A review of entrepreneurial leadership learning: An exploration that draws on human, social and institutional capitals

Abstract

This chapter explores entrepreneurial leadership learning – what it is and how it is different to leadership learning within employed contexts. We use Communities of Practice (CoP) theory as a lens for understanding how owner-managers learn entrepreneurial leadership. Drawing upon an empirical case study of an SME leadership development programme and an autoethnographic account of one of the owner-managers, we explore how entrepreneurial leadership learning becomes manifest in the entrepreneurial context and how it can be developed within a CoP. Developing this further we use the notions of human, social and institutional capitals to illustrate how such learning becomes manifest: the connect between individual skills, knowledge and attitudes within social relationships supported through an organised structure with guiding informal rules of collective engagement.