Comparing Entrepreneurship and Leadership: A textual analysis

Lew Perren

One of the working groups examined management, leadership and entrepreneurship in UK small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The group commissioned this paper at an early stage in its work to help it cope with the semantic confusion caused by the similarities and differences between the terms entrepreneurship and leadership. This was felt to be important to inform the integration of the group's recommendations with the Council's overall management and leadership strategy. This paper was originally intended to be no more than an internal document for a meeting of the working group, but it has proved useful in other discussions and it is therefore offered as a working paper. It is recognised that it cannot be viewed as a comprehensive and complete study, it is offered in the spirit of stimulating debate. Subsequent to the production of this paper a more extensive study of management and leadership abilities was conducted using a similar textual analysis (see Perren and Burgoyne, 2002)