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Economic Sociology as a Sociology of Economic Action
Krzysztof T. Konecki
The paper deals with the construction of basic principles of theoretical model of analysis of
economy from the perspective of interpretative sociology. Author tries to build a model of
economic action taking into consideration the point of view of a subject and going beyond
mere rational model of action. An economic action is strictly associated with a context of
action and is constructed on the level of interaction. ‘Processual ordering’ takes place on the
level of interaction, where an economic action which emerges from the interaction is subject
to certain temporary ordering with complete potency to modify its structure. The paper
presents also the concept of analytic dimensions for the analysis of every economic action.
1. Introduction
What is economic sociology? The answer to this question seems obvious. Economic
sociology is applying the sociological perspective to analyze economic phenomena. The
problem appears when we want to specify what is the sociological perspective in analyzing
reality. Is there only one such perspective? If there are more than one, does this mean that we
are dealing with many economic sociologies? Another equally complex question is: what is
economy? Is it mainly the system of exchange institutions, or the system of economic
activities? Is analyzing the system of institutions and the organizational level enough to claim
how economy works? It is difficult to go in for economic sociology without answering these
questions1. Making use of certain theoretical and methodological inspirations (Weber 2002;
1994; Strauss 1993; Strauss, Corbin 1990; Bourdieau 1990, 2001; Morawski 2001; Partycki
2004), below we shall develop an initial theoretical model of the sociological analysis of
economy, and therefore also the economic sociology, which we will assume to be the sociology
of economic actions analyzed on different levels, though always in relation to the direct context
of their occurrence and interactional conditions. Here we shall anser the following fundamental
question: how can it be possible that economic action occurs in a given context? How does this
action emerge from a range of partial actions and what conditions these actions? In this
context we shall also take into account the role of organizational conditions for economic
actions. The qualitative understanding of these actions enables our access to all conditions and
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processes which can have effect on the particular action in the given context for the
occurrence of that action.
2. Basic assumptions
Can any phenomena or actions of the economic nature be analyzed regardless of other
dimensions of the social occurrence of phenomena? There is only one sociology. One in a
sense that clear-cut isolation of a phenomenon and analyzing its conditions is impossible
without taking into account the diverse context for its occurrence. All dimensions and
contexts of a given phenomenon must be analyzed if they are materialized empirically in our
observation and measurement instruments. The empirical research, or induction, to be more
accurate, should be an introduction to analyzing empirical data (Strauss, Corbin 1990). The
qualitative research enables our initial analysis of a phenomenon on the micro level which is
concerned with the motives for given action, the identity of an individual and the work of that
individual, so that we could proceed to higher levels of the analysis, i.e. those included in the
macro level. The macro level converges in the micro level, and the micro level is apparent in
the macrostructural level.
An attempt at presenting the possible analytical matrix useful for the inductive and
qualitative methodology of research and analyzing the empirical data which enables our
formulation of the categories and their properties has been provided below (see Fig. 1).
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The researcher/analyst’s discourse and concealed assumptions
The academic discourse
The colloquial discourse and
the practitioners’ discourse
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International
and global level
Country
Community
Organization/
Institutions
Inside
the organization
Group
Interaction
Economic
Action
Fig. 1. A holographic/analytic matrix of the economic action (cf. Strauss, Corbin 1990: 163).
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1. In our opinion the basic unit in the sociological analysis is theaction, while
economy is indeed the system of interrelated and interactive economic activities
which would combine into a particular network of relations. The basic analytical
unit here is also the lowest level on which the economic game concerned with the
production, distribution and consumption of goods is played.
Action is not fully determined here, and the individual is free to choose and prefer the
assumed purposes. It is traditionally defined in the liberal doctrine that the individual
economic entities are free on the market. However, paradoxically, this vision is deterministic,
since the objective supply, demand and economic efficiency powers determine the free
economic activities. In fact that freedom in this concept is ostensible. Nonetheless it can be
expected that the individuals still maintain some of that freedom, for instance in terms of their
ethical freedom: ‘Even if he market economy is based on involving people into a specific
series of rules, it cannot make them redundant and eliminate their ethical freedom from the
economic process’ (Ratzinger 2005). Moreover this also has to do with formulating reality on
the interactive level. The economic action is set free in nature. The coincidence of such
activities builds up the economy, while this coincidence itself is possible owing to
harmonizing particular activities in the interaction, when we adjust mutually our lines of
activities and reach a consensus about our aspirations and purposes, as well as adjust our
actions of the emotional character.
