible to deliver the best quality products and efficient service to the customers across the international markets. Discover additional insights on Employee Relations for Business Success by navigating to our other resources hub.

Evaluating influence of other factors fostering or hinder entrepreneurial success

There are several factors that influence Meaden to achieve the business aim and become a successful entrepreneur in the business world. Education is the major factor where she has completes the business management coursework with personal and professional knowledge and skill developmental process, which provides her a scope to gain business ideas, creative solution and making decision for the organisations. Additionally, passion towards business is another factor for which Meaden become successful in the business world. When she was a student, she focuses on becoming a successful business entrepreneur and with the ambition; she tries to gather vast knowledge and ideas to establish a successful organisation in the market. The financial base was not strong initially, for which she has faced difficulties to run the business activities with innovation and creativity. She tried hard to arrange capital and gain high return on the investment for raisings funding to the business. Through continuous investment opportunities, raising fund by maximising business profitability and business expansion, she tried to establish the bard in the market. The entrepreneurship skill and passion towards the business are the major success factors for Meaden to achieve success. She is also knowledgeable about the creative business ideas and the employee management practice, where she focuses on creating values for the staff, providing high return on the investment of the shareholders and investors as well as handles the management team in order to run their operations in a systematic way. The knowledge and skills set of Meaden further provides a scope to develop the business and make the organisation successful.

Reference List

Akpan, I.J., 2020. Scientometric evaluation and visual analytics of the scientific literature production on entrepreneurship, small business ventures, and innovation. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, pp.1-29.

Al Abdulrazak, R.M. and Razak, S.A., 2020. SMES and market growth. Entrepreneurship Marketing: Principles and Practice of SME Marketing, p.387.

Bismo, A., Halim, W. and Erwinta, M.A., 2021. Knowledge Management Strategy, Innovation, and Performance in Small Business Enterprise in Indonesia. The Winners, 22(1).

Burrows, R. and Curran, J., 2018. Not such a small business: reflections on the rhetoric, the reality and the future of the enterprise culture. In Work and the enterprise culture (pp. 9-29). London: Routledge.

Choudhary, S., Nayak, R., Dora, M., Mishra, N. and Ghadge, A., 2019. An integrated lean and green approach for improving sustainability performance: a case study of a packaging manufacturing SME in the UK. Production planning & control, 30(5-6), pp.353-368.

Julien, P.A. ed., 2018. The state of the art in small business and entrepreneurship. Routledge.

Kumar, S., Vanevenhoven, J., Liguori, E., Dana, L.P. and Pandey, N., 2021. Twenty-five years of the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development: a bibliometric review. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development.

Linton, J.D. and Solomon, G.T., 2017. Technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and the small business—technology and innovation in small business. Journal of small business management, 55(2), pp.196-199.

Mallett, O. and Wapshott, R., 2020. A History of Enterprise Policy: Government, Small Business and Entrepreneurship. London: Routledge.

Park, S., Lee, I.H. and Kim, J.E., 2020. Government support and small-and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance: The moderating effects of diagnostic and support services. Asian Business & Management, 19(2), pp.213-238.

Portes, A. and Guarnizo, L.E., 2019. Tropical capitalists: US-bound immigration and small-enterprise development in the Dominican Republic (pp. 101-131). London: Routledge.

Rowe-Haynes, M.D., 2017. Micro-finance and small and medium-sized enterprises: the social, economic and environmental impacts of community development finance institutions in the UK (Doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham).

Saeed, A. and Ziaulhaq, H.M., 2019. The impact of CEO characteristics on the internationalization of SMEs: Evidence from the UK. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences/Revue Canadienne des Sciences de l'Administration, 36(3), pp.322-335.

Tsvetkova, A. and Partridge, M., 2017. The shale revolution and entrepreneurship: an assessment of the relationship between energy sector expansion and small business entrepreneurship in US counties. Energy, 141, pp.423-434.

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