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The ASKO dialectical framework for entrepreneurial courses construction: theoretical foundation

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Abstract

Entrepreneurship education undergoes a growing phase with numerous courses and programs provided worldwide. Entrepreneurship is also extensively studied in order to attain its own theory. Evidently, disperse outcomes from diverse entrepreneurial courses, either formal or informal, are observed. The article adopts dialectics aiming to conceptually assemble factors, promoted as crucial for viable business venturing, into a holistic and theoretically consistent two-dimensional representation. The emergent framework can be quantified and utilized for entrepreneurial courses construction or pre/post-course measurements. Shifts in trainees’ perceptions, indicative for the outcome of a course, can be consistently mapped. The ASKO framework (i.e., ability, support, knowledge, and opportunity) addressed in the present article is a first attempt to obtain a coherent base for further development of educational tools for the construction and assessment of entrepreneurial courses. It also provides a typology of four complementary conceptualizations for business venturing along with a new set of entrepreneurial beliefs regarding factors of success.

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Notes

  1. Mindset denotes generally the way of thinking (i.e., a state of mind) popularized as a psychological trait by C. Dweck. It encompasses beliefs and attitudes and orients a person’s response to situations.

  2. ‘Marketistic’ may not be an agreed and acceptable term. It is used here just to reflect the objectively conceived influence of the market on business venturing. Apostrophes are dropped in the sequel.

  3. Knowledge here involves what an individual personally knows (the ‘knower’) and what she/he can obtain through others (the ‘knowers’). It is used differently than information in the sense that the individual believes in its validity and in its essential contribution to the success of the venture.

  4. There is an ontological debate in entrepreneurship about the entrepreneurial opportunity which is beyond the scope of the present article (e.g., Sarasvathy et al. 2003).

  5. The present approach refers to opportunity perception. It follows the Austrian perspective in economics which assumes that opportunities are gestated in the environment but also involves the individual in the process as a ‘cognitive match’ has to happen in the individual-opportunity nexus of Shane and Venkataraman (2000). Scholars, especially from management studies, call this initial perception as ‘entrepreneurial idea’ that can be converted to opportunity through human action. This discussion overwhelms the present analysis which simply implies that a concept of ‘opportunity’ is taught in entrepreneurial courses. The follow-up of human action, i.e., the exploitation of opportunity, involves all poles of the ASKO representation.

  6. This customary classification is clearly met in the subjective/objective views of opportunity (Sarasvathy et al. 2003).

  7. This is the concept of ‘individual-opportunity nexus’ of Shane (2003).

  8. In various streams of the literature, learning is considered organizational and knowledge is attributed to the organization or teams. In the present educational perspective, the individual is the unit of analysis, i.e. the learner, who has the potential to participate in enterprising groups and contexts.

  9. Dialectical opposition of knowledge and ability may appear surprising in a first instance. It has to be clarified that it emerges from two hypotheses: (a) individual as a level of analysis and (b) time shortage in pursuing opportunities. The individual seeks for success in finite time in order to timely seize opportunities. Ideally, knowledge and abilities can evolve together but their full development may exceed any expectation for efficient decision-making. The full acquisition of knowledge and abilities can leave the individual idle. This difficulty is implicitly tackled in studies that promote collaborative teams or entire organizations as units of analysis. Such a change in the unit of analysis introduces issues relevant to group dynamics, communication and confidence among team members, knowledge management, etc. A simple transfer of these concepts to the individual (an analogy) yields entrepreneurship pertains only to ‘wise’ and ‘skillful’ persons. In the current educational approach, the analysis is done toward the individual while her/his attitudes need to be captured. Therefore, knowledge and ability are inserted as dialectically opposite poles in the ASKO representation.

  10. As in a previous comment on knowledge and ability, it can be assumed that, ideally, successful entrepreneurship can due to both opportunity and support. Businesses based on outstanding opportunities that are fully supported are unlikely to fail. Nonetheless, any conception of risk disappears under such a consideration. An individual, who is the unit of analysis, is improbable to meet such circumstances in the environment when asked to act entrepreneurially. Her/his imbalance between opportunity and support is depicted in the ASKO representation by the dialectical opposition between the previous concepts.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported by the Greek Ministry of Education through the ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’ program at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The author is grateful to Emeritus Professor P. Georgiadis for comments and encouragement, to Dr. Georgios Efstathiou for comments and to Mrs. Chelsea Lazaridou for proof-reading and commenting the manuscript.

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  1. Sustainable Development and Entrepreneurship Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Peloponnese, Tripolis Campus, 22100, Tripolis, Greece

    Alexandros Kakouris

  2. National Observatory of Athens, Lofos Nymphon - Thissio, PO Box 20048 - 11810, Athens, Greece

    Alexandros Kakouris

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Kakouris, A. The ASKO dialectical framework for entrepreneurial courses construction: theoretical foundation. Entrep Educ 2, 51–69 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41959-019-00013-4

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