Entrepreneurship Report: Exploring the Dark Side of Leadership

This report examines the multifaceted concept of entrepreneurship, exploring the characteristics and ideological nature of entrepreneurs. It delves into the 'dark side' of entrepreneurship, acknowledging the potential negative consequences of certain leadership traits. The report analyzes the entrepreneurial journeys of Sam Walton and Elon Musk, highlighting their successes, leadership styles, and the ethical challenges they faced. It discusses the impact of their decisions on their respective organizations and the broader business landscape, providing insights into the complexities of building and managing successful enterprises. The report draws on academic sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of entrepreneurship and its implications.

RUNNING HEAD: ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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Entrepreneurship
Report
Student Name
4/19/2019

Entrepreneurship
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Concept of Entrepreneurship relating to dark side of an entrepreneur......................................................2
Entrepreneurs.............................................................................................................................................4
Sam Walton.............................................................................................................................................4
Elon Musk................................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References...................................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Entrepreneurship is defined as the willingness and capacity to develop, plan and organize a
business by taking risk in order to make a profit. Mainly the person who starts the business is
considered as an entrepreneur (Lowe & Marriott, 2012). The entrepreneurs have some
characteristics that help in running a business and have to face failures in order to be successful.
This can be understood with a saying “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
The report consists of concepts of entrepreneurship and the ideological nature of an entrepreneur
that makes the business successful for long run. Furthermore, the report includes a brief
discussion on considering two most successful entrepreneurs and their skills that make them the
leader in the industry.
Concept of Entrepreneurship relating to dark side of an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is a process in which an entrepreneur takes action and plans to establish a
business that is profitable and convert his vision into the reality. It is a creative activity that
requires ability to take risk, be innovative and accept the challenges even after so many obstacles
in order to be competitive in developing an enterprise (Blundel, et al., 2017).
The ideological nature of the entrepreneurship can be understood with the help of these theories
that are classical theory describes that the role of an entrepreneur is more related to production
and distribution of goods in a competitive market whereas resource based entrepreneurship
theory focuses on financial, social and human resources and state that these are important criteria
in process of entrepreneurship. Psychological entrepreneurship theory emphasizes on the
different characteristics or personality trait affects the way an entrepreneur deals with the
situation. So from above it is known that entrepreneurship is multidisciplinary in nature (Dey &
Verduyn, 2018).
As seen in the diagram 1, an entrepreneur is a person who takes action to start a business and this
process of creating, developing and managing the ideas is called entrepreneurship and the end
result is an enterprise that offers goods and services in the market, provide employment,
contribute to the country’s income and in economic development. To run an enterprise the

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person possesses some skills that have some negative and positive outcomes some of them are
there aggressive nature, always winning attitude, capability to courageous decision, leadership
skill, creative thinking and needs to be visionary (Hajizadeh & Zali, 2016). The saying that
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” that means for achieving goals and dreams
a person has to come out of the comfort zone and in the process has to face many difficulties
which includes taking unethical decisions or rational decision without considering the others
opinion. All this can be relate with the journey of the entrepreneurs that means they have to take
risk, come out of their comfort zone, break the barriers and achieve their desires in order to be
successful in the career same as without breaking eggs it is not possible to make an omelette so
for an entrepreneur it is not possible to achieve the success without facing the challenges in the
process of entrepreneurship. As each entrepreneur has their own strengths and weaknesses that
sometimes prove to be beneficial or in other side risky or harm the organization (Bessant, et al.,
2015).
Diagram 1: The Concept of Entrepreneurship
Being a successful entrepreneur is not a trouble free task as there is no guarantee of success. It
requires huge efforts and broad competences in different areas that includes marketing, finance,
management and strong interpersonal skills. Entrepreneurs are not a homogenous group they
Entreprenuer
A Person who take
risk and has an idea
to start a business
Entrepreneurship
It is a process of
implementing that
idea to make profit
from that idea.
Enterprise
It is the end result
of the process , an
enterprise is the
outcome of risk
taken by an
enterprenuer.

