FROM UNEMPLOYMENT TO RUNNING ONE’S OWN BUSINESS: THE IDEATIONAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN POLISH AND EU PUBLIC POLICY

Nowadays the entrepreneurship phenomenon is of great importance. Small business is considered a criticalI become a subject of common approval and growing legitimization as well as of intensive governmentalsupport in various forms. In public debate and public policy, the idea of deregulation, relating to actions limit-in the public debate and public policy, providing entrepreneurs with subsidies and other kind of support isbased on the interventionism doctrine. Therefore, an ideational entrepreneurship system is created at the publicauthority level which seeks to explain and justify a certain shape of support policy for entrepreneurs. The paperargues that entrepreneurship could be perceived as an ideational embedded economic action. In order to illustratethe ideational embeddedness of entrepreneurship, EU and Polish public policy discourse form 2000–2010 wasanalysed. The objects of qualitative discourse analysis were, among others, governmental documents, strate-gies, and public statements.