The Perception of an Entrepreneur’s Structural, Relational and Cognitive Social Capital among Young People in Poland - An Exploratory Study

Paweł Ziemiański

doi:10.7341/20181416

Abstract

The goal of the current paper is to verify how an entrepreneur’s structural, relatonal and cognitve social capital levels are perceived by young people in Poland. The research involved a group of 374 undergraduate business students from a Polish university as partcipants. Partcipants completed a survey on entrepreneurial cognitons. It was found that partcipants assess the level of an entrepreneur’s social capital as relatvely low. Due to the fact that social capital, and its diﬀerent dimensions, serve diﬀerent purposes in the process of venture creaton, the result obtained can be considered alarming. Its practcal implicatons are related to the necessity to review and design actvites facilitatng the development of an entrepreneurial culture in Poland. The value and the originality of the paper lie in the approach that allowed us to investgate which dimensions of an entrepreneur’s social capital are seen as partcularly weak by people for whom launching a new business is a viable opton in the near future.

Highlights

The issue of social capital has increasingly attracted the attention of entrepreneurship scholars (e.g., Stam, Arzlanian & Elfring, 2014)
The aim of the current paper is to present and discuss the results of exploratory research aimed at the identification of attitudes of Polish students towards entrepreneurial social capital
An attempt to interpret the reasons for relatively low levels of perceived social capital that were discovered in the current studies will be made, together with proposed directions for further research and the limitations of the current study

Summary

Introduction

The issue of social capital has increasingly attracted the attention of entrepreneurship scholars (e.g., Stam, Arzlanian & Elfring, 2014). 110 / The Perception of an Entrepreneur’s Structural, Relational and Cognitive Social Capital among Young People in Poland - An Exploratory Study and sustain a high level of social capital) are more likely to start new ventures and become nascent entrepreneurs. This pertains to both developing and developed countries (Kolvereid & Obloj, 1994). Since the seminal work of Putnam (1994), scholars have attempted to identify and verify different dimensions of social capital in different social contexts One such theoretical proposition that applies strictly to the entrepreneurial context was developed by Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) and later used by other scholars including Liao and Welsch (2005). It may be stated that the current article is of both theoretical and practical importance as, apart from advancing what we know about the perception of social capital in Poland where a unique mixture of different developmental stages of capitalism can be observed (Ziółkowski, 2012), it can allow us to develop guidelines for policy makers and educators

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Conclusion