Stella Toyosi Durowoju¹, Abideen Adekunle Tijani²

Abstract: The success of an entrepreneurial organisation towards meeting its objectives is largely dependent on the effective management of roles. An effective development and survival is attainable in entrepreneurial organisations since originators have the compassion to give their best for achieving the sustainability of the organisations through hard work and commitment. Entrepreneurs are generally thought to be abnormal people because they are unique and creative in their thoughts and ability to change an old way of doing things to more acceptable modern and global standard. This study used secondary data from extant literatures in international and local academic journal articles, textbooks and other useful articles on the web sites. The inability to get adequate responses from entrepreneurs is responsible for desk research due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. Also, entrepreneurial organisations partially closed their businesses and this necessitated the use of secondary data. The study adopted two role models: Managerial Roles proposed by Henry Mintzberg and the Founder’s Multiple Roles Model by Peter Wilson and Sue Bates. The study concluded that roles that need to be implemented by the founders and their managers must be articulately carried out in entrepreneurial organisations in order to achieve stated objectives such as corporate survival. Furthermore, the study recommended that investment in training and development of workers should be put into consideration to enable them cope and adjust to assigned duties and functions that is accompanied by technological innovations towards corporate survival.

Keywords: Managerial and Founder roles; Entrepreneurs; Wealth creation; Behaviour; Managerial skills

JEL Classification: L26

1. Introduction

Managerial roles cannot be separated from successful entrepreneurial organisation because they are core to business survival and growth. Effective role management prescribed in an entrepreneurial organisation enhances the achievement of set business goals and objectives, accompanied by strategies and utilisation of resources. Individual role should be flexible and adaptable and easy to understand by all concerned within and outside the organisation because there is no static organisation. No product or service remains the same over time; that is why managers should be able to articulate their roles from the introductory stage of the business to the growth stage in order to avoid decline. Therefore, entrepreneurs represent unaffordable change agents because of the decisions they make and their role modelling behaviours that predict the internal and external environment of the organisation. In most organisations in Nigeria, Entrepreneurs refuse to separate themselves from the business. This is because of their needs for achievement, (McClelland), threat from competitors, delegation of powers to employees and passion to make the business a success with the adverse effects to entrepreneurs’ health in the long run.

The cycle of effects arising from entrepreneurs’ passion is that they promote development that contribute to poverty reduction and more jobs (Edoho, 2016). This is strengthened by Korsgaard et al. (2016) that entrepreneurs in Nigeria deploy their knowledge to ameliorate the socio-economic crisis that is associated to an environment. Entrepreneurial organisation has therefore become an essential feature of development in Nigeria. In contrast, many people believe that entrepreneurs are destructive, even though technology innovation has made the entire world to be a global village where ideas and inventions can be shared for the benefit of the consumers and sustainability of the business. Nonetheless, the actions of entrepreneurs negate this disposition, as entrepreneurs are creative and innovative because they accept high rate of failure and encourage high number of trials involving calculated risk taking. This means innovation seeking to differentiate between the past products and markets and the promising future (Akinfolarin, 2007).

In the opinion of Weihrich and Koontz (2005), an entrepreneur is a person who does similar things as the intrapreneur, but outside the organisational setting. This means that while an intrapreneur is a person that exists within the organisation only, even though he has innovation and creativity like an entrepreneur, he may not have other characteristics needed to own his business. While an entrepreneur can be found both within and outside the organization setting, he provides all the necessary things to make the business grow. The constant worldwide flow of people, ideas, news, money and technology has created a new global neighbourhood that can bring benefits to the entrepreneurial organisations. Being the owner of a personal business is expedient if the entrepreneur has the supports and encouragements from both informal and formal sectors of the economy. In this case, a successful entrepreneur must be able to combine the managerial roles with innovativeness and creativity in order to achieve his goals; although recognised structures are largely found within a more reputable firm. Most entrepreneurs engage informal sources for their ideas, such as being sensitive to the complaints and change comments of friends and associates.

