Cultural capital and European entrepreneurship research: a plea for a paradigm focusing on national, corporate and professional cultural capital

Abstract

Innovation and entrepreneurship have been examined from many different angles and theoretical perspectives. Linkages between national cultural assets and entrepreneurship activity, however, constitute a niche in contemporary research. In this paper, we argue that the level of entrepreneurship is contingent upon the cultural environment in which it takes place. Further, we argue that cultural environments can be broadly assigned to two distinct settings, with one being roughly equivalent to the US and the second to the European cultural context. As most theoretical work explaining links between entrepreneurship and culture refers to the first cultural context, a new theoretical paradigm must be developed in order to explain entrepreneurship within the European setting. Departing from Bourdieu’s capital theory, we develop conceptual elements for this new European paradigm and conclude our paper with recommendations in terms of research questions and research methods.