Metalanguage Of The Culture Of Entrepreneurship During Economic Development Paradigm Shift

Abstract

Being based on the study of the key concepts of metalanguage, the article identifies the culturally conditioned tendency of entrepreneurial activity in industrial and digital paradigm of economic development. Metalanguage as a product of collective wisdom and accumulated knowledge does not appear spontaneously, it emerges either ontologically in the form of metaphorical images of the naïve picture of the world, or as a result of radical change in the grasp of reality. The study of metalinguistic elements of the culture of entrepreneurship reveals the deep concepts and ideas that guide entrepreneurial activity. The analysis of the metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture conducted in this study shows the correlation of the mindset and work methods, ensuring entrepreneurial success in socially acceptable framework to the worldview of the era, to the key notions of understanding of reality. The analysis of the key notions of the metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture demonstrates that the economic development paradigm shift, which started in the beginning of the 21^st century, meaning the transition to networking, constant adjustment and refinement of strategic tasks with the help of digital technology under uncertainty and risk, reflects some changes in models of perception and practical actions of entrepreneurs, rather than transformation of the root idea of modernisation – that is gaining dominance by means of “creative destruction”.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial cultureglobalizationmetalanguagemodernizationparadigmpicture of the world

Introduction

Human thought and perception are based on language structures. The fundamental elements of entrepreneurial culture accumulating gained social and professional experience are reflected in the language, which is a form of verbalisation of human consciousness and a means of organisation of interpersonal relations. Language is used not only for message transmission but simultaneously structures the content of an utterance. Semantic content is able to support particular thinking patterns, being an instrument of knowledge system shaping about the world and a cultural stereotype base. The substantive aspect of language stores a way of world perception of every ethnos.

The language of entrepreneurship is a product of a particular society and a certain historical period. Entrepreneurial activities are both unique and ethnically determined. Entrepreneurship generated by the course of European cultural development, aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficient resource use, is meant to implement new economic activities that lead to the changes in the market situation. Entrepreneurship, as a specific social phenomenon, emerged in the depths of Western civilization, gains stability in time and public recognition when this type of activity gets a cultural boost, extending beyond individual needs and aims at achieving collectively significant results. Entrepreneurial culture develops by means of elimination of ineffective behavioral patterns and collecting positive experience of many successful entrepreneurs, which is much richer than knowledge gained by an individual throughout one’s life.

Problem Statement

The reality, in which entrepreneurial activities are carried out, is constructed in accordance with knowledge-beliefs followed by individuals. Notions, used to comprehend the reality, represent intelligent constructs, created by people in the framework of the established scientific paradigm. The study of metalinguistic elements of entrepreneurial culture outline concepts, which being unconscious for native speakers, direct entrepreneurial activities. Concepts and general notions used in entrepreneurial activities constitute an integral part of entrepreneurial culture metalanguage and enables us to analyse not only linguistic phenomena but also the symbolic reality of culture in general. The relevance of the study is due to the modern stage of social and economic development of world community and a necessity to research interconnection between metalanguage as a cultural code and entrepreneurial activities.

Research Questions

How did the metalanguage of scientific discourse of the Modern era influence the perception of economic reality and emergence of the fundamental concepts of a manufacturing entrepreneurship paradigm?

What changes in the metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture occurred in the conditions of economic development paradigm shift in the beginning of the XXI century?

What is the impact of the global English language on entrepreneurial culture of different ethnic groups?

Purpose of the Study

Based on the metalanguage analysis, the article represents an attempt to interpret the profound features of entrepreneurial culture in modern society, its origin and direction, in order to understand how deep the ideas of the Modern era are rooted in the worldview of its bearers in global economic space. By highlighting the basic concepts of industrial and digital paradigm of economic development, we can designate orientation of attitudes and vectors of entrepreneurial culture during the alteration of world picture and basic metaphors, molding understanding of reality.

Research Methods

Interdisciplinary nature of the study combines general scientific methods and principles typical for neoinstitutional economic theory and cultural linguistics. According to the evolutionary theory of economic change of North (2005), economic activities reflect a belief system spread in society, while cultural linguistics interprets the language as a cultural phenomenon, expressing ethnic mentality. Thus, it is possible to trace conjugation of the metalanguage of scientific world picture and economic development paradigm with the metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture.

