Representações sociais sobre a ação empreendedora

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with the representations of the smalland médium entreprises' entrepreneurs actions. The Social Representations Theory was used as methodological framework, as well as some studies on entrepreneurship, small and médium enterprises and family businesses. It was constituted a sample of enterprises from a city in the Shouth of Minas Gerais State (Minas Gerais , Brazil). The cases are designed from the interviews with the owners. The technique of interpretation was the discourse analysis, following some Spinks's steps (Spink, 1999). A three-step anarysis was developed: the categorization was the procedure through which the data were arranged, according to the common part among them. In this way, five categories composed the main analysis matrix: the entrepreneur identity formation; the entrepreneurs administration style; the entrepreneurs family dynamics; the pleasure and the satisfaction - motivation sources for accomplishment and the meaning of the entrepreneur action. The second step was the analysis of the entrepreneurs global discourse as a social being, regarding his/her action in the management of his/her business, evidencing the systemic character of the studied entrepreneurs' social representations set. The third levei understood was the researcher*s reading of the difTerentiated social representations of the entrepreneur action as a social knowledge, with a local perspective. In this sense, the social and cultural context were also object of the representations. It was verified that there are differentiated conceptions about the entrepreneur action, and it is believed that the approaches' differentiated integration awards to the study a relevant theoretical-analytical framework for the investigation of the factors that take the enterprisers to be entrepreneurs.