6.4. The Image of an Entrepreneur - Entrepreneurship Psychology

Unlike the population of the United States and Japan, which sees the entrepreneur as a person serving his needs and creating sources of income for a multitude of hands, in Europe the image of the entrepreneur is generally not positive. This is also connected with a certain mystery of its activities, hidden from the public eye; and with certain stereotypes of the entrepreneur's perception as a speculator, businessman, exploiter (especially in the Russian economy, which has been ideologized for a long time); and with some categorical behavior and communication of entrepreneurs in the interests of the cause and in connection with economic necessity; and also with envy about his profits and earnings.

In studies of the image of the entrepreneur , Schmelders's “distanced hypothesis” became famous, in which a distinction is made between the image of the entrepreneur “at a distance” and “near” ³⁹ . In the first case, we are talking about a more or less unconscious mass-psychological stereotype of an entrepreneur. He entrenched with us in the concept of "new Russian". In the second case, we mean an individualized image, built on the basis of our own experience. These are impressions about specific acquaintances with their successes and problems. Schmelders’s “distanced hypothesis” means that the opinion “close” is more complicated and more positive than the stereotypical image of the entrepreneur “at a distance”.

The data of sociological polls in Germany showed that the larger the company, the more negative evaluations were given to the entrepreneur by the employees of the company. From the standpoint of the “distant hypothesis”, this is explained by the fact that in a large enterprise the distance between the employee and his chief boss, who is considered an entrepreneur, is usually significant, and the relationship is more anonymous than in a small and medium enterprise. In order to shorten the distance, available options of formal and informal communication are used, for example, such a technique as personal congratulations of the entrepreneur to his employees on his birthday, or, for example, holidays of a company or corporation where there are relatives and friends of the entrepreneur, and he appears in the eyes of employees in the usual for all social roles (father, husband, son). Attempts to create a more attractive image of an entrepreneur in large enterprises are an integral part of modern management in the West.

The rating of an entrepreneur also increases with an increase in the welfare of the population. In this case, wealth has more opportunities to legitimize; entrepreneurs are not responsible for poverty.