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Abstract
Effective communication is a primary means whereby entrepreneurs achieve the desired levels of excellence in the development of their organizations. Research suggests that the major reflections of excellence in entrepreneurial organizations focus primarily on the care of customers, constant innovation, committed people and managerial leadership. The keys to achieving acceptable levels of excellence involve four key entrepreneurial leadership strategies: attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning and confidence through respect. Research also suggests that at the heart of successful entrepreneurial management, leadership strategies must be communication-based upon key values and a concern for people that provide the foundational core and a paradigm of interactive cues for the fulfillment of those strategies.
Introduction
Successful entrepreneurship can be described as a process of leading through direct involvement and example-a process that creates value for organizational stakeholders by bringing together a product/service innovation and package of resources to respond to a recognized opportunity. In implementing this process, entrepreneurs function within an operational arena of three dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness, all of which are inseparable from effective communication (Morris, Schindehutte, & LaForge, 2004). Innovativeness focuses on the search for creative and meaningful solutions to individual and operational problems and needs. Risk-taking involves the willingness to commit resources to opportunities that have a reasonable possibility of failure. Proactiveness is concerned with anticipatory implementation, and facilitating action through appropriate means, which typically include the efforts of others.
This three-part perspective takes into account the entrepreneur, the individuals with whom the entrepreneur is directly involved, and the broader "community" of stakeholders in which the entrepreneur is embedded (Stevenson, 2004). An individual typically identifies an opportunity to be pursued and then, as an entrepreneur, must surround himself/herself with individuals to help make it happen and provide the leadership and effective communication necessary to achieve the desired level of operational excellence. In doing so, the entrepreneur is involved with various identifying characteristics of organization development-profound change, value-based operations, cycles of intervention, and process-oriented activities (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2004; Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2005).
The practice of successful entrepreneurial leadership is thereby fulfilled within an array of exciting activities and new creative organizational developments-full of innovations and evolving concepts, constantly changing, and in many cases eluding classification. The interactive nature...