Entrepreneurship

Alongside more general attention to land, labour and capital, in certain economic analyses entrepreneurship is treated as a full factor of production, its reward being profit. The entrepreneur exercises a co-ordinating function in the capitalist economy, and arguably had even more influence in the nineteenth century, before the functions of manager and financial backer became almost entirely divorced. But even when financial capital and managerial skill have been separated, it can be cogently argued that high-quality technical managers and outgoing investors, who are prepared to be adventurous on occasion without being rash, can be crucial to the success of an industry, a sector, or even a whole economy, especially in its developmental stages. An entrepreneur, or even better an entrepreneurial class, prepared to break with tradition where economic advantage is concerned, dedicated to the pursuit of profit, and unashamed of their profession of making money, could obviously be a qualitative asset to the factor-input constellation in any developing economic situation. The real question is very much just how important they were, and it is not an easy subject to assess systematically or quantitatively. Recent studies of the Dutch situation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have tended to emphasize the steady and gradual improvement in the quality of entrepreneurship, rather than sudden leaps forward in managerial technique and capitalist risk-taking.