Meanwhile, it has been observed that founders of entrepreneurial organisations are faced with challenges of annexing all the factors of production in order for the business to survive. These factors of production include: Entrepreneur, Capital/finance, Land (fixed assets) and Human resources (employees). It is however noteworthy, that human resources are the most difficult of all these factors to manage because they can think, feel and pay attention to issues that may negatively affect their survival and business success. On the other hand, 80% entrepreneurial organisation is reported not to survive business after every five (5) years in Nigeria (Agwu & Emeti, 2014). The general business problem was the high failure of most entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The specific problem was that some entrepreneurial organisation business founders lack the skills to delineate managers’ roles that would lead to the business survival. Despite these noticeable challenges, founders of entrepreneurial organisations have passion for what they do and the need for accomplishment in the business. An entrepreneur manages his organisation for success, sustainability and continuity of all means of production for profit and success. Therefore, a review has been done in this study to delineate on how to effectively manage individual roles in an entrepreneurial organisation. Hence, these perspectives will make founders’ ideas and dreams become a reality for launching their own businesses despite any confronted obstacles because of the enormous risks involved in the business. It is in this view that this study used a desk research to appraise how the managerial skills of founders are useful to nursing entrepreneurial organisations in Nigeria.

2. Conceptual Exploration

There have been different scholarly perspectives to explaining the concept of entrepreneurs. From the behaviour perspective, entrepreneurs are conceptualised as having the feelings, attitudes, activities, sentiments, performance, attitude to work and belief on the venture (Ogundele, 2007). Also, Ogundele (2007) theorised that entrepreneurial behaviour can be categorised into two stages: Pre-Emergence Behaviour and Entrepreneurial Practice Stage

1) Pre-emergence behaviour is affected by many factors such as: family background, parental occupation, economic environment, peer influence and political environment.

2) Entrepreneurial Practice Stage involves: Management skill and strategies involving such areas as record keeping and financial control, inventory control, human resources, marketing, strategic management. Time management and negotiation are critical during the growth stage of a new venture. Other important skills in managerial relationships of entrepreneurs with people are: negotiation, opportunity seeking, independence and self-confidence, persistence, risk taking, goal setting, information gathering, persuasion and networking and personal values.

From the perspective of roles, Henry Mintzberg establishes the understanding of managerial roles. The findings of the extensive research by Henry Mintzberg in 1975 espouses there are five managerial roles which are: Factory foremen, sales managers, administrators, presidents and even street gang leaders. Additionally, Mintzberg (1975) concludes that there is considerable similarity in the behaviour of managers at all levels. All managers, he argues, have formal authority over their own organisational units and derive status from that authority. The status causes all managers to be involved in interpersonal relations with subordinates, peers and superiors, who in turn provide managers with the information they need to make decisions. This is strengthened by Weihrich and Koontz (2005), affirming that all managers in entrepreneurial organisations are made to do one assignment, function or the other at a particular time, even if the duration for carrying out the duty varies doing the same. This could be due to the individual background, behaviour, personality, skill and motivation to do the job among other variables. These different aspects of a manager’s job in an entrepreneurial organisation cause manager at all levels to be involved in a series of interpersonal, informational and decisional roles which Mintzberg defines as organised sets of behaviour (Yalokwu, 2000) as demonstrated in table 1 below:

Tabel 1. Nature of Managers’ Roles in Entrepreneurial Organisations: Mintzberg Perspectives

Source: Three Categories of Mintzberg Managerial Roles Adapted from Robbins, Judge, Millet And Waters-Marsh (2008). Organisational Behaviour. Australia. Pearson Education (6)

The table above indicates entrepreneurial organisations can survive if manager’s roles are clearly delineated at the starts, early growth and sustained growth of the organisation. This assists the managers or workers to understand how they can contribute to accomplishing and achieving the business goals. Goals can only be achieved with required resources to meet customers’ demands and any other necessities the business requires in the future.

