Zaufanie w strategiach polskich przedsiębiorców
Trust and Polish Entrepreneurs’ Strategies

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with trust in the context of doing business. Authors are particularly interested in what forms of trust (personal, generalized) Polish entrepreneurs resort to in various spheres of their activity, what are the grounds for their choices and what consequences they have for their own businesses. The problem of trust is analyzed in 3 major areas: legal regulations of business, contacts with public officials and relations with other companies. Authors claim that, due to historical background, including an established legal framework and ways of state functioning and lawmaking in business activity, generalized distrust towards the law, public administration and other companies has emerged among Polish entrepreneurs. Qualitative research in the form of over 100 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs from 4 voivodeships of Southern Poland corroborate the hypothesis, that the state (and legal) institutions, as well as state administration interfere with building generalized forms of social capital and generate social distrust, instead of contributing to reinforcing civic attitudes and generating generalized trust towards others (including business partners). With deficits of generalized trust, companies need to come up with various strategies of building personal trust (towards other entrepreneurs and public officials). Therefore, personal trust becomes a basis of establishing business relations, which, in turn, drastically increases so-called transaction costs of doing business.

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