Ascetic Entrepreneurship. Religion & Theology Essay

Ascetic Entrepreneurship
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Ascetic Entrepreneurship
Summary
The article Ascetic Entrepreneurship is related to both Ascetic and Business Entrepreneurship. Its main focus, however, is how the notion of ascetic affects the great entrepreneurs. It looks into the concept of ascetic entrepreneurship, exploring who ascetic entrepreneurs are, whether or not they are still around, and how such entrepreneurs influence business in general and entrepreneurship in particular. The book also examines whether Max Weber, the German sociologist, was actually right when he put forward that the advent of Calvinism and its followers was the root cause of the exponential expansion of industry and trade that is witnessed today.
According to Kee (2015), the term entrepreneur has been defined differently by three top experts. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist stated that an entrepreneur is an innovator whose work brings about creative destruction, causing havoc in the existing stable equilibrium. Frank Knight, a professor at the University of Chicago defined an entrepreneur as a risk-taker who is prepared to attempt new ways of doing things and is also ready to accept the responsibility of the failure or success in the new endeavour. The New York University professor, Israel Kirzner defined an entrepreneur as the alert discoverer who sees a new opportunity within the marketplace and exploits it. Combining the three viewpoints results in three dimensions of entrepreneurship: pro-activeness, risk-taking, and innovativeness (Kee, 2015).
According to Kee (2015), the concept of asceticism is linked to the spiritual exercise of monastic living. The Christian ascetic is subordinating any self-seeding goals to those of God’s will. There are two types of ascetics: inner-worldly ascetics and outer-worldly ascetics. The characteristics of inner-worldly ascetics include industriousness/hard work, inner-worldliness, frugality/thrift/stewardship, honesty, use of time, and internal locus of control, calling/vocation, and generosity (Kee, 2015). Examples of ascetic entrepreneurs include Asa Candler who founded Coca-Cola; J. W. Marriot who founded the hotel chain Marriot International; Hans Wilsdorf the founder of Rolex; Truett Cathy who is the founder of Chick-Fil-A; Wal-Mart’s founder Sam Walton; Migros founder Gottlieb Duttweiler; and IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad. Ascetic entrepreneurs make their companies inherently ethical enterprises. On the whole, financial prudence, generosity, ethical practices and hard work would always outperform greed, dishonesty, laziness, and even lavish spending. The former practices, as Kee (2015) has shown in his book, are asceticism at work.
Regarding whether or not Max Weber was right in his assertion, Kee (2015) pointed out that Weber’s argument needs slight revision. While it is true that the ascetic work ethic developed very much by reason of the teachings of reformers starting in the 1500s, the reformers found those concepts in the Bible. The reformers were simply practising the teachings that roused from the Bible; they did not develop them from their own theology.
Theme Development
The theme in the text is how the Ch...