Entrepreneurship Versus Corporations A View of the Effects on Society Essay

Ever since the first establishment of entrepreneurial businesses, the effects they have on society have been continually examined and debated. Some view that having entrepreneurship in American society is a benefit to the overall outcome of our economy, while others argue the opposing side saying that entrepreneurial businesses only damage society or that large business are doing the same thing with less harmful effects on society. It is important to view and to make an analysis of both sides of the argument before agreeing with one viewpoint over the other.
In order to understand the different viewpoints in the argument on the effects of entrepreneurship in society, one must first know and understand truly what entrepreneurship is. In America it seems as if nearly every individual has a slightly different opinion of who an entrepreneur is or what entrepreneurship is. In the book Entrepreneurship authors William Bygrave and Andrew Zacharakis define entrepreneurs as “the person who destroying the existing economic order by introducing new products and services, by introducing new methods of production, by creating new forms of organization, or by exploiting new raw materials (Bygrave 1).” Others define entrepreneurship as the art or science of innovation and risk-taking for profit in business, the process of pursuing opportunity and leveraging resources to create value, or as a process whereby enterprise is employed and leads to the pursuit of opportunity through new ventures. Nearly all of these definitions outline the same thing: that entrepreneurship is the act of starting one’s own business as its own entity. Yet, for the sake of this analysis, one must also note that “entrepreneurial firms are defined as firms that satisfy one of the following conditions: (i) They employ fewer than 100 employees; (ii) They are younger than 7 years old; (iii)They are new entrants into the market (Mirjam van Praag 353).”   Now that there is a clear standard for what...