Entrepreneurship and Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship and Social Responsibility

Summary/Abstract: This paper is focused on the social type of the entrepreneur who comes as a new and basic economic actor in Bulgaria in the period of transition towards market economy. This analysis is an attempt to contribute to highlighting the entrepreneurial culture in the post socialist period and to outline how the new economic actors understand, define and practice their social responsibility. The current analysis is based on empirical material from expert interviews (Meuser/Nagel, 1997) with entrepreneurs in Bulgaria. The first part of the paper introduces entrepreneurial self-understanding (‘Selbstverstдndnis’). After presenting the entrepreneurs in their company and social context (Meuser/Nagel, 1997), the second part of the paper is focused primarily on two social interpretative patterns (‘to act socially’ and ‘moralizing’), which are characteristic of the entrepreneurial practice in the transition period. The basis of the analysis in this particular case is the theoretical and methodological concept of Ulrich Oevermann (1973, 2001) dealing with the social interpretative patterns (‘Deutungsmuster’). The third part outlines the entrepreneurial understanding about the responsibilities against other ‘distant and close’ actors (employees, business partners, local communities, etc.). In connection with that issue the text describes the predominant family ties in the entrepreneurial concept of the (corporate) social responsibility and makes clear the difference between this ‘transitional’ definition and the current CSR-concept.

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