Przedsiębiorczość w regionach o monokulturze przemysłowej jako problem badawczy
Entrepreneurship in the Regions with Mono-cultural Economy as a Research Area

Summary/Abstract: The interest in entrepreneurship understood as the will and skill to establish and run a business does not only arise from the search for answers to the key cognitive issues referring to the motives, barriers and development determinants, as well as to the theories which try to explain them, but also from practical reasons in terms of supporting and shaping the attitudes and models of entrepreneurship education. It has long been known that developing universal models of entrepreneurship observation and support do not work. Entrepreneurial behavior is strongly determined by the regional (local) characteristics as borne out by both theoretical studies and little success of the attempts made to imitate the phenomenon of the Silicon Valley. One of the evidence as to the crucial role of regional predispositions is the situation of the postindustrial regions in Poland (as well as many other European regions, especially in postcommunist countries). These regions do not fit in the universal research models and are not easily subjected to the “proven” instruments of the development support. Our existing studies on entrepreneurship and its determinants directed our attention to, as we believe, specific regions dominated by a single industry and in the majority of cases by one enterprise – the primary employer. According to statistical data, such regions are characterized by being clearly distinctive in many aspects from other regions. The level of entrepreneurship measuredby enterprise birth rates or entrepreneurial activity of residents in general is lower than in the regions whose economies have been developing in a more sustainable way. One could try and explain this phenomenon intuitively by indicating a considerable bargaining power of the main and big employers and, in a sense, their suppression of entrepreneurial stirrings. A more effective strategy in terms of one’s profession is to try and remain in the orbit of the primary industry and enterprise than to strive to become independent of its influence. Both in Polish and world-wide scientific literature, the attempts aimed at studying entrepreneurship nature, manifestations and development barriers in such regions are rare and therefore little is known about those issues.

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