The Entrepreneur and the Other Factors of Production
Elementary economics asserts the saliency of the
entrepreneur among other factors of production being the one factor that
combines other factors in the production of goods and services. The churning
necessity of other factors in the act of production makes the importance of the
human factor something that can not be overemphasized. Money, land and the
other factors will remain, at best, what they are, if the entrepreneur is not
involved.
When faced with an unavoidable need to produce, the
entrepreneur brings to the fore, his knowledge, abilities, skills, learning,
experience and what have you, in other to bring about the very necessities of
mankind. Without these attributes, the entrepreneur may not be too different
from the other dormant factors of production. Therefore, it can be said that
what stands the entrepreneur out are the knowledge, abilities, skills,
learning, experience, etc that he possesses.
Sometimes however, the human factor in the process of
production may not possess much of all the above attributes. This development
brings about the dichotomy between skilled and unskilled. While the human
factor in possession of the afore-mentioned attributes may be referred to as
being skilled, the one without will be called the unskilled. However, no matter
the dichotomy, even the unskilled labour can still not be compared to the other
factors in the production process because the labour called unskilled does the
dirty jobs, for example, cleaning the factory floor after production, sweeping,
dusting the offices, moving files from one office to another, etc, without
which the production process will be incomplete.
It therefore follows from here that whatever the
manifestation form of the human factor in the production process, whether
skilled or unskilled, its importance still can not be over-emphasized.
The Human Factor and Skill Acquisition
The skilled/unskilled dichotomy notwithstanding, (because
there is no part of the production process that doesn't require one skill or
the other, even “ordinary” sweeping), what each human factor in the production
process requires is the very necessary need to sharpen whatever skill it
possesses with the vision of upgrading such skill and also, possibly, acquire
new and more profitable skills.
The position in the preceding paragraph stems from the fact
that the human mind, even at birth, isn’t a tabula
rasa (i.e. a clean slate). Every human factor in production brings something
unique that the other may or may not know how to do. For example, it may be
possible to have managers who have never swept all their lives, it therefore
follows that for the production process to be complete, somebody must be there
to rid the organization of environmental filth and those generated in the
production process so as to make the environment, habitable, and welcoming,
even to the customers/clients.
Apart from some inborn skills (which are not very common),
skills can also be acquired in diverse ways ranging from structured to unstructured.
The structured means of skill acquisition are usually planned and mapped out
for particular purposes they are designed to achieve within the organization in
the production process. Unstructured skill acquisition means however, most
often, are unplanned and accidental, and most times are individualistic in
nature without the organization being involved. Whichever, the goal of skill
acquisition is to develop the individual human factor in preparation for a
better performance both in personal life, and in organizational involvements.
Whatever the level hitherto attained by the human factor
before enlisting in an organization, the truth is that there is always the need
for knowledge upgrading for the purposes of performance improvement by keeping
in tandem with the latest global best practices in the field of choice. Skill
acquisition, also known as training and development, equally ensures that the
employee (human factor in production) contribute meaningfully to the
organizational development. A lack of skill acquisition and or upgrading may result
in career stagnation.
