The Role of Social Capital in a Traditional Entrepreneurial Society : A Study

Social capital, a construct, is a focal point in entrepreneurship research. This paper seeks to study the effects of an exploitative regulatory and economic environment on the social capital of an entrepreneurial society and the individual entrepreneur. The case study method is adopted and the study is carried out through semi-structured interviews of seven entrepreneurs selected from the community of weavers and traders of handloom textile products in Shantipur, a small town in Eastern India. Analysis of the cases leads to the propositions that when exposed to such environments, entrepreneurs in the society demonstrate low levels of generalized trust and low capability for forming bridging social capital. In a country with diverse languages and a legacy of English colonialism, the fluency of the entrepreneur with the English language correlates positively with the ability of the entrepreneur to create bridging social capital