These activities are interactive in nature, since they are always targeted at their objects
(when an action is initiated the object can define oneself as the subject) which often reacts to
the initiator of the action even before that given action is initiated, during its performance, or
after it has been concluded. The initiator can be either an individual or a group. Interacting
refers here to all interactive processes, such as exchange, negotiations, manipulating, selfpresentation, the threat of using violence, real violence, teaching, symbolic violence,
dominance, discussion, argument, and self-reflection as a discussion with one’s actual or
invented alter ego, etc. In the discipline of interest to us, i.e. economic sociology2 the basic unit
of sociological analysis is the economic action (with the entrepreneurial activity as one of its
possible prototypes), where the basic interactive process is exchange. The action can be of a
strategic character, for instance when a new action plan and purposes are formulated for, say, an
enterprising activity3. This level of analysis (the level ofactions) is concerned with people’s
active and explicit expression of themselves in order to continue the orientation of a phenomenon
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or influence its direction. This level is closely correlated with the interactive level (cf. Strauss,
Corbin 1990: 158-162 who generally speak of all action as interaction). This action is rational in
nature, and the subject of that action is assigned the feature of rationality, i.e. the ability to
adequately select the means in a particular situation to achieve the predefined purposes4. That
purpose is usually realized by the individual in such actions, it becomes an element of the action
strategies (the purposes and the plans for their achievement) drawn up to control, to maintain the
orientation of the actions and the applied interactive techniques regarding given phenomenon and
specificcontext. The interactive techniques are specific modes of behaviour which, when
combined accordingly, build up the tactics for fulfilling strategies (a set of methods). In other
words, the purpose is the desired value the achievement of which is inwardly considered
necessary by the indiviual in the specified context (time and space).
However, it must be remembered that the achieved purposes are not always realized by
the individual. The directly realized purpose of the actions undertaken by the rank-and-file
employees is by no means gaining profits by their enterprise. Their position in the enterprise
structure defines the character of their actions, though mainly on the individual level, which do
have their economic purpose when considered from a wider systemic perspective. These actions,
usually the working process, determine the rationality of their individual activities, while the
wider organizational and economic order provides their activities with systemic rationality. On
the other hand, inability to realize that wider context of their rationality is produced by a wider
system which has already seen to it in the educational and training subsystem that the employee
was not particularly worried about the issue of company’s profits, and that the entrepreneur was
not especially concerned about the deep structure of the meaning of the term ‘profit’, since this
could be destructive for the system.
It must also be borne in mind that many activities are economic in character though in
general they are not defined as such. This refers to the unpaid work which has been increasingly
popularized in our lives. For example, the customers in the hypermarket do the work of
consciously looking for particular products (and determining their values) which would be
handed in by an assistant in the traditional shop. The patients do the personnel’s work in the
hospitals, the women do the unpaid houseworks, while the welfare work, which is voluntary and
charitable, yields specific and measurable economic effects within a given community or
organization. This is particularly observable when we must hire a person to do given work
(Konecki 1988). Therefore the economic action has economic meaning not only in terms of its
purposes and, generally speaking, the individual’s action strategy, but also with regard to the
consequences of the above. These consequences can have serious effects on the shape of the
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societies, e.g. the particular perception and performance of the work as a calling and a form of
asceticism had an effect on the emergence of the capitalist society (Weber 1994: 143).
The work can have different properties, and the whole working process is divided into a
number of the subtypes of work. An analysis of different forms of work and their coordination
shows clearly how the specific social order connected with a given type of economic action is
developed (Konecki 1998: 42-65). The action plans and their specific arrangements are fulfilled
on the level of interactions, and it is on that level that particular purposes (strategies) of work are
realized in a specified temporal and spatial context, under specific circumstances, using
particular interaction techniques which build up interaction tactics, and eventually leading to
particualr consequences.