3. Significance of Managerial Skills to Entrepreneurial Organisation Survival

Survival represents the continued existence of an organisation even in a difficult circumstance (Business dictionary.com 2014). The survival of an entrepreneurial organisation is subject to how the founders adapt its managerial roles and fully utilize resources to the changing environment. Thus, all the functional decisions regarding the growth of the organisation is premised on the investment of the founders for survival. In accordance, Jones and Bartlet (2008) agree that survival and growth of entrepreneurial organisation require the investment and resourcefulness of the founders. This indicates that corporate survival is key to businesses irrespective of locations. In terms of the dimensions of corporate survival, it has been theorised as flexibility and vibrant management skill. These measures are derived from the research works of (Teece et al., 2010; Zahra et al., 2006). In this context, Mintzberg Katz (1975) identifies three essential management skills that could be applied to entrepreneurial success:

Technical skills: This espoused the use of specialised knowledge or capability. However, not all technical skills require formal education to be learned in schools, or formal training programmes. All jobs require some special skills, while some develop their specialised knowledge on the job.

Human skills: The ability to work with, relate and motivate others individually and in groups. In contrast, it has been argued that beyond these skills, managers need the resilience and flexibility to provide novel solutions to vagaries of problems that face the entrepreneurial organisation. Dalziell and Mc Manus (2004) conceptualise resilience and flexibility as responsive behaviours showed by organisation through defined roles to survive in the changing environment Eniola and Ektebang (2014) argue that strategies to survive by an entrepreneurial organisation reside in the managerial skills and technological innovation. Although, it has been noted that some managers are poor listeners, incompetent to comprehend the needs of others, or have difficulty in the management of conflicts. Therefore, entrepreneurs are known for getting things done through others. They are expected to have good human skills to converse, encourage and delegate.

Conceptual skills: Entrepreneurs necessity involves having the mental capacity to analyse and identify multifaceted conditions. Based on the above fundamentals in every entrepreneurial organisation, the necessity of growth espoused the need to delineate multiple founders’ roles expectations.

4. Founders’ Future Roles in Entrepreneurial Organisation Survival: An Overview

In an entrepreneurial organisation, the founders’ roles is to ensure it experiences a vigorous growth level. This indicate in the growth process. The founder has the responsibility to share the business vision, goals and encourage full participation. The cycle of effect led to all round growth for the individual, team and organisation at the growth process. It is therefore believed that doing this objectively is aimed at meeting external stakeholders’ expectations and creating market advantage in today’s business environment (Danilda & Thorslund, 2011). Founders are owners of the entrepreneurial organisations. Most often, they started either as managers in Small and Medium enterprises before becoming an entrepreneur. The roles the entrepreneurs perform before as managers are improved upon, and also in some cases, maintained when they become owners of their businesses. Success and continuity of the business is paramount when founders consider the need for achievement of their goals and objectives which has to come through the interaction and performance of personnel in their employments. While the business is expected to reach its growth, the complexity of managing the enterprise size may be cumbersome without delegating some of the founders’ functions to relevant employees. It is therefore necessary to consider some of the roles that founders of entrepreneurial organisations must be able to comply with in order to meet future requirements for the sustainability of all the resources invested in the organisation. Some of the roles are illustrated and adapted from Wilson and Bates (2003) in table 2 below:

Table 2. The Founders’ Multiple Roles Model

Source: Adapted from Peter Wilson and Sue Bates (2003, 258). The Essential Guide to Managing Small Business Growth. England. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

In the light of the table, the success of founders’ multiple roles is subject to two opposite structures. Mechanical and organic. Each structure is suited to achieve specific outcome under certain growth conditions. Therefore, each structure is expected to delineate internal and external stakeholders’ roles, the more the growth experience of the entrepreneurial organization the more the manager loses connection with other levels. The structural characteristics expected of entrepreneurial organizations is organic. This structure is encapsulated with flexibility, transformation, less bureaucracy and widening possibility.

5. Overview of Challenges and Prospects of Entrepreneurial Organisation Survival in Nigeria

The business founder identifies with the firm because the business is part of the founder and the decisions most often are taken by him personally because he takes all the risks and profits involved in the business. The success and failure of the business depends on the founder ability to coordinate all the resources efficiently. That is why he will not delegate important functions to the employees or kin because of fear of losing the leadership of the business and his business strengths to the competitors. Trusting investors to the business despite inadequate finances or lack of capital becomes a problem as a result of risk of releasing the business secret to an outsider who may take over the business from the founder. In Nigeria most entrepreneur organizations are found, managed and controlled by the founders, that is why the study advised that entrepreneur organizations should be independent created.

