Failure is an option: the entrepreneurial governance framework

Abstract

Purpose It has been more than 20 years since the “Reinventing Government” movement swept through the American public sector. Over time, the tenets of public entrepreneurship and new public management have diverged due to liability and risk aversion. One of the core elements of entrepreneurship is risk taking, and with it the likelihood of failure. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile these issues under a simple framework of “entrepreneurial governance” that works across the elements of knowledge, innovation, opportunity, and implementation. Design/methodology/approach This is primarily a set of problems (liability, risk aversion, critiques) that negatively impacts the application of public entrepreneurship. To build a framework, the author made a substantive review of the literature to “get back to basics” and clarify the problems, as well as draw fundamental concepts about entrepreneurship. Findings The framework was developed by applying the more current notion of “governance” with the basic elements of entrepreneurship, acknowledging that in implementation we have to account for the critiques by reinforcing responsible risk reduction and ethical decision making. Research limitations/implications The intent was to create a framework based on fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship. The limitations/implications are that additional research will have to develop more concrete testing methods and then test the framework. Practical implications The intent here was to create a “practitioner friendly” prescriptive framework that could be almost immediately applied. Social implications A culture shift away from risk aversion (and corrupt practices) has to allow risk taking and with it responsible risk reduction (and failure or success). Originality/value The reliance on existing literature reduces some of the originality, except to re-conceptualize public entrepreneurship in a way that accounts for its shortcomings. The value in shifting culture and responsibly reducing risk is difficult to estimate.