Activities are often routine, if not ritual, in character. Routine contains the forgotten
purpose, where the latter may be reonstructed only by means of a historic or both ‘synchronicalfunctional and historic’ analysis. On the other hand, the ritual nature of an action often comprises
symbolic meanings which we can understand and reconstruct after developing an overall
symbolic model of the particular system of actions, since that system is comprehensible only
within a wider whole. If we assume that the technology has eliminated from our lives the magic
as a means of practical understanding of the world (Eliade 2000: 32), it is the technical system or
the technical surroundings and contexts that build up the system of symbols and its associated
system of meanings which enable understanding the world and acting. Therefore economic
activities can be purely symbolic, where the exchange of economic goods (i.e. what Karl Marx
would call ‘commodities’) does not occur, and what does occur is the exchange of values, which
are equilvalent in the contemporary world. A symbol can be exchanged for another symbol. For
example, prestige or renown is social capital which can be exchanged for political values
(powers) or the other way round, and only eventually for economic vlaues. Employees’ loyalty
as a value becomes social and/or cultural capital, since the investment in trainings made by an
employee at a given time, targeted at developing loyalty attitudes, may pay for itself in the
future. Added value is perceivable here immediately, or it simply is not there. However, the
equivalence of values is materialized in the particular interaction within an exchange process or a
series of such processes.
2. The level which is closely related to the level of analysis described above is the
interactive level. Interactions are understood here as people’s joint actions or their
consideration for others’ point of view on a given phenomenon. Each action, even an
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individual one, requires interaction in the form of self-reflection, where the relations and
contacts with others are taken into account. Here interaction comprises the processes
referred to above, i.e. exchange, negotiations, dominance, teaching, arguing and selfreflecting etc. These processes take place through language, and it is the language that
should be analyzed here. In economic actions particular linguistic notional matrices are
used which build up the contexts of meaning for the appearance and emergence of
specific economic actions. This level also involves the processes of communication
through the media (the techniques and technologies) which are intermediary (such as
telecommunications, the Intranet, the Internet). Interactions construct a network which is
to be analyzed on this level. Given interactions and interactive processes are the
conditions for establishing a particular form of action. A consequence of
action/interaction can be the social construction of economic values (e.g. expressed with
prices), such as it is the case during an auction (Palmer, Forsyth 2002). Values can be
floating, there are no objective indicators to unambiguously define economic value for
the specific deal price during an auction. The price is usually negotiable and that floating
value depends on a number of factors: the type and character of the customers and the
sellers, the fashion, the economic climate at that particular time, the time of the year, and
a number of other determinants. The selling process is a symbolic interaction which in
turn is hedged with the social and economic network of interactions, if not subcultures of
selling particular products, or with the social worlds in which particular types of
customers and sellers are on the go. Therefore the floating value of a product is related to
the social construction of economic values (as above, cf. Smith 1989). It does not seem
that the particular deal prices are always defined by the statistical values which are the
products of supply and demand. The sale and purchase deal is interactive in character
(Prus 1994: 243). The subjects in the deal are independent, they have certain autonomy,
assume responsibility for their actions and actively predict what can happen during the
purchase-sale interaction, thus having effect on its course.
3. The group-individual level is concerned with the biographies, private philosophies,
knowledge and experience of people and groups (such as the associations of
professionals, trades unions, households as economic entities etc.). Therefore here the
individual is involved as the subject of economic actions in the system of group relations
and bonds. Through the processes of the subjective and looking-glass self, the individual
becomes both social and individual subject of one’s actions. Entreprising activities are
often constructed by rejecting the negative observations developed by others about
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private economic action and by constructing the subjective self as a positive image of
oneself as an entrepreneur. This new subjective self along with its further maintenance
and ongoing work with oneself/the identity is essential to continue as an entrepreneur and
overcome numerous institutional and organizational obstacles, not to mention those of
the cultural character. (Konecki, Frączak – Konecka, 2007).
It is presented on this level how individual actions (such as the enterprising activity
of supervising managers) supported with the actions of groups (managers) and trades
unions enable the creation of the system of economic activities on the managerial level in
the enterprise (Konecki, Frączak 1998; Konecki, Kulpińska 1995)5.
It is on this level of analysis that the conditions for the economic actions
undertaken by a household can be studied, where that household can be the subject of
such actions itself. The enterprising actions are possible where we have, for instance,
loyal surety towards the creditors by all members of a household with their private
property (Weber 2002: 278-282). Therefore the characteristics of the original groups as
the determinants for economic activities are taken into account here.