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have his/her own characteristics and traits that affect the growth and development of the
organization and totally depend on how an entrepreneur give direction to their vision.
Entrepreneurs have some dark side too and because of that many a times company has to suffer
that cons are desire to applause, sense of distrust and greater extent of control. Their dominating
behavior and contrasting attitude sometimes misfit for the employees and for organization, they
always put their grandiose desires at mercy of others. They always wanted to be ready for future
uncertainties and due to that forget about the present consequences leads to conflict and sense of
distrust. Higher authority and power in hands of entrepreneurs is harmful and dangerous for the
organization their dreams and grandiosity always involve high position but despite of all the
dangers and problems they still make it to the top (Klotz & Neubaum, 2017).
Entrepreneurs
The concept of entrepreneurship is not limited to building an enterprise for making profits but it
has some dark side too that can be understood with the example of two successful entrepreneurs
and from analyzing their skills that sometimes prove to be a negative outcome of their
personality.
Sam Walton
Founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton is a successful entrepreneur. He single handedly built the
company into the biggest retail in the world. Sam Walton began his career in the retail segment
in 1940, and he started a job as sales trainee at J.C Penney Store but it didn’t work out after that
he started with $20,000 borrowing and purchased a Ben Franklin variety store and from his hard
work and skills he made a remark in the retail segment and own 18 stores and by 1987 Wal-Mart
had become the third largest retailer. Because of his creative thinking, ability to take risk and his
great vision are the essential elements in success of Wal-Mart (Bergdahl, 2012).
As an entrepreneur Sam Walton took so many steps to make his company a successful enterprise
but some decisions got negative impact on the society as well as on Wal-Mart. Such as Sam
Walton wants to be a leader and always focus on work and improving efficiency to make the
Wal-Mart a biggest discounted store for that he took unethical decisions and violated many acts
related to overtime working hours, gender discrimination in the company, violating laws relating
to environmental practices and wrongdoing in paying taxes (Abrams, 2017). It is analyzed that

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the vision of Sam Walton leads him to take decisions that harms the society as well as his
organization. His leadership style and analytical skills proves to be a danger to the Wal-Mart and
leads to accepting the criticism and take it as a challenge for further improvement. Sam Walton
followed his vision that guided him to do better and better even it harmed its employee and the
industry As an entrepreneur he always focus on to be a leader who has passion and desire to
grow with the company, motivate his employee to put their best in any condition around a shared
vision (Lidow, 2018). Due to his attitude of be a leader in retail segment and his autocratic
leadership style he made decisions that make the company in troublesome situations some of
them are; He was criticized for his aggressive performance in the industry and wants to gain
monopoly in the market as the largest discounted supermarket chain for that he forced small
retailer to close their business down and this aggressive expansion impacted on employee wages
and working standard in the retailing segment that flowed millions of amount from the retailing
small stores to the Wal-Mart. This impoverished small independent stores and destroyed small
communities in the country. This trait of Sam Walton or this autocratic style of decision makes
it difficult for the whole industry to overcome the crisis and leads to imbalance in the flows in
the country (Gorlon, 2017).
Wal-Mart faced many controversies related to labor disputes and welfare controversy in that
Walton had to pay his workers the minimum wage with doubled time penalty (Banjo, 2012).
Then he communicated to the employees from number of stores and threatened them to fire who
cashed the checks paid to them. Wal-Mart took an aggressive step to shut down its 4 stores
without informing and claimed that stores had plumbing problems later on it was found that there
was no issue and the closures of store approximately affected 2,200 employees and they were out
of work (Boudway, 2012).
This trait of Sam Walton proves to be harmful for the success and growth of the organization as
it demotivates the employees and staff in the company that bring so many controversies and
criticism for the Wal-Mart and the company had paid lot of amount in settlement of the
controversies that arose because of some critical decision taken by Sam Walton as an
entrepreneur (Carlisle, 2013). That showed that as an entrepreneur a person has to take decisions
which always are not ethical but every situation has some pros and cons as the concept of

