Entrepreneurship in a Bureaucracy: The Case of Friedrich Althoff

Discusses the factors relating to the success of Friedrich Althoff as an innovator (or entrepreneur), within the nineteenth century bureaucratic Prussian public administration, that enabled him to be the driving force in the building of the university system. These include acquiring control over resources (salesmanship); the political skills of evaluation, of dealing with superiors in the system, and negotiating with other departments and other powerful groups (Althoff had to bypass hierarchical constraints from above); mastery of his own field, tight management; and an immense capacity for work. The prevailing stereotypes of bureaucracy have no room for the public entrepreneur who succeeds only by usurping the role of bureaucracy within his own private realm.