To their own or to their fate? About the competitive small business and its entrepreneur

Authors

  • Carlos Alex de Cantuária Cypriano Instituto Federal da Bahia

Abstract

Recently, entrepreneurship and small business have been highly regarded as triggering factors of social and economic development. It’s necessary a deeper understanding of the causes, possible consequences and interests related to this process as well as its characterization as a specific field of knowledge and as a teaching and research academic object. Entrepreneurship, considered as a specific individual inclination, is misleadingly conceived as being able to render the small entreprise competitive in the contemporary capitalism arena. The objective of this paper is not to criticize the small business nor the entrepreneur in themselves, but the ideologic meaning that structures the several discourses that conform that agent and his “thinking style”. The relative weights that compose the institutionalized image of the object – the work and its author – were identified and evaluated. The results showed the importance granted to certain aspects such as disposition to risk, creative ability, and adaptation to scenery changes touted as being “naturals”. Other aspects underlay along the process, such as the assumption by the individual of all responsibility for what happens in his entrepreneurial action, and the legitimation of the functionality of the small enterprise concerning the systemic reproduction of contemporary capitalism.

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Published

2016-01-25