4. Another level is the intra-organizational level which is concerned with the specific
features, e.g. the production firms, their sections and departments, as well as the relations
between them and their locations wth regard to other components. Here the floor is given
to organization and management sociology (cf. Konecki, Tobera 2002: 7-9). The
achievements of this discipline in terms of the relation of structures to strategies,
technologies and actions is indispensable here to analyze the organizational conditions
for economic actions. The power and the system of positions establishing the objectively
existing configurations between them emerges here. At this level structure begins to
become increasingly apparent in action, though it will emerge fully only on the
successive level.
5. Going
further
into
the
analytical
matrix,
we
come
accross
the
organizational/institutional level. Each organizaiton has its structure, informal
structure, formal procedures, regulations, problems and history. Economic actions of the
individuals and their interactions are determined institutionally, same as their rationality,
though they also establish structures and institutions themselves. The structures assume
the form of routine actions.
Numerous firms and entrepreneurs act seemingly irrationally. This can be systemic
irrationality, while in terms of the organizational and institutional conditions such acts
can be utterly rational. An example here is the long tradition of the corruption exchange
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actions in Poland, where corruption has become a cultural standard (habit) in economic
activities, enhanced by the specific form of establishing laws and finally legal rules (or
actually exceptions from these rules). Systemic irrationality becomes something natural,
domesticated through economic actions in which equivalent values are exchanged, e.g.
the work or a post in the tax office is an equivalent of a particular sum of money6.
Therefore rationality on the institutional level is constructed and adds to the effectiveness
of all interactions established at given time and in given space.
On this level we also analyze organizational culture and organizational identity.
Organizations can be treated as cultural entities having their own values, norms and basic
assumptions, and these elements can be the matrix determining economic actions. If an
organization is a community (see the section below), it will definitely ‘regulate’
economic actions through individual actions, relations within the organization according
to the collectivist and ‘synthetic’ matrix (cf. Trompenaars, Hampden-Turner 1998, and
Hofstede 2000), while a deeper basis for these matrices will be the structural rule of
‘groupism’ (Konecki 1994). On the other hand, the orgnizational identity comprises the
main values (the axis of organizational actions) which are the basis for economic actions.
They are often anti-effective or maintaining their former identity, though still economic
in character through their consequences (cf. Konecki 2002).
6. Yet another level is the community level which covers all the factors discussed above,
though with regard to given community. For example, every community has its own
specific demographic characteristics (concerned with the criteria of gender, education,
average wages, interpersonal relations etc.). Here it can be the starting point ot analyse
the economic actions which, for instance, involve exchanging work for wage. An
attention should also be paid to local authorities and their relations with the economic
entities and other customers.
On this level we shall also analyse for example neighbourly help, which modifies
considerably economic exchange. Here we are often dealing with a wheedled loan or
unpaid, wheedled work (Weber 2002: 282-283). Many neighbours compose a commune
as both social and economic unit. Dictatorially contorlled communities were established
in the past as well, targeted at fulfilling the demands of their masters instead of making
money (i.e. ‘oikos’ in Greek; Weber 2002: 301).
7. Another discussed level of analyzing the conditions of economic actions can be the
national level, i.e. the internal policy of the state in given country, its internal legal
regulations, culture (Hofstede 2000) and internal cultural and class diversity, history,
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values, economy a different internal problems. Here we also analyze the religious
determinants of our economic actions (Weber 1994; Potz 2005; cf. Ratzinger 2005).
On the level of the country there functions the educational system which educates
the future subjects of economic actions. The members of given society acquire certain
attitudes and predispositions to behave, assess and judge in a certain way. This is the
original habitus7, the base for differentiating the abilities to acquire the habitus from
‘modern’ organizations and firms. The ‘subjectivisation of objectivity’ occurs here.
Habitus is based on purposeful acting, where the purpose need not always be realized
by the subject of the action. Objectivity is about the social and organizational relations,
i.e. our fundamental involvement in social relations. Therefore the participation and
careers in organizations can be determined already on the level of the original habitus,
where class differences are of relevant, while the secondary habitus, concerned with
our work institutions, is acquired mainly during our post-primary education, selfeducation, individual improvement of professional skills and in-service trainings. On
this level there often occurs the strong motivation to acquire the perception matrix (cf.
