Business Commons^™

The Bigman Metaphor For Entrepreneurship: A "Library Tale" With Morals On Alternatives For Further Research, Alex Stewart

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Melanesian Bigmanship (a meritocratic, enacted career of political-economic leadership) is recounted as an anthropological metaphor for entrepreneurship. This “library tale” has two purposes. The first is a demonstration of conceptual uses of ethnographies for developing grounded theory. Propositions are generated on entrepreneurial orientations and opportunity structures. Opportunities are seen to arise in the creation of linkages between spheres of exchange, or fields in which an object exchanges at different values. Entrepreneurial tactics, such as converting between spheres, call for skills in informal planning, astute use of timing, and networking. These “tactical” skills coexist with “moral” skills, in persuasiveness, the manipulation …