Enterprising competencies of Dirk Scheringa The aim of this paper is to examine the enterprising competencies of Dirk Scheringa. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the competencies of enterprising persons. Several studies show that competencies can help an enterprising person to establish a new venture. Some important competencies are discussed during the lectures of the course Enterprising Behavior. This paper analyzes the following competencies of Dirk Scheringa: networking, teamwork and persuasion (Van Gelderen, 2012). The purpose is to determine which competencies helped Dirk Scheringa to establish his venture and which competencies were the cause of the bankruptcy. The first section of this paper will give a short outline of the biography of Dirk Scheringa. In the second section, each competence will be explained first and will then be analyzed. The last part of this paper will give a short conclusion about the different competencies of Dirk Scheringa and what the main reason is why is bank went bankrupt. Dirk Scheringa was born on 21 September 1950 in Grijpskerk. He grew up in a poor family and quitted school when he was fifteen years old. At the age of fifteen Dirk Scheringa started to work. Because he did not have a diploma he worked hard to prove himself to society. He kept this attitude during the rest of his life. Dirk Scheringa had several jobs before he started to work for the gendarmerie. In 1977 he experienced something awful during his service. At this point, Dirk Scheringa decided to quit the gendarmerie and start his own company. Dirk Scheringa has always been good in finance and has helped his friends with tax for years. This is one of the main reasons why Dirk decided to establish a tax and consultancy agency named Frisia. In the early years of Frisia, Dirk invested a lot of money in his business and this is the reason why Frisia grows quickly. A few years after the establishment of Frisia, Dirk became financially independent and searched for other business opportunities. Dirk builds his own museum for realism and he becomes chairman of AZ. He also turns his tax and consultancy agency into a real bank which he named 'De DSB Bank'. Around 2006 is Dirk a known person and at this point in his life he experiences almost no setbacks. This lasted till October 2009 when the negative publicity around his bank reaches its peak. On 19 October 2009, after a bank run originated by a statement of Pieter Lakeman, the DSB went officially bankrupt. The first competence that will be discussed is networking. The achievement of certain goals is often dependent on networks that an enterprising person possesses (Stam and Elfring, 2008). The importance of an network is clearly: an enterprising person needs to convince customers, suppliers, bankers and other stakeholders of his idea (Van Gelderen, 2012a). It is almost impossible for an enterprising person to be successful without decent network. Networks can contribute in different ways but most importantly "[n]etworks are vital [...] as the give access to benefits, such as, resources, information, support and legitimacy, which are not under direct control of the entrepreneur" (Adler and Kwon, 2002, p. 19). When an enterprising person wants to build a decent network, it is necessary that this person is willing to give something to someone without any guarantee of return. This is an effective way to build up trust and credits which can lead to a person giving something back (Van Gelderen, 2012a). It has been shown that a network is build up out of weak and strong ties. Van Gelderen (2012a) defines strong ties as those people that can be called upon relatively unconditionally and defines weak ties as people that a person knows less well. It can be concluded from the biography that his network plays an essential role in his career. Especially the separation between weak and strong ties is clearly visible. If his weak ties are analyzed it can be concluded that these ties created the opportunity for Dirk to start his museum and they created the opportunity to become the chairman of AZ. If Dirk did not had these people in his network, it was a lot harder or even impossible for him to establish his museum or to become the chairman of AZ. This shows that Dirk uses his network to create new business opportunities. This is in line with the studies of Granovetter (1973;1982) who states that weak ties are able to come up with information and opportunities that are new to a person. Dirk is also aware of the fact that he has to invest in his network without any guarantee of return. On page 157 of the biography, he tells that he does not like to go to charities but that it is important to go if he wants to meet interesting people (Mei, 2010). When the strong ties of Dirk Scheringa are examined it appears that his wife and his four friends are his strong ties. He uses them to seek social and emotional support for his ideas. This is also in line with the study of van Gelderen (2012a) who states that strong ties are useful as they provide an instant basis of trust and familiarity. The second competence that is important for an enterprising person is team working. Most venture or projects are established by a team rather than an individual. According to Van Gelderen (2012b) are teams a group of two or more people who work interdependently on a common goal. Each member of a team can have a different contribution to a project and can have different ideas about a project. That is why it is important for enterprising persons to pay attention to team working. According