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entrepreneurship has too but an entrepreneur failures and weaknesses are not counted in front of
their success as it was analyzed in case of Sam Walton.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is inventor, engineer and a transformational and visionary leader and founded PayPal,
SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City that changed the most of the industries and impacted on a global
scale. The innovations of Elon Musk was revolutionary like PayPal changed the way payment
industry worked, SpaceX became the first company in private sector that launched rocket into
the orbit, and Tesla is changing the electric motor industry. He identified his vision and goals
earlier that one person needs in order to be a successful entrepreneur. He gone through so many
failures until a startup gain traction and Elon Musk decided to take on this path to understand the
true meaning of hard work, struggle and hunger of success (Ventura, 2017).
Elon Musk believes in going where others won’t think to go, as he is trying to improve human
minds by connecting it with machines and his competitive spirit make it in action of all his vision
and imagination (Angelova, 2013). “If things are not failing you are not innovating enough” that
was said by Elon Musk as he always tries to think out of the box and do what he thinks is
innovative and challenging for him that make him to come out of his comfort level and face the
problems that can make him learn new things. But with that Elon musk has some weaknesses
that lead him to face many challenges as his wants to win every controversy cost him the war
when he was continuously in controversies due to his tweets; Elon Musk real problem is that he
is not controlling downside of his greatest strength: his unwillingness to fail. He always wanted
to win as his mindset is that any loss may harm his companies but that mindset was useful earlier
to build the companies but this behavior of Elon Musk is not helpful to raise the companies into
mature and sustainable organization (Canal, 2018).
This behavior of Elon Musk impacted his company and Tesla shares prices was fell down by 4%
because of his controversial tweets and business ethic cases. On the other side his erratic and
aggressive behavior or decisions are harming the growth and progress of tesla at present and
another issue was that Elon Musk was sued by securities and exchange commission for fraud
committed that he had tweeted and accepted on social media platform, his individualism decision
making ability affected the tesla and its investors (CBSnews, 2019).

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Elon Musk faced financial crisis of his three companies that make him took decision to lay off
one third of his staff and to close some tesla branches. He was in the fight of his life as there was
only a week worth of cash in his bank, then he decided to raise $40 million to keep the
companies running and after sometimes with an innovative product launch he managed an
unexpected recovery (Nateog, 2013).From analyses of the Elon Musk as an entrepreneur or his
journey as an entrepreneur it was found that his individualism approach helps him to overcome
the failures. These failures not affected his visions and goals for the future, even after all these
challenges he continues to follow his goals to change humanity and live up to the expectations he
has from himself that is risk taking and his confident that showed his desire for own success
(Aguinis & Bradley, 2015). The process of entrepreneurship is difficult as each entrepreneur has
to face difficult behavior and shady times as Elon Musk also criticized for following his
individualism approach that impact the overall organizations and the stakeholders but his
innovations and imagination brings lots of things for the public that will always be the positive
side of his entrepreneurship and due to that success of entrepreneurs their dark side is always
neglected.

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Conclusion
Entrepreneurship is a process of managing and organizing the business and running a business in
a profitable manner by taking risk. The concept of entrepreneurship is not only limited to
establishing a business and running it but includes so many challenges and failures and despite of
that continuing towards achieving the goal. Entrepreneurs have lot to experience as they are
successful because they survived a lot in their journey. Entrepreneurship has dark side too there
is both success and failure in establishing an organization. This was understood in relation to a
statement that “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” That means an entrepreneur
has to face difficulties in making an enterprise successful without breaking eggs it is not possible
to attain the goal that is to make an omelette. It is concluded from analyzing the journey of two
well-known entrepreneurs; Sam Walton founder of Wal-Mart and Elon Musk founder of Tesla
and PayPal. Through their journey it is known that entrepreneurs face so many challenges and
has dark side that was unnoticed by the people in order to be successful. Sam Walton faced
difficulties related to many controversies of Wal-Mart but after all that he continues to be a
leader in retail segment. Another entrepreneur was Elon Musk, he faced financial crisis in his
journey that lead him to see shady phase of the entrepreneurship, from knowing the failures and
difficulties of these entrepreneurs it can be said that some of the decision taken by entrepreneurs
are sometimes proves to be harmful for the organization. So it can be concluded that concept of
entrepreneurship has benefits and flaws too and difficult behavior and shady business deal are
part of the business that leads to an entrepreneur to create a successful career.

