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Cannon, Katherine (2017) Do Founding Entrepreneurs Take a Causal Approach to Organizational Structure and Culture? [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)]

PDF (Katherine Cannon Msc Dissertation) - Registered users only - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (580kB)

Abstract

This dissertation explores the approach that entrepreneurs take towards their

organizational structure and culture. As such, the underlying research question is: Do

founding entrepreneurs take a causal approach to organizational structure and culture? In

order to investigate this, existing literature on entrepreneurship, organizational structure

and organizational culture have been critically analyzed. Although there is considerable

research on entrepreneurship independently of organizational structure and culture,

however the approach entrepreneurs take towards these organizational phenomena has

rarely been considered. This dissertation follows a qualitative ethnographic, interpretivist

methodology, using semi-structured interviews, document analysis and participant

observation. The Blue Water Elite Swim Training (BEST) Centre is used as the basis of the

study. According to the research presented in the literature review, as well as the evidence

discovered through the aforementioned methods, it has been found that entrepreneurs use

a combination of both effectual and causal approaches to their organizational structure and

culture, with an element of evolution over time. The overriding limitation to this study

however, is that the BEST Centre is a small organization, with seven permanent employees.

This therefore makes it difficult to generalize the results presented in this dissertation, to

large organizations. This dissertation concludes by considering the implications of the

findings, suggesting that similar studies on whether founding entrepreneurs of larger

organizations, as well as organizations in a variety of industries, are consistent in either their

causal or effectual approaches to organizational structure and culture.

Item Type:	Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Keywords:	entrepreneurship, culture, structure
Depositing User:	Cannon, Katherine
Date Deposited:	11 Apr 2018 09:48
Last Modified:	17 Apr 2018 15:10
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/46115

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