Entrepreneurship: Embeddedness of Economic Activity Perspective

In the paper entrepreneurship is presented from the embeddedness perspective as a type of economic action. The concept of the embeddedness of economic action is one of the key theoretical foundation of contemporary economic sociology. According to this idea the economic activity is determined by cognition, social structures, culture and politics. Selected theories are described, as well as empirical studies concerning setting up, running and maintaining a firm, directly or indirectly situated in the embeddedness paradigm. Based on the analysis of the embeddedness theory, the author argues that embeddedness is not a coherent theoretical concept but rather a potential framework for investigating various economic issues. It constitutes a scheme which could organize sociological approach to economic activity in a way alternative to economics.