Findings

The culture of entrepreneurship, which determines the models of success in a socially acceptable framework, is based on an understanding of the current market situation and values embedded in the ideals and traditions of the community. Culture, embracing inherited traditions that have gone deep into the collective unconscious, embodies collective memory in language, creating the foundation of knowledge about the world. In language, as in the shell of the early forms of social consciousness, ideas and concepts that form a naive picture of the world of the people are preserved. Language, as a system of signs encoding information, involving the individual to the social experience, forms both the individual consciousness of the individual, and the mentality of the ethnic group as a whole. Thus, according to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, put forward by Sapir (2002) and Whorf (2003), the system of concepts and features of people's thinking are determined by the language, the native speakers of which they are, i.e. the language does not just express thoughts, but directs the thought processes, determining their results.

Language in its fundamental basis contains language a priori, limited meanings that form the culture, becoming a metalanguage. The metalanguage of culture is a special cultural code, a way of forming basic messages. Language a priori principles of metalanguage is a condition for the generation of culture itself. Language modeling of human existence, contained in the fundamental concepts of metalanguage, creates a network of associated associations of worldviews, in accordance with the vectors and dimensions of the naive picture of the world (perception of time and space, attitude to life and death, etc.). The metalanguage, as the foundation of people's thinking, contains metaphorical images encoded by means of language. The metalanguage of culture is a matrix of fundamental metaphors defining and ordering culture. The metaphor encodes the worldview of culture bearers.

The naive picture of the world of any ethnic group can significantly differ from the scientific picture of the world, presented in the form of a system of scientific concepts, and is similar for people who speak different languages. Scientific data are superimposed on the ideas of the world, characteristic of the naive picture of the world of this ethnic group, existing in an indirect form and unconscious by native speakers, supplement and correct the ordinary ideas, which form the basis for adaptation to the world, but do not create an objective and universal scientific picture of the world for all representatives of the world community. Theoretically, neutral scientific knowledge is impossible, since metacategories of scientific discourse, the components of conceptual-linguistic framework of scientific experience remain constant perception of the world inherent in the structure of natural language (time, space, language, the world, etc.). Just as objective scientific knowledge, free from the modeling system of natural language, is impossible; likewise, the existence of naive consciousness in its pure form, in the conditions of modern civilization with advanced information and communication technologies, is impossible as well.

The differentiation of science into an independent discipline, a loss of the integrity of the scientific picture of the world, the appearance of special scientific ontologies, weak trends of research synthesis lead to the fact that deep mastering of scientific knowledge and liberation from the elements of naive consciousness become possible in the framework of the specialised scientific sphere. Mastering of professional language and categories of professional metalanguage becomes an indispensable condition of acquiring theoretical systematised knowledge in a particular professional field. The basis of professional culture is theoretically systematised knowledge that represents reality through sign, conceptual models, the basis of which are the categories as the concept of the metalevel.

In the process of development, science may encounter new objects of research that contradict the accepted picture of the world, which leads to a radical restructuring of the foundations of science. A new picture of reality and new norms of cognitive activity, being established in one science, are translated into others, stimulating the further development of new results. The scientific picture of the world is continuously refined and developed through the interdisciplinary development of knowledge and the transfer of ideas and norms of research from one scientific discipline to another. Updating of scientific terminology is associated with the emergence of new units of research, the emergence of new concepts or a change of scientific paradigms.

The new paradigm as a general model for solving research problems, as an image of scientific theory, a scheme for understanding and explaining various aspects of reality, is not established immediately. New cognitive attitudes and new knowledge, leading to a review of the range of research problems and a change in the world view, accumulate, leading to a state of crisis. The paradigm shift by Kuhn (2009) is a discrete process, performed not as a result of reflection, but due to an unexpected and non-structural event that leads to a shift in perception, “switching the Gestalt”, after which the views on the fundamental questions of the universe change: “although the world does not change with the paradigm, the scientist after this change works in another world” (p. 187). The transition from one paradigm to another, accompanied by a change in the view of the world, leads to a new vision of the subject of research, defines new methods and models for solving problems, forms new terminological systems.

One of such crucial events was the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, when science began to develop in Europe, which was the beginning of fundamental and irreversible changes in the understanding of the world. The cognitive shift that occurred in the minds of nature researchers changed all human knowledge about nature, becoming a scientific revolution that shook the foundations of human culture, so that the entire Western world from the traditional became modernistic. Fundamentally new, in comparison with the ancient and medieval understanding of nature, free from mythological and religious interpretations, formed the scientific picture of the new time in accordance with the laws of classical mechanics. “Nature” – “Physis” in the ancient worldview was not an impersonal, inanimate substance, but was understood as matter, framed with due consideration of its purpose, objective and function in the perfect completeness of the Cosmos. The new attitude to nature, fixed in the category of “nature” in conjunction with the formation of new meanings of the categories of “space” and “time”, developing with the approval of the heliocentric system of the world, destroyed the idea of the movement of the terrestrial and celestial spheres, as having a fundamental difference, i.e. the perfection of the celestial spheres and their qualitative superiority over the earthly – “sinful”. The universe in the concepts of classical mechanics is considered in the concepts of material particles, empty space, acting mechanical forces.