Some of the challenges faced by entrepreneurial organisation in Nigeria are associated with poor financing opportunity, poor managerial roles, and multiple taxation as indicated by Agwu and Emeti, (2014). On the prospect of entrepreneurial organisation, there are opportunities for growth through access to different long-term loans from financial institutions. However, entrepreneurial organisation prospect is largely dependent on efficient infrastructural facilities, human capacity building and tax incentives (Agwu & Emeti 2014). In contrast, entrepreneurial organisation survival is attributed the manners the internal stakeholders in terms of workers are critically handled (Svensson et al., 2016). Additionally, in an attempt to reduce the problems confronted by entrepreneurial organisation, there is need to avoid heavy reliance on recommendations from contacts and friends, which is perfectly satisfactory if the recommender fully understands the job specification, and if the recommended person is measured against that specification and against other candidates. Senior positions are reserved for family members whether or not they are the best qualified people available. If these

6. Conclusions

Scholarly discourse agrees generally that entrepreneurial organisations should be well delineated in doing the things they intend do or in the manner they intend to act. Risks exist in all entrepreneurial organisations such as dealing in products that may be subject to change in the economy such as inflationary rate. As a result, the reviews of past literatures affirm that survival is connected to the managerial roles of founder of the business. Previous studies indicate that entrepreneurial organisation needs several factors to survive. Among the critical factors include management skills, founders’ personality to define roles and access to financing (Lawal, Worlu, & Ayoade, 2016). This position supports this study, that in Nigeria of today, for entrepreneurial organisation to survive, they cannot do without managers’ roles and skills. Lawal et al., (2016) further affirm that business owners should recognise these critical factors if they attempt to survive and as well experience growth while doing business in Nigeria (Lawal et al., 2016). Therefore, irrespective of factors required for survival, Parnell et al. (2015) acknowledge that knowledge management is critical for all founders of business. This will enable founders have approaches that can create a positive- trajectory for survival (Parnell et al., 2015). To conclude during start-up, sustaining entrepreneurial organisation involves selecting persons that are effective team players, accompanied by training to develop their team work skills, and reward individual for cooperative efforts.

Organisations operate as open system where all the variables are interdependent and interrelated for sustainability; hence, all roles performed by managers must be included in entrepreneurial business by the founder so that goals and objectives of the organisation can be achieved by all individuals involved in the productivity and performance of the assigned duties.

7. Recommendations

Nigeria entrepreneurial organisations should understand that hard times do not last, but hard people last. In order to survive, consideration must be given to all the resources that abound in their environment in which business activities take place so that adaptation to both planned and unplanned change will reduce the negative effect of unstable economy to both the organisation and workers.

Participation of business entrepreneurial organisations in social welfare will reduce the burden of early retirement and retrenchment of workers when the organisation is embarking on staff reduction. Also, investment in training and development of workers will enable them cope and adjust to any technological innovation and boost morale and reduce turnover of workers.

Effective communication and cordial relationship with workers and management will lead to trust and confidence in building a profitable entrepreneurial business. Whichever way, managerial roles and founders’ multiple roles are considered, the goal of every manager and founder is to be productive and make profit at lower cost and risk to the organisation.

8. Contribution to Knowledge

While it is believed that the founder invested from informal and formal sources, lack of delegation by the founder may hinder the survival of the business. While some authors argue that managerial roles are different from entrepreneur’s roles, the problem is that at what point can we separate these roles or are they interwoven? Bearing in mind that managers of entrepreneurial organisations may become an intrapreneur and also later develop his own business and employer of labour.

While we may separate these roles in abstraction, we must consider that in real business world there is no clear distinction because of the environmental, financial and other resources involved in the business. No entrepreneur will want his life investment to go down the drainage because he wants to be the boss without getting involved in day-to-day running of the business and role-model as manager where necessary, not just as founder.

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APPENDIX

Table 1. Mintzberg Managerial Roles

Source: Adapted from Robbins, Judge, Millet And Waters-Marsh (2008). Organisational Behaviour. Austrailia. Pearson Education (6)

Table 2. The Founder’s Multiple Roles Model

Source: Peter Wilson and Sue Bates (2003, 258). The Essential Guide to Managing Small Business Growth. England. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.