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References
Abrams, R., 2017. Walmart Is Accused of Punishing Workers for Sick Days. [Online]
Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/business/walmart-workers-sick-days.html
[Accessed 29 April 2019].
Aguinis, H. & Bradley, K. J., 2015. The secret sauce for organizational success. Organizational Dynamics,
44(1), pp. 161-168.
Angelova, K., 2013. Elon Musk Tells Us How He Went From 'An Introverted Engineer' To Being The New
Steve Jobs. [Online]
Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-being-new-steve-jobs-2013-11?IR=T
[Accessed 23 April 2019].
Banjo, S., 2012. Wal-Mart to Pay $4.8 Million in Back Wages, Damages. [Online]
Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304868004577378381606731206
[Accessed 29 April 2019].
Bergdahl, M., 2012. What I Learned From Sam Walton: How To Compete And Thrive In A Wal-Mart
World. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Bessant, J. R., Bessant, J. & Tid, J., 2015. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 2 ed. UK: John Wiley & Sons
Ltd.
Blundel, R., Lockett, N. & Wang, C., 2017. Exploring Entrepreneurship. London : Sage Publications.
Boudway, I., 2012. Labor Disputes, the Walmart Way. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-12-13/labor-disputes-the-walmart-way
[Accessed 23 April 2019].
Canal, E., 2018. The Huge Challenge Elon Musk Is Facing Right Now. [Online]
Available at: https://www.inc.com/emily-canal/elon-musk-tesla-production-goal-cash-flow.html
[Accessed 23 April 2019].
Carlisle, J., 2013. Wal-Mart Embraces Controversial Causes. National Legal and Policy Center, 2(6), pp.
17-25.
CBSnews, 2019. Elon Musk reaches new agreement with SEC over social media abuses. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-reaches-new-agreement-with-sec-over-his-
social-media-abuses/
[Accessed 26 April 2019].
Dey, P. & Verduyn, K., 2018. Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurship. New York: Routledge.

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Gorlon, M., 2017. How Sam Walton Built The Greatest Retail Empire Of The 20th Century. [Online]
Available at: https://medium.com/@Gorlon/how-sam-walton-built-the-greatest-retail-empire-of-the-
20th-century-926618f1bd24
[Accessed 23 April 2019].
Hajizadeh, A. & Zali, M., 2016. Prior knowledge, cognitive characteristics and opportunity recognition.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior, 22(1), pp. 63-83.
Klotz, A. C. & Neubaum, D. O., 2017. Research on the Dark Side of Personality Traits in Entrepreneurship:
Observations from an Organizational Behavior Perspective. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(1),
pp. 7-17.
Lidow, D., 2018. Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made. New
York: Diversion Publishing.
Lowe, R. & Marriott, S., 2012. Enterprise: Entrepreneurship and Innovation. 2 ed. UK: Elsevier Limited.
Nateog, 2013. Elon Musk discusses Tesla and Space X's near-bankruptcies during Google Hangout.
[Online]
Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/8/4602772/elon-musk-richard-branson-google-
hangout-offers-startup-ceo-advice
[Accessed 23 April 2019].
Ventura, M., 2017. Elon Musk: Entrepreneur and Innovator. US: Abdo Publishing .
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