Gestión de riesgos y oportunidades

While writing about entrepreneurship, the authors usually perceive this notion as specifi c personality features, attitudes and behaviours of a person that are based on “the tendency to undertake new actions, improve the existing elements of the environment and creatively active attitude towards the reality that is surrounding the individual”6_{. The scope} of the notion is either narrower or broader, dependently on whether it takes into account only “the management of the enterprise”7_{, generally} understood “business activity”8_{, or whether it is perceived as a method} of self-realisation because it results from “the need of independence, 6 _{M. Duczkowska-Piasecka, Przedsiębiorczość na wsi, in: A. Woś (ed.),} Encyklopedia agrobiznesu, Innovation Foundation, Higher School of Sociology and Economics, Warsaw 1998, p. 634.

7 _{T. Hunek, Makroekonomiczne uwarunkowania rozwoju “small businessu”} na terenach wiejskich, in: K. Duczkowska-Małysz (ed.), Przedsiębiorczość na obszarach wiejskich. W stronę wsi wielofunkcyjnej, IRWiR Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 1993.

8 _{A.P. Wiatrak (ed.), Rola doradztwa w kreowaniu przedsiębiorczości na obszarach} wiejskich, IRWiR PAN,Warsaw 1996.

motivation to succeed, individualism”9_{. However, concentrating the} attention on individuals, the tasks of an economic character undertaken by them (intended to bring profi t) and stressing the novelty of their actions is a common feature of various suggestions for defi nitions. In fact an entrepreneurial person perceived in this way becomes a synonym of a phantom called homo oeconomicus, which is favoured by liberals and is guided only by rational calculation and an isolated social, historical and cultural context10_.

Contemporary rural sociologists perceive entrepreneurship as an activity that goes beyond an activity concentrated on farming. Also, the notion of social entrepreneurship that is becoming more popular nowadays does not include many aspects that used to be important for the forms of team cooperation in the country such as orientation at not only economic profi t but also at more superior purposes (shaping civic attitudes and skills of cooperation, promotion of education, progress in patriotic and social feelings, moral improvement, etc.). Moreover, references to standards accepted in the environment that were clear in former initiatives (that often take the form of conscious reference to traditional forms of self-organisation and mutual help) and the close relationship of those initiatives with farming, as the most important purpose of individual activity that at some point demands complementation in collective actions directed at the same priority, are often ignored.

All of the mentioned assumptions create such an image of entrepreneurship that is not only far from the realities observed in many developing countries and in places where success has already been accomplished but also that does not allow for taking into account a range of enterprises typical of the country of the past. As a result, this makes it impossible to refer (theoretically and practically) to those experiences as historically verifi ed social resources of rural environments.

The defi nition of entrepreneurship suggested here refers to all initiatives undertaken both by individual people (individual entrepreneurship) and jointly with others, while thinking about a wider group of benefi ciaries (social entrepreneurship), that, while not necessarily violating conventional values, make an attempt to use available resources (material and human) in a new way in order to maintain or increase the 9 _{B. Fedyszak-Radziejowska, Społeczność lokalna a rozwój przedsiębiorczości,} in: M. Kłodziński, A. Rosner (eds.), Rozwój przedsiębiorczości na terenach wiejskich wschodniego i zachodniego pogranicza, IRWiR PAN, Warsaw 2000, p. 160.

10 _{See: J. Beksiak (ed.), Państwo w polskiej gospodarce lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX} wieku, PWN Scientifi c Publishing House, Warsaw 2001.

living standards of a family or the whole community. Therefore,placing entrepreneurship that is perceived in this way in the local context and not exploiting or even devastating its resources is its essential element; it is, to a large extent, collective and traditional and not individualistic entrepreneurship. It is an aspiration to create additional value of a social character (fulfi lment of a liability, earning respect and prestige of the environment, call an institution of higher utility into being, initiating new forms of group cooperation and group bonds, etc.).

Extending the range of the notion of entrepreneurship comes from a conviction, based among others on the readings quoted below, that entrepreneurship motivated in an endogenous way is practicable and therefore does not mean the devastation of found order and the destruction of existing mentality. As it will be shown in cases described below, the concept that differentiates entrepreneurship from ordinary resourcefulness or thiftiness (that in turn are based on the effi cient use of existing resources without going beyond previously known and accepted methods) does not have to be imposed in a strict way. Instead of forming “creative destruction” it can be negotiated, and so to say familiarised, and presented in categories that are accepted by the surroundings. Owing to the use of “soft social engineering” it comes to the weakening or even levelling of the shock effect, and the new imperceptibly becomes a piece of tradition and not an element that breaks the continuity and violates the sense of identity.

Therefore, I suggest analysing entrepreneurship in categories of ethos activities perceived as “a style, way of life, attitude of a given social group, moral ones in particular”11_{. For example, when describing} various forms of economic activity undertaken in Asian countries, Brigitte Berger declares herself in favour of such a broad treatment of entrepreneurship. The author indicates that as opposed to the classical model formulated by Max Weber all initiatives observed by her and a group of her colleagues were closely related with the orientation on the family and neighbourhood group (entrepreneurial familism). In fact, the functioning of such entrepreneurship cannot be explained in the language of concepts related to the personality of an individual. As Berger writes, entrepreneurship is a quality of a person “deeply submerged in their culture”12_{. It means that market behaviours ought}

11 _{S. Jedynak (ed.), Słownik etyczny, Publishing House of UMCS, Lublin 1990, p. 66.} 12 _{B. Berger (ed.), The Culture of Entrepreneurship, Institute for Contemporary} Studies, San Francisco 1992.

to be interpreted not in economic categories but in cultural categories – the exchange of information, transfer of symbols, operating on values. Also, it comes out of this that entrepreneurial people, independent of their inclination to novelties, should manifest a large amount of conformity, i.e. they should be quite typical representatives of their group. Otherwise they would not have any chances to become a local authority and their behaviours would not be followed.

The literature related to the Polish countryside (farmers’ diaries, speeches by social activists, scientifi c studies) is very rich. Analysing manifestations of entrepreneurship, at fi rst individual and then social, illustrated by specifi c exemplifi cations aims at both documentary value and theoretical intentions: to suggest a hypothesis that concerns the relationship between the fi rst and the second form of entrepreneurship and the relationship (mechanisms of transposition) that joins both types of capital (human and social) with entrepreneurship phenomena.