Empreender para sobreviver: estudo sobre a ação econômica dos empreendedores de pequeno porte

Abstract

The new world of labor, that is a result of the flexible accumulation of capital, determined deep changes in the workers’ lives. There has been changes in the pattern of traditional jobs — the kind of job that was able to provide stability and the benefits of labor laws. New characteristics were demanded from workers in the in the fordism era of capitalism. It’s required dynamism, competitiveness and entrepreneurship from workers. Reengineering that causes productive restructuring, longer labor’s journeys, change of management methods and the adoption of new technologies have caused the reduction of traditional jobs and an increase of the number of own-account workers. This scenario benefits the high qualified and skilled workers, but to the greater proportion of workers, it means unemployment and struggle to survive, usually developing activities in the informal labor market – there is precarious labor. Facing this reality, public policies of job and income generation stimulate microcredit and entrepreneurship as a way to consolidate the activities developed by own-account workers. Since we have described this scenario, it is necessary to ask some questions order to guide this thesis: Who are the own-account workers? What do those workers do when they are stimulated to develop their managerial talents and competitiveness practices through the microcredit policies? Do those workers have cultural background that enables them to practice the post-modern principles of entrepreneurship? What kind of entrepreneurship are we talking about? Is it Schumpeter’s entrepreneurship? Is it an entrepreneurship based on needs, native and marked by survival struggle? Is it an entrepreneurship of small business that insists to be established in heterogeneous social-economics spaces? The methodology we adopted in this thesis evolves, beyond detailed bibliographic analysis, a sample research in the district Granja Portugal, that is part of Grande Bom Jardim − an urban agglomeration in the periphery of Fortaleza, the city capital of Ceara. We also interviewed community leaders and credit consulters and credit agents that work in that area. The research highlights, among its most important results, the existence of entrepreneurship used as an strategy of survival, that carries out aspects of different kinds of entrepreneurship, such as achievement of professional and personal goals; innovation and creativity, and exhaustive work and discipline. Most microproducers reveals the character of survival strategy in their labor activities and they prefer formal contracts jobs that assure the benefits of labor laws. Those who are secure in their own-account job activities are not yet satisfactorily supported by the public policies, such as microcredit loans and the courses about micro entrepreneurship. We may summarize the argument so far by saying that this study suggests that the microcredit programs should contemplate loans to new business and the reformulation of the courses about entrepreneurship. So, those courses may develop the conscious of the social-economic development of the territory where the entrepreneurs live. This is an essential basis for the surge of micro entrepreneurs.