Entrepreneurship, Collective Entrepreneurship and the Producer-Owned Firm

Entrepreneurship is predominantlyassociated with the activities of an individual actor –the entrepreneur. It has also been related to theconcept of firm ownership (e.g. Foss and Klein,2005). This may lead to the conjecture that acollectively-owned firm is a setting for collectiveentrepreneurship. However, such reasoningencounters a number of taxing questions. Ifentrepreneurship is usually related to the individual,how does the collective embody entrepreneurialspirit and lead to effective outcomes? These andother questions will be addressed in this paper,which is mainly based on a review of the literature.The paper starts by providing an overview of thedifferent schools of (economic) thought onentrepreneurship. Subsequently we discuss theimplications for the conceptualization ofentrepreneurship when it is not carried out by anindividual but by a group of people. Finally, thenotion of collective entrepreneurship will be framedwithin the context of the producer-owned firm inagriculture, by considering conditions under whichcollective entrepreneurship can be attributed to thecooperative.