Abstract:

Entrepreneurship is a significant and still up-to-date research topic both because of its theoretical complexity and the importance for the social practice, especially the economic one. The authors assume that the study of entrepreneurship needs to take into consideration different perspectives: psychological, organisational, economic and cultural. The aim of the article is to diagnose the perception of entrepreneurship and its conditioning in the perception of Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian students. The opinions of young people studying management - potential future entrepreneurs representing different national cultures - have been found cognitively interesting. The study involved a group of 312 students from Bialystok University of Technology, Grodno State University and the Poltava National Technical Yuri Kondratyuk University. With regard to a gradual character of evaluation (5-point Likert scale) and a large number of groups, the analysis of the obtained results was based on the Kruskal-Wallis test. The U Mann-Whitney test was used for identifying groups with considerable differences. The analysis of the study's results also allows for the formulation of the conclusion that the greater the level of market economy development, the greater the focus of respondents on elements independent of political situation. Ukrainians and Belarusians much more often than Poles connect the likelihood of their success with the socio-political situation within their country. Students from countries which were former Soviet Union republics consider the need of knowing the right people as one of the main factors affecting the success of a business. They also, much more often than students from Poland, consider corruption and extensive bureaucracy as well as lack of state support for the small and medium business sector to be real barriers to the development of entrepreneurship.