to Harrison and Klein (2007) it is not the question whether diverse of homogeneous teams perform better but it is important to know which type of diversity a team possesses. Harrison and Klein (2007) distinguish nine different types of diversity. Each of these types has it upsides and downsides. Therefore, an enterprising person needs to be aware of the difference in diversity to manage a team well. It is surprising that the team behind de business of Dirk Scheringa is mentioned only once. He only thanks his team for all the arrangements they made in order to receive a license for banking. He thinks that he thanks the rest of the successes to himself. This means, according to the literature of Harrison and Klein (2007), that Dirk Scheringa elevates himself above the rest. This is also the case when decisions have to be made. Dirk Scheringa does not pay any attention to ideas of the people surrounding him. He believes that his ideas are the best ones and he also wants to make the final decisions. That is why it can be concluded that the team situation described in the book is a situation of maximum disparity (Harrisson and Klein, 2007). As Harrisson and Klein suggest, maximum disparity is a team where one member holds all power and resources and the remaining members have none. The team is split into two groups that completely oppose each other. (Harrison and Klijn, 2007). This is certainly the case in the team of the DSB bank. The last competence that will be discussed is persuasion. "Persuasion is the process of trying to move one or more people to a new or changed believe, attitude, value or behavior" (Van Gelderen, 2012c, p. 2). Many researchers believe that persuasion is one of the most important competencies for an enterprising person to have. The reason for this is that it is necessary for enterprising persons to convince customers, stakeholders and financers of their business idea. If an enterprising person cannot persuade people, he is not able to find any support for his business. Consequently, his business will fail. Therefore, persuasion can be used to win people over to lend their support to a new business. Important to understand is that persuasion does not refer to offering money (Van Gelderen, 2012c). There are three elements that determine the outcome of a persuasion process. These factors are ethos, logos and pathos. In the context of this paper, ethos is the most important one. Ethos "refers to the credibility and trustworthiness of the source of the request: the enterprising person and her venture" (Van Gelderen, 2012c, p. 12). Especially for new ventures, it is important to show customers and stakeholders that the venture is trustworthy and that it deserves their credit because a new venture has to compete with the existing offerings which are already recognized. It seems that persuasion is the competence that caused problems for Dirk Scheringa. A few years after the establishment of Buro Frisia, Dirk became financially independent. Due to this financial independency Dirk did not longer concentrate on his persuasion skills . He was able to buy anything which means that he was also able to buy opportunities. As Van Gelderen (2012c) suggests, persuasion does not refer to offering money. However, this is exactly what Dirk did when he wanted to build his own museum and when he wanted to expand the DSB bank. In the case of the DSB bank, Dirk decided to ask the former minister of finance, Gerrit Zalm, to come and work for the bank . Dirk offered him a €100.000 salary payment but Zalm refused the offer. Then Dirk doubled the salary payment and asked Zalm again who accepted this time. Not only is Dirk not able to persuade people to become an employee of his bank he is also not able to persuade customers and financial authorities about the trustworthiness of the bank. There were always people telling negative things about the bank. Especially on television, where there were broadcasts which showed the viewers why the DSB bank could not be trusted. This is one of the reason why Dirk was not able to gain ethos. Because there was a lack of ethos the bank run, which was originated by the statement of Pieter Lakeman, was possible. Therefore, it can be said that the bankruptcy of the DSB bank is due to the absence of ethos. Dirk was not able to convince his customers about the creditability and trustworthiness of his business. This paper has given an explanation of important competencies for enterprising persons. After each explanation, the competence of Dirk Scheringa is analyzed. This paper has shown that Dirk Scheringa is a good networking person. He is able to maintain and expand his network. It is worth noting that his network consist mostly out of weak ties. It was also shown that Dirk Scheringa works in a team with maximum disparity. This might be one the reasons why his team is mentioned only once in his book. It would be better for him to change his attitude within a team and to pay more attention to the diversity within his team. Diversity can ultimately lead to better and more detailed ideas. The last major finding is that the lack of persuasion skills led to the bankruptcy of the DSB bank. Since Dirk was not able to gain ethos for the DSB bank, Pieter Lakeman was able to originate a bank run which led to the bankruptcy of the bank. This present study provides additional evidence with respect to the importance of competencies for enterprising persons. References Adler, P.S., and Kwon, S-W. (2002). Social capital: Prospects for a new concept. 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