Abstract
Entrepreneurship means that action is something active, creative and human. Pure entrepreneurship is the deployment of the person’s creative capacity in the reality around her. This is a view that implies an extension of economics. Firms occupy a central position as basic institutions in society. It is a dynamic view that shows the firm’s importance as institution in which the lead role is played by the person and the driving force is entrepreneurship.
We can define a criterion of entrepreneurial efficiency based on the enhancement of persons’ possibilities for action. First, an economic, social and cultural system will be more efficient if it increases personal possibilities for action. This first aspect concerns personal freedom of choice. It is the freedom ‘from’. But in the course of this essay we have argued that all individual action has a social dimension and that, as a result, the institutional order is maintained by personal actions. It is the freedom ‘for’. Therefore it is necessary to supplement the criterion of coordination from the social perspective and assert that the more entrepreneurial and social coordination it generates, the more efficient personal action will be. It is the freedom ‘for’.
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Notes
- 1.
It is impossible here to deal with the capabilities approach developed by A. Sen and M. Nussbaum (Nussbaum and Sen 1993). The first point should make the differences—remarkably I would say—between Sen and Nussbaum approaches. For instance, Sen (2009) presents what he considers to be distinctive of his approach, and Nussbaum (2011) does the same. For a general and critical assessment of both approaches see H. Richardson (2000, 2007).
- 2.
P. Koslowski (1996, p. 53) status emphatically that the market allow not only freedom of consumption but also of action and production.
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Aranzadi, J. (2018). The Firm as Social Institution. In: Human Action, Economics, and Ethics. SpringerBriefs in Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73912-0_8
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