Bourdieu, Passeron 1990: 90-94). That matrix is supplemented with the linguistic capital:
‘…language is not only a means of communication. Apart from the more or less extensive
vocabulary, it provides for a more or less complex system of categories, and it does so in
a way that the ability to decipher complex logical or esthetical structures and to use these
structures depends to some extent on the complexity of the language handed down by the
family’ (Bourdieu, Passeron 1990: 131). P. Bourdieu and J. Passeron say here about
conditioning the original socialization in acquiring specific linguistic competence.
However, this socialization takes place also on higher levels of education, as well as
during secondary socialization which occurs in other formal organizations, referred to
as workplaces. The linguistic competence analyzed on this level is implemented into
specific uses of the language on the interactive level. Activities show all dimensions,
are the focus of its both creative aspect on the part of an individual (interactions) and
external conditions having effect on the internal conditions (habitus).
Consumption habitus is reflected in the economic activities concerned with
purchasing goods. Living ‘beyond one’s means’ or ‘on credit’ is a condition generated
not only by the economic and organizational system which has enabled this, but also
results from the socialization made on the symbolic level by advertising, literature,
movies, television. The distribution system goes beyond the logistics of physically
supplying goods to customers. Distribution is included in the symbolic system
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distributing the particular consumption and lifestyle model. Distribution is a linking
element in the system of communication between the producer (forwarder) and the
consumer (recipient). The system brings about socialization, which, in turn, emerges
through tha habitus in the economic activities concerned with purchasing goods.
The habitus becomes apparent in the economic action itself and it can be overcome,
though this task is extremely difficult for the ‘active subject’. Bourdieau calls those who
have overcome their habitus and poor cultural capital as ‘miracules’ (derived from
‘miracle’; Kłoskowska 1990: 18-19).
How does a subject involved in the economic activities (such as enterprising) deal
with its anti-enterprising habitus, such as is the case in Poland8? How does an educated
person in Poland overcome the habitus of passiveness or moral unwillingness to make
money? How is the rationality of the individual action modified here by the system of
variables beyond the conscious choice made by the individual? This is another task for
the analysis in economic sociology.
8. The most external level in the analytical matrix is the international and global level,
which includes the following: international policy, legal regulations made by the
government in terms of the relations between different countries, culture (values) in the
international comparative context, economy, history and international problems, such as
the protection of natural environment in the global context or the local labour markets in
the context of globalization or international integration (e.g. in Europe), the global IT
network and global media. The global level includes analyzing the conditions imposed
by transnational and global corporations (Tobera 2002: 19-25). The global conditions for
particular actions cannot be avoided here and now. The international level shows the
power of the new technologies: ‘In the new man-machine logistics it is not about the
work any more. The man and the machine build up the interface. There no longer exists
the subject of the work. The action does. We are not in the situation of the transcendental
conflict. We are rather in the horizontal situation of functionality and networks… The
work really has neither price nor value. It cannot be even accurately estimated, such is its
involvement in a variety of links, same as information’ (Baudrillard 2001: 32-33). In the
global world, the specific economic action, the work, is influenced by a number of
spatially distant determinants. The information network assaults the subject of the work
and regulates what is to be the object of that subject’s work and the character of that
work. The role of subjective action is gradually smaller, though still significant. J.
Baudrillard’s claim that ‘there no longer exists the subject of the work’ is not actually
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true. It does exist, though with a different, otherwise determined character which requires
considerable efforts to oppose the technology which bombards the subject or use it for its
own purposes. The global nature of the world requires more efforts from the individual to
let that individual maintain its subjectivity. It is becoming increasingly difficult to predict
the results of one’s actions in this world; the unpredictability of the economic play
implies incurring enormous operational risk (Beck 2002), often resulting in the
emergence of the apathetic approach towards the possibilities for subjective actions. The
subject loses its sense of control, the majority of decisions regarding subject’s life are
made in economy, in the global economic and technological play which is beyond that
subject’s reach (Beck 2002). The work subject does not even have an opportunity to
become alienated, for if this were to happen, it would also become possible in the
situation where this phenomenon was realized to reduce its effects or eliminate the
conditions leading to alienating the subject and the work itself. Obviously it can be
assumed that the subject of the aciton as Homo economicus does not have the raison
d’être in the contemporary world of diverse social dependencies, but assuming the
existence of the ‘sociological subject’ if the actions is not wholly justified either. The
‘subject’ undergoes too much conditioning to be traditionally approached in terms of
subjectivism as a free though partially determined determinant of action. This is but an
element of the network of actions in the global economic system of feedbacks,
determined mutually in a number of loops, which enhance some actions positively and
provide negative support for others, where the consequences of actions increase
exponentially. In this situation it is difficult to require that the subject with its individual
characteristics could be the main object of the sociological analysis. The hypothetical
construct called the ‘sociological man’ becomes meaningless here. Its usefulness is
seriously doubtful in the situation of the multifactorial and multilevel determination of
the actions undertaken by the ‘subject’. The aim of sociological analysis is rather
multidimensional action, also conditioned globally.
