Entrepreneurial Competences: Comparing and Contrasting Models and Taxonomies

Abstract

The emphasis on competences as capturing key aspects of entrepreneurship is relatively recent and quite distinct from research on entrepreneurial traits or cognitive styles in that competences represent observable and measurable knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and skills. Many competency taxonomies and models have been proposed by scholars, as frameworks organized into tiers of competences including descriptions of the activities and behaviours associated with that competency (Chouhan and Srivastava, IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 16(1): 14–22, 2014). However, no comprehensive set of entrepreneurial competences has emerged from these distinctions and no or little empirical evidence has been provided to validate these categorizations (Morris et al., Journal of Small Business Management 51(3): 352–369, 2013). This study compares and contrasts three traditional models (Morris et al., Journal of Small Business Management 51(3): 352–369, 2013; Bartram’s, Journal of Applied Psychology 90(6): 1185–1203, 2005, with the EU Entrepreneurship Competence Framework; Bacigalupo et al., EntreComp: the entrepreneurship competence framework, EUR 27939 EN, Publication Office of the European Union, 2016) previously empirically validated by the authors.