Drumul antreprenorial: fără încredere dar cu relații The Entrepreneurial Way: without Trust but with Connections Section Miscelanea

Abstract

The focus of the paper is on the role of social capital for the diffusion of entrepreneurship in Romanian rural communities. The analysis is done by using data sets from surveys at national level. Entrepreneurship appears to be a innovative behavior under the influence of human, material and social capital. The relation with the social capital is a dynamic and differentiated one, function of the stage of entrepreneurship. There are significant differences of human and social capital among behavior, intention and desire entrepreneurs. Accessibility to useful social relations, a key favoring factor of entrepreneurship is significantly conditioned by leadership experience in communist times and by wealth. Rural social capital is clearly structured by four dimensions: diffuse trust and cooperation, trust in institutions, and network capital and integration of formal institutions by their functioning. It is only the working of the first three dimensions that could be revealed by survey data. Considering this limitation, the conclusion is that rural social capital is a working reality, not only an umbrella concept: diffuse trust, trust in institutions and network capital stem all from a unique latent dimension that could be labelled as social capital.
Rural social capital is more "fractured" than urban social capital.
Interpersonal trust in rural communities is negatively related to the intensity and scope of network social capital.