How Organisational Culture Can Help to Institutionalise the Spirit of Innovation in Entrepreneurial Ventures Available to Purchase

Managing the process of growth in a successful small business is a critically important task for the entrepreneur. Both the academic and practitioner press are full of advice to the entrepreneur about how to handle this process. This advice, if accepted, tends to create organisations that are more formal and bureaucratic than the entrepreneurial organisation. Too frequently, the consequence of this bureaucratisation is that the innovative spirit which contributed to much of the success of the entrepreneurial organisation is diminished. It is contended that innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit do not need to be diminished by the transformations necessitated by successful growth. By managing the growing organisation′s culture while institutionalising structural changes, the entrepreneur can maintain the entrepreneurial spirit within the business as well as successfully manage growth.