Abstract

Numerous scientific studies provide information on the impact of the environment on the launch, operation and growth of businesses. Reflections on the environment can result from two perspectives: the objective and the subjective one. The first relates to the economic analysis and/or sociological research, whereas the second relies on the perception of the environment by the interested parties themselves. While analysing companies from the SME sector, the author usually deals with businesses whose owners are not formally trained in management. Their abilities come primarily from experience and occasional courses. As a result, such entrepreneurs’ manner of environment evaluation — in particular related to the economic situation — is often based on intuition. However, the intuition is shaped to some extent by the opinions of others, either oral or written. In Poland those opinions depend to a large extent on the political option represented by the person uttering them, and are largely spread by different daily and weekly newspapers. Therefore the owners decide to take some actions or refrain from them, following their subjective perceptions of the environment. The concept of entrepreneurs' perception forms a part of broader entrepreneurship approach known as Entrepreneurial Cognition (EC) (Mitchell, et al., 2007). At first glance, it may seem that relying on intuition and subjective perception should not take place, as decisions taken in such a way could be disadvantageous for the entrepreneur. On the other hand, “positive ignorance” or misunderstanding negative environmental phenomena could, paradoxically, bring success. Entrepreneurial behaviour (flexibility, quick response, strong motivation) (Baker, Miner, & Eesley, 2003) can lead to overcoming real threats, previously unrecognized by the entrepreneur. The objective of this research is to find the relation between subjective perception of environment and the growth plans of small enterprises in a post-communist country during the slowing down of economy.

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