In the previous chapter I have examined tourism at an aggregated level while placing it in the wider historic and economic context of the region. I take now a closer look into the different strategies of guesthouse owners. From this standpoint, my respondents are tourism entrepreneurs in a post-socialist rural setting, a category that so far has not been the subject of substantial research.
Very broadly speaking, economy represents the production, circulation and consumption of goods and services (Carrier 1997:viii). In contemporary capitalist economies, people who, given their innovative vision, were able to produce and circulate a new type of commodity or service, have been called entrepreneurs. Attempts at defining entrepreneurship have been made by many scholars, they have a long history and span several disciplines70. Common to many definitions is the emphasis on the
element of novelty and innovation in entrepreneurship, which is rooted in SchumpeterÕs classic contention that
the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on (Schumpeter 2003[1943]:132).
Along these lines, some authors argue for a distinction between entrepreneurship research and the study of small firms (Thomas et al. 2011:965). Here, however, I will follow Landstrom who sees the two areas as overlapping and argues for approaching them together (Landstrom 2009:21). Taking then a more inclusive view, imitation does not exclude entrepreneurship, while innovation can be judged relative to different levels of the market Ð local, regional, national, or global (Smallbone and Welter 2009:136). Since all private ventures in tourism are a rather new development in the Romanian
countryside, I use terms such as ÔguesthousesÕ, ÔbusinessesÕ or ÔenterpriseÕ interchangeably to refer to any form of tourism accommodation, regardless of its scale or degree of novelty. I do however distinguish between imitation and innovation when examining and explaining the different entrepreneurial ventures that I observed.
Moving away from these very general standpoints, it is useful to consider that business characteristics depend on their specific line of activity and they also vary across particular geographic and historic contexts. My focus here is on tourism entrepreneurship in a post-socialist rural setting, narrowed down to two locations in Romania: the villages of Bran and Moieciu and those in Albac and its vicinity. Although a significant part of tourism research is concerned with its business side (Tribe 2010:30), there is surprisingly little research with an explicit focus on tourism entrepreneurship. Li reviewed papers published in seven of the leading journals in hospitality and management between 1986 and 2006 identifying all the articles on this topic. He found that out of 4917 papers, only 97 addressed entrepreneurship, representing around 2% of the total (Li 2008:1016). Most of these articles relied on quantitative research methods. Just 19 papers were based on interviews and only 3 involved field observation (1017). The majority of texts examined by Li were empirical and just 25 of them could be classified as theoretical (idem). Concluding, Li suggests that there is no specific theoretical framework for studying tourism entrepreneurship and that research is carried out guided by existing theories of other disciplines like economics, psychology, sociology or management (1018). However, most such concepts and theories were built on observations drawn from established market economies. Based on their extensive research of post-socialist economies, Welter and Smallbone warn that in such contexts, this framework must be used with caution (2009:230). Entrepreneurs cannot exist if the patterns of production are under state control, as it happened for decades in many socialist and Soviet countries with centrally planned economies. One of crucial and undisputed characteristics of postsocialism is the shift from this centrally planned economy to one based on the so-called ÔfreeÕ market. This new context might have provided a legal and political frame that allowed and even encouraged entrepreneurship, but people faced significant challenges in their business endeavours, particularly given the previous lack of entrepreneurial models in their society and because of the high degree of uncertainty and frequent changes in legislation (Smallbone and Welter 2009:40). These challenges were particularly strong in rural areas. The fact that these regions are not very supportive of business development is reflected in the comparatively little research interest that they generate,
even in countries with more established market economies. As Pato and TeixeiraÕs bibliometric survey71 revealed, only 30% of the studies on entrepreneurship published
over the past two decades were set in rural areas (2014:12). The same authors also signal that about 75% of this research focuses on high-income and developed countries (17). Understanding of entrepreneurship among rural people in a post-socialist context remains under studied and little understood.
Returning to the equally limited body of research on small firms in tourism, Thomas et al. have pointed out that many of the existing studies fail to take into account the wider social and economic context of businesses, offering thus a narrow outlook on the issue (2011: 964). At the same time, they note that some of the most important contributions come from sociology and anthropology (Thomas et al. 2011:963). Anthropology is particularly suited for investigating the articulation of human activity Ð in this case entrepreneurship, with the wider socio-economic context. Granovetter used the notion of ÔembeddednessÕ to conceptualise these links, building a critique of both the ÔundersocialisedÕ and ÔoversocialisedÕ notions of economic action. According to him, individuals are neither actors in pursuit of their self-interest, nor expressions of internalised cultural patterns (1985:485). This perspective draws attention to the role of on-going social relations and to the immediate social context (485) and it overlaps to some extent with the more recent and popular notion of social capital (Smallbone and Welter 2009:51). Interested in the embedding of economic actions, but owing more to what Granovetter called the ÔoversocialisedÕ perspective, others have stressed the role of the historical and institutional contexts (Smallbone and Welter 2009) and the importance of values and morality (Tucker 2010, Luetchford 2005). Drawing from the Weberian tradition, many authors have linked a societyÕs dominant values with itsÕ membersÕ entrepreneurial inclinations and achievements (Blim 2005). At the same time, according to a more recent theoretical strand, it is the everyday realities that are Ômore powerful in determining patterns of thought than those patterns are in determining everyday realities of peopleÕs livesÕ (Durrenberger 2005:137). Reconciling both sides, I will follow Blim in arguing that there is a dialectic relation between peopleÕs worldviews and their economic actions (Blim 2005). Consequently, one of the central aims of this chapter is to understand both the ethics guiding peopleÕs economic actions and the new values that these entrepreneurial pursuits might be instilling among
71 Based on the Scopus SciVerse bibliographic databases, up to 31 March 2013 (Pato and Teixeira
villagers, while remaining aware of the important role played by networks and by peopleÕs on-going social relations.
In spite of its seeming sameness, the tourist offer in Bran and Moieciu is the result of household decisions72 crystallised in varied entrepreneurial practices. In what
follows I suggest a number of typologies that illustrate better this diversity and that will allow me to explore several issues. First, I ask what kinds of skills were required for one to become an entrepreneur, a successful participant in the tourism economy. I am interested in the ways in which people have built their businesses by recognising and combining both material and immaterial resources. In answering this, I also examine how imitation and innovation work in spreading and generating knowledge. Second, I want to discover to what degree these businesses are embedded or not in the economy and the history of the area, and how does this influence their success or failure. Conversely, I also examine their connections to the non-local and the ways in which they link to categories of buyers that are inevitably located elsewhere.