3. Conclusions
An analysis of the social and economic order cannot begin and end on the organizational
or institutional level. The order begins with the economic action, one of a number of types of
actions which establish, enhance and alter social order. The analytical matrix desribed above,
referred to as the holographic matrix (Fig. 1), shows that the economic action focuses all the
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social aspects of economic exchange, including the behavioral, structural and developmental
ones (cf. Kośmicki 1995: 42). Each dimension in the matrix is the reflection of itself and the
entire social and economic order. Therefore particular actions are holograms in which given
social and economic systems can be observed qualitatively (to uncover the context of actions and
the processes in which these actions are involved). It is there that an individual willing to make
the most profitable deal is subject to the restrictions and opportunities provided by all
dimenstions, distinguished here only analytically and not onthologically. It is there, in the
economic action, that the economic and organizational order is established to enable further
economic actions. The clash between the derivative social structures, i.e. the habitus, social
values and norms, organizational structures, and the subjective and creative aspect of people’s
actions from the level of interaction, controlled here by the rule of rational exchange of goods
and individual values, results in the complete image of the peculiar combination between the
subjectivity and objectivity of actions in the given social context. Action is a process which
produces specific economic order, i.e. the structures, the procedures and the institutions. The
structures are generated before being provided for us to experience. Therefore this is a
structuralizing process. However, the structures have the return effect on the economic actions,
and the latter can alter the structural dimension of actions (Strauss 1993: 246-262). Processual
ordering (Strauss 1993) is included in the economic actions as a whole indistinguishable from
the action itself (it is the hologram which focues all the dimensions, both structural and
processual, since it is an action), pointing to the fact that the economic action as the basic
analytical unit was selected accurately to see the whole of the still constructed economic order.
The main economic message here is the remark not to begin with economic analyses from the
organizational level, but from the action/interaction level instead (the work process included), i.e.
the generator of the organizations, the institutions and capitalism in general (Weber, 1994), the
action undertaken by a researcher as a verb instead of a noun, where ‘ordering’ on the level of
interaction is the primary objective of that action, while its consequence can be temporary
‘orderliness’, but never the static social order.
Action can be analyzed qualitatively. If we want to understand the actions and the ways
of interpreting the world, we should concentrate on defining the situation of social actors,
typologized and conceptualized by us – researchers and analysts – to understand a more general
dimension of social reality, i.e. the economic one in this case. The majority rule and the whole
philosophy of surveying does not enable our reconstruction of meanings and comprehension of
people’s actions.
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Qualitative research is particularly relevant for explaining the material world, though
definitely insufficient to understand man as Homo economicus. The individual and group
meanings of quantity are of the qualitative character and depend on the context of actions and
individual interpretations of the social and cultural rules. Therefore the analyses of social and
economic phenomena are always understood qualitatively, since we cannot say anything fully
and exhaustively using only numbers referring to the quantitative examination of phenomena,
excluding the types, the classes, the categories, the category properties, the relations, the
descriptions of the contexts for actions and of the processes. Pure numbers do not exist; they
exist only in the experience of active social actors. This is particularly important for private
business activity. To us, the empirical researchers, the qualitative way of thinking about
human experience is the way of ‘scientific, intersubjective empathy’ which makes it possible
to reach the individual and group experiences in the ‘economic world’. An effect of the
research and analyses is the theoretical description or conceptualization and theoretical
integration of the concepts concerned with what we call the ‘socioeconomic system’.
Institutions and organizations cannot be understood without comprehending the active subject
which creates them, provides them with meaning and changes them in a particular context.
Qualitative understanding is also taking into account the context and the motives for the
actions by the individual and the groups in economic exchanges and regulations. The
economic value and its sedimentary or altering organizational structure are produced by way
of social processes. Examining the processes, discovering their stages, dynamics and
conditions is possible only in qualitative research and analyses. First there are categories and
typologies, followed by figures and quantitative relations, and eventually references to the
previously generated categories in order to understand these quantities.
