L’entrepreneur comme un homme prudent

Abstract

This article proposes to unify the economic theories of the entrepreneur by the theory thomist of prudence. It supports that the principal quality of the entrepreneur is to be prudent. It presents in the first two sections the theories of the entrepreneur by organizing them around two traditions. The tradition - Cantillon - Knight - Schumpeter - defines the entrepreneur as a taker of risk able to manage uncertainty and to innovate. The tradition - Say- Mises- Kirzner - defines the entrepreneur as a man ordinary, alert with the profit and able to have a good judgement on the businesses. These two thesis are not opposite but complementary. To innovate, indeed, it is necessary to have to identify a profit. The quality of alertness is in this direction a prerequiste to the innovation and the taking risk. The contemporary literature has, nevertheless, makes a certain number of criticisms to this concept of alertness. The theory thomist of prudence makes it possible to raise them and unify on new bases the whole of the figures present in economic sciences and of management. The principal quality of the entrepreneur is well to identify the profits not exploited on the markets, but instead of reducing this quality to alertness it is preferable to define it as a form of economic prudence. The prudent entrepreneur is that which deliberates well. A good deliberation imagines and innovates (Schumpeter). It judges (Say, Knight) in a dubious world of the appropriateness of the imagined projects. It orders finally at the period convenient to act and mobilize resources to concretely carry out the perceived profits. Imagination, the judgement and the command are thus principal qualities of the entrepreneur i.e. of the careful man. The entrepreneur is thus the man who deliberates for well acting.