Mark Casson: The Entrepreneur at 30—Continued Relevance?

• Date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Mike Wright,Sharon Alvarez,Andrew Godley
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1180
• Published date: 01 June 2014

Research Pioneers

MARK CASSON: THE ENTREPRENEUR AT

30—CONTINUED RELEVANCE?

SHARON ALVAREZ1, ANDREW GODLEY2*, and MIKE WRIGHT3,4

1Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

2Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship, Henley Business School, University of

Reading, Reading, U.K.

3Center for Management Buyout Research, Imperial College Business School,

London, U.K.

4University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium

Mark Casson’s The Entrepreneur: An Economic Theory (1982) has become one of the most

influential books in the field of entrepreneurship. For the first time, this article outlines its

origins and summarizes its main themes. The article goes on to show how Casson’s subsequent

research has closely followed the research agenda he set for himself in The Entrepreneur and

illustrates the continuing challenge his work presents to entrepreneurshipscholars. The article

is based on an interview the authors conducted with Mark Casson on the thirtieth anniversary

of the book’s publication. Copyright © 2014 Strategic Management Society.

INTRODUCTION

In 1982, Mark Casson’s book, The Entrepreneur:

An Economic Theory, was published. It has become

one of the most highly cited works in the domain

of entrepreneurship, making a contribution to the

subject area by developing concepts of entrepreneur-

ial coordination of resources, judgment, market

making, and intermediation (Landström, Harirchi,

and Åström, 2012). As of the end of December 2012,

it had received 2,070 Google Scholar citations. For

the first time, this article describes the book’s origins

and summarizes its most significant and distinctive

features. The article goes on to examine Casson’s

subsequent work in the field, which has developed

several of the key principles first outlined in The

Entrepreneur: An Economic Theory, and outlines

where the logical consequences of Casson’s view of

entrepreneurship might lead the field in the years to

come. The authors interviewed Mark Casson at

Henley Business School, University of Reading, on

December 15, 2012. Extensive excerpts from that

interview are reproduced throughout the article.

ORIGINS

Born in 1945, Mark Casson arrived at the University

of Reading in 1969, after an undergraduate degree in

economics at Bristol University and doctoral training

at Cambridge. He was an econometrician (Casson

1973 and 1974, for example).But at Reading, he was

influenced by John Dunning (now widely regarded as

the doyen of the field of international business), who

was developing his broad theory of multinational

enterprise (MNE). Dunning’s then research assistant,

Peter Buckley,1sharedMark’s desire for a systematic

Keywords: Mark Casson; history of entrepreneurship; The

Entrepreneur; economics of entrepreneurship

*Correspondence to: Andrew Godley, Henley Centre for Entre-

preneurship, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading,

RG6 6UD, U.K. E-mail: a.c.godley@henley.ac.uk

1Buckley is now professor of international business at Leeds

University.

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Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 8: 185–194 (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sej.1180

Copyright © 2014 Strategic Management Society