Poczet polskich przedsiębiorców [Polish entrepreneurs’ cluster] (2018). Wydawnictwo Magam, Biblioteka Warsaw Enterprise Institute, Warszawa, pp. 192

Abstract

The process of developing the foundations of the free market economy, which took place in Poland in the last decades of the 20th century, resulted in an increase in interest in the issues of entrepreneurship, its role and importance in undertaking new economic initiatives and shaping social attitudes. The restoration of the importance of private property in the economy, the legislative amendments made, including the possibility of setting up companies and running a business, led to an explosion of entrepreneurship on a previously unprecedented scale. A characteristic feature of the transformations carried out in the 1990s was the rapid, often unexpected emergence of business leaders who used favourable circumstances to establish new organisational structures. Entrepreneurs, or rather businessmen – as A. Meducka pointed out – became “undisputed heroes of those times” [Meducka-Potocka A. 2017]. However, have these groups always been positively perceived by Poles in different historical periods? The dynamic development of the private sector and the growing interest in the business environment, observed in the following years, naturally inclined to raise questions about the Polish tradition of entrepreneurship and those who established economic structures on Polish lands throughout the history. The history by providing personal models, according to the well-known saying Verba docet, exempla trahunt, belongs to those disciplines of the science that can be used in shaping certain social attitudes [see: Czechanowski P., Pacanowska R. 2014: 129-149]. Among publications, interviews or manuals, the Polish market was initially dominated by the positions showing well-known entrepreneurs from other cultural circles [Rigby R. 2015]. The most noSTudiA HiSToRiAE oEConoMiCAE