Probing into the social layers of entrepreneurship: outlines of the sociology of enterprise

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Abstract
This paper analyses entrepreneurship in an unconventional manner from the viewpoint of conventional economic wisdom. The latter imputes to entrepreneurship as well as development of an ‘inner logic’ of its own. In contrast with this imputation, a complex social structure is attributed to entrepreneurship and hence to economic development. Entrepreneurship possesses an eminently social character and is subject to the operation of definite societal processes. Of these, of particular relevance are cultural-historical and social-structural factors, as exemplified in the ‘spiritual’ and institutional preconditions of modern dynamic capitalism, including entrepreneurship. At this juncture, the profit motive of entrepreneurship appears as a culture-specific, institutional incentive, not as an expression of some inborn propensity to profiteering. For human motives, preferences and values cannot be taken as parametric, homogeneous and exogenous to society, but as variable, heterogeneous and endogenous to it and its culture and institutions.