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

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.

Keywords

• social capital
• entrepreneur’s social capital
• entrepreneurship
• nascent entrepreneurs