Abstract
Entrepreneurs typically live with the ever-present threat of business failure arising from limited financial resources and aggressive competition in the marketplace. Under these circumstances, conflicting priorities arise and the entrepreneur is thus faced with certain dilemmas. In seeking to resolve these, entrepreneurs must often rely on their own judgment to determine “what is right”. There is thus a need for a technique to assist them decide on a course of action when no precedent or obvious solution exists. This research paper examines how entrepreneurs experience and deal with these dilemmas. The research is based on interviews with seven entrepreneurs in established service-oriented ventures, which gave rise to 26 dilemmas. These dilemmas were analyzed by making use of the Synergy Star technique, which is introduced here as a tool that is useful in defining any dilemma, isolating the ethical component, and resolving the dilemma in a way that is congruent with the entrepreneur’s personal world-view.
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Dr. David Robinson lectures in Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at Queensland University of Technology and Bond University in Australia and is Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Himself an entrepreneur and director of companies with varied business interests, he holds a Master of Science from Brunel University, London, an MBA from Newport University, California and a Ph.D. from Rhodes University, South Africa. Dave is a past surfing and lifesaving champion and is known around the world as ‘Dr. Dave - the Surfing Professor’.
Per Davidsson is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director of Research at Queensland University of Technology, Australia and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Jonkoping International Business School in Sweden.
Hennie van der Mescht is Associate Professor and Head of the Education Department at Rhodes University, South Africa.
Philip Court is Associate Professor and Head of the Management Department at Rhodes University, South Africa.
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Robinson, D.A., Davidsson, P., van der Mescht, H. et al. How Entrepreneurs Deal with Ethical Challenges – An Application of the Business Ethics Synergy Star Technique. J Bus Ethics 71, 411–423 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9148-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9148-8