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Entrepreneurial Family Businesses in Poland: From an Emerging to a Developed Market

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Entrepreneurial Finance in Emerging Markets

Abstract

Over the last thirty years, fundamental changes have taken place in the economic system and the principles of doing business in Poland. Since 1989, when citizens’ opportunities to develop and operate their own businesses ceased to be restricted due to ideological reasons, economic growth has become unprecedented in the Polish history. Thanks to this growth, the Polish economy has transformed into a developing market from an underdeveloped one, gradually striving to become a developed economy. Family entrepreneurship plays a significant role in this respect. Since the beginning of the transformation process in Poland, the development of family businesses has been a hallmark of the economic transformation and is a symbol of Poland’s economic success. Polish family enterprises operating in the free market economy are constantly facing new challenges, which are posed by the changing market. These challenges also relate to their specificity, resulting from the dual connection of the two inter-related systems: the business and the family. This connection leads family enterprises to simultaneously combine in their functioning the implementation of economic goals and the goals of the family running the enterprise as well as a long-term (multi-generational) perspective of creating enterprise value. Family involvement allows to maintain a value system that is not subject to fashions and changing trends in the enterprise’s evolution.

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Marjański, A., Sułkowski, Ł. (2020). Entrepreneurial Family Businesses in Poland: From an Emerging to a Developed Market. In: Klonowski, D. (eds) Entrepreneurial Finance in Emerging Markets. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46220-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46220-8_7

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