Entrepreneurial Leadership In Kuwaiti private firms

Abstract

This study examines the traits and characteristics of entrepreneurial leaders within the Kuwaiti context, by drawing from the different but related leadership and entrepreneurship theories. We first identified several areas where these fields theoretically converge with an emphasis on traits, styles and behavioural characteristics, which led to the emergence of a new leadership paradigm herein referred to as ‘entrepreneurial leadership’. Entrepreneurial leadership is conceptualised as a process of social influence, transformation, and empowering in rapidly changing and uncertain contexts. We operationalised the construct of entrepreneurial leadership by identifying the key traits and characteristics of Kuwait’s private sector leaders. These traits and characteristics included the leaders’ values and beliefs, vision, proactivity, creativity and innovation, opportunity-seeking and risk-taking. The study adopted a predominantly positivist ontology and objective epistemology in order to better understand the phenomenon under investigation (i.e. entrepreneurial leadership). This necessitated obtaining data largely from surveys of 345 leaders, mainly from the financial banking and investment sectors of Kuwait, complemented by qualitative data from 12 interviews. The study provides important insights into the concepts related to entrepreneurial leadership in a non-Western environment and enriches our knowledge in this sector of the management field. The research contributes to knowledge on leadership in Kuwait by conceptualizing a model of entrepreneurial leadership, which places emphasis on leaders’ traits and characteristics and how that relates with leadership effectiveness. The implications of the research relate closely to the way in which companies must be managed or led in a global and competitive environment.