The Entrepreneurial Shift: Americanization in European High‐Technology Management Education

Citation

Bátiz‐Lazo, B. (2005), "The Entrepreneurial Shift: Americanization in European High‐Technology Management Education", Management Decision, Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 464-465. https://doi.org/10.1108/md.2005.43.3.464.1

There are many ways to approach “Americanization” (pop culture, consumerism, imperialism, etc.). Locke and Schöne handle it in terms of the history of management education. History is the operative word here because they are not social scientists but historians. In the book's introduction, they refuse to conceptualize “Americanization” as a “neutral analytical category,” thereby ducking disputes with social scientists. Not only do they treat “Americanization” as recent history but they divide the history into two periods of quite different historical content. The first is the time between 1945 and 1975 when the M‐Form US‐based firm dominated, with top down management through planning and control techniques. US‐based management schools developed education programs, which were emulated in Europe and elsewhere, suited to this postwar managerial environment. “Japanization” superseded this era (1975‐1990) which brought with it new bottoms‐up participative forms of management, although it little effected the business school education. Locke's (1996) previous book concentrates on this era. He claims that the management forms and processes of the decades following World War II, “Americanization” proved inadequate in this new environment. Although he now concedes that much of this so‐called “Japanization” was really a form of “Ameicanization”, in that Americans proselytized Japanese methods worldwide. The second period of “Americanization” (1990 to the present) succeeds this “Japanization” and it differs from the first period of “Americanization” as much as governance of large corporations differs from managing entrepreneurial start‐ups. Whereas in education during the first “Americanization”, business schools serviced the management framework of large firms (the firm's endoskeleton), in the second, they have had also to learn how to service the start‐up firms, through a habitat external to, but essential to them (their exoskeleton). The book focuses on this second period of Americanization.

It starts with Phenomenal Silicon Valley. Although the authors are interested in entrepreneurialism in general, they are especially concerned with high technology entrepreneurialism brought about by the industrial revolution accompanying the digital revolution. The chief point is that, by 1990, the Valley was not just a high‐tech centre but an entrepreneurial centre that captivated the imaginations of people all over the world, including Europe. Chapter II describes how US‐based business schools responded to the new entrepreneurialism, with special emphasis on high‐tech centres, adding the entrepreneurial dimension to their business studies program. Subject matter includes curricula, research and community outreach. However, the main focus is about the creation of a new discipline. Then, in chapter three the authors turn to Europe, and within Europe, to three countries in particular, Germany, France, and the Czech Republic.

Locke and Schöne do not try to compare the current state of European entrepreneurial studies with their counterparts in the US. They simply state that the European countries started their entrepreneurship studies late and developed them less lustily than the Americans. The source of this “retardation” is the subject of Chapter III. The authors analyze the management education traditions in France and Germany, showing how their inherited forms and content blocked (and still do) the creation of entrepreneurial study programs in the two countries.

In the next two chapters, the book considers the state of entrepreneurship studies in France and Germany (IV) and the networking that has developed to foster high‐tech start‐ups (V). Both countries suffered from a lack of entrepreneurism and have tried to use new entrepreneur studies, with varying success, to foster start‐ups. This part of the book is based on extensive interviewing of educators in entrepreneurship studies. Chapter VI covers much of the same ground, with interviews, for the Czech Republic, a case of “arrested development”. The book closes with a chapter of conclusions and policy recommendation concerning the development of entrepreneurial studies.

The study is well researched and written. But there are a number of caveats. It generally fails to distinguish between phenomena affecting all types of small and medium businesses and those unique to high‐tech start‐ups. The educational connection is the obvious difference, but are there others? Moreover, the authors fail to discuss the suitability of US models to European conditions. France and Germany, for example, traditionally use internal funding and bank financing, not external models of finance. A more sophisticated treatment of differences is needed in order to understand the penetration of entrepreneurial studies from US into Europe and, therefore, the extent of this “Americanization”.

But these reservations do not gainsay the value of the book. It is a pioneering work because it looks at entrepreneurship, education, and technological development at the same time, and on a comparative basis in different countries. It should be obligatory reading for those interested in these subjects.