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However, it must be remembered that the perspective of the researcher-analyst (or the
consultant-analyst) must be taken into consideration in this case as well. It is never the case that
the researcher is a free individual not subject to any specific rules of the play in the academic
world nor its social values and standards. Many researchers have crystallized political and
economic beliefs, revealed in their analyses, and they are often engaged in economic
(counselling, trainings) and political activities. Without sociological analysis of the source of the
concepts, the position in the social, political or economic academic world, i.e. the sociological
analysis of the often concealed assumptions about the onthological, epistemological and
anthropological base for the economic order, economic sociology cannot be pursued without
strong ideological distortions of which the researchers may be often unaware.
Information about the author
Professor Krzysztof Konecki, PhD – Head of the Department of Organization and
Management Sociology, Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, the
University of Łódź. E-mail: [email protected].
Endnotes
1
The reflections presented below are an attempt at continuing the theoretical claim by K. Doktór (1996: 17) who
argued that there was the requirement for a new paradigm of the analysis of the new (old) economic phenomena:
‘The structure of ownership, control and management is changing, therefore the old way of thinking about <<the
autonomous socialist enterprise>> is a relic of the past methodology. We must go back to the roots and study
enterprise again.’
2
The terms economic sociology, economy sociology, sociology of economics are used here interchangeably,
though to us the basic term is the adjectival structure of ‘economic sociology’, since we are not analyzing any
specific economy within given discipline, but the economic measures, processes and phenomena in general,
though within a specified context, i.e. time and space (cf. Kośmicki, Janik 2002: 489-491, as well as Morawski
2001: 12-19; Swedberg 1987; Martinelli, Smelser 1990).
3
Economic action is understood here as ‘social’ action, which, according to M. Weber, ‘is the action which
according to the intentional sense of the actor or actors refers to other people’s behaviour and is oriented at that
behaviour in its course’ (Weber 2002: 6). This orientation to others is expressed fully in the interactions between
people (Strauss 1993: 47-74).
4
In this context, purposes serve the interests of a subject, i.e. an individual or a community with which further
existence of an individual is connected (Horkheimer 1987: 247-248). This type of rationality can be called
‘subjective rationality’, using Horkheimer’s transposition of the philosophical ‘subjective reason’ to the field of
sociology.
5
Enterprise actions can also be analyzed on the individual reason, where personality traits can be treated as
important conditions of enterprise actions, such as innovation, the ability to see a wider context, the inclination
to take risk balanced accoridngly with the sense of responsibility, flexibility with the ability to learn from the
acquired experience (Nawojczyk 2002: 331). Still, these traits can be reconstructed only through observing
specific economic actions and the network of relations established through these actions by means of continuous
adjusting of the action paths, coordinating the work paths and arrangements (cf. Strauss 1993: 40-41, 87;
Konecki 1998: 26-27).
6
Institutions are formal organs mounted in the axiom-normative order: ‘The establishment of formal
organizations can be treated as the initial formal phase. It should be supplemented with the second phase, the
15
normative, socio-cultural one, intended to render formal purposes the elements of shared values and behavioural
standards’ (Morawski 2001: 59).
7
Habitus is ‘…the socially developed system of structured and structuring dispositions, acquired in practice and
permanently targeted at the practical functions’ (Bourdieau, Wacquant 2001: 107).
8
An interesting attempt at analyzing this problem was made by A. Marcinkowski, J. Sobczak (1995: 35-37). The
two authors claim that ‘an individual usually does not become an entrepreneur in the effect of some uncontrolled
coincidences, but as a result of consciously realized intentions’ (Marcinkowski, Sobczak 1995: 35). They add,
however, that certain conditions must be met for the entrepreneur’s objectives to be fulfilled. Nonetheless the
primary assumption as to the entrepreneur’s nature is his or her rationality, free will and the capacity to make
rational choices in the specified circumstances, restrictive for that nature. Still, we blieve that this will and its
underpinning freedom (the rational and calculative disposition) has its historical and systemic genesis related to
the possession of the economic, cultural and social capital (and therefore not only to inheriting, enforcing,
imitating and experimenting) which, when revised in action, provides for an opportunity for an analyst to define
a posteriori an economic action as the enterprising one.
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