Turning to mechanical causality and abandoning teleological notions has become a radically new way of seeing nature and man. The hierarchy of different forms of existence has been reduced to the dualism of the object – nature, which has quantitative properties, and the subject – man, exploring objects with the help of thinking and action. The interpretation of nature as a field of application of human forces, and man as opposed to it, intensively thinking and acting, is associated with a paradigm shift in science. Fixed in the category of “nature” attitude to nature, served as the basis of a fundamentally new way of exploring the world: experimental research with the help of technical means to achieve their goals. A paradigm shift, which consists in the turn to systematic experimental science, which is based on the idea of progress, defined the strategy of scientific cognition in general. The scientific approach developed within the framework of classical mechanics has also become fundamental in the consideration of social objects.

Understanding of nature and society as an ordered and naturally arranged mechanism, the knowledge of which allows to expand the transforming activities and meet the growing human needs on the basis of scientific explanations, increases the status of ratio as a necessary condition for the prosperity of society. Rationality, which contributes to gaining dominance over nature and society, has become the dominant value of modern culture. The ideal of the new European culture – a rational individual, mastering the forces of nature and the forces of social development, makes a free choice and possesses power over external circumstances.

In 1776, Smith (1993) published “The inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nation”, which laid the foundations of a new attitude to the economic life of society. The name of A. Smith is associated with the creation of economic theory as a science of categories and laws of economic life. Instead of reasoning about the principles of economic management of the country, political economy of A. Smith created a complete picture of the economic processes taking place in society, allowing to develop objective conclusions predetermined by the laws of economic behaviour of market participants.

Markets have always been an integral part of human history, but understanding the market system as a mechanism for the survival of the entire society has become the basis of a new worldview. The idea of a market economy as a self-regulating system that transforms, on the basis of the laws of supply and demand, selfish instincts into social virtues, and through competition, ensures the production of the necessary volume of goods and the establishment of affordable prices, is based on the principles of the mechanistic picture of the world and the belief that they are a universal means of learning about any object.

Economic rationality in the interpretation of the classics of economic theory has acquired a specific form - maximizing one's own benefits, objectively contributing to the balance of the entire economic system. Restrained by religious norms and traditions, the motive of personal profit has gained support in economic science: the market logic according to Smith (1993) implies that private vices can lead to universal benefit. In addition, the ideological soil of Protestantism was fertile ground for the establishment of capitalist attitude. In pursuit of capital, innovation and enterprise have become recognised virtues.

In “The theory of economic development”, J. Schumpeter defines the concept of “entrepreneur” through a specific function performed by him – the implementation of new combinations. To be a Schumpeter entrepreneur is not to do what others do and not as others do. Singling out the entrepreneur among all economic entities, undoubtedly possessing economic thinking and being able to do “calculations”, Schumpeter (2008) proves that the entrepreneurial function requires qualitatively different abilities than within a balanced circuit. In addition to such generally recognised qualities of an entrepreneur as the gift of foresight, initiative, authority, Schumpeter also calls the ability to overcome established habits of thinking that is, “spiritual emancipation”, suggesting “the presence of forces and energy, the volume of which goes far beyond the needs of ordinary everyday life”. This quality, according to Schumpeter, “is something peculiar and rare in nature” (Schumpeter, 2008). Therefore, entrepreneurship cannot be a profession – it is difficult to be in such a state for a long time. Once established on the basis of new combinations, business will begin to operate within the established circuit, the entrepreneur becomes “just the owner”. His thinking is no longer aimed at finding the “best option possible”, but to choose the most profitable of the “familiar, tried in practice” (Schumpeter, 2008).

The opposition of the two types of behaviour presented in the antithesis of the two types of economic entities – “just the owner” and the entrepreneur is manifested in the difference of their motivational attitudes. Describing the content of the economic mentality aimed at meeting the needs in the broad sense of the word and recognising the desire to acquire goods – ratio (meaning) of economic activity, Schumpeter defines the behaviour of the entrepreneur as based on a different rationalism and other motives of his actions. The desire to fight, the desire to succeed for the sake of success, to take a higher position in society, the joy of creativity are fundamentally different from purely economic motives. “They are alien to the economic ratio and its laws”, Schumpeter says (Schumpeter, 2008).

In the model of economic development presented by Schumpeter, the entrepreneur is given not only the role of “the driving force of the reorganisation of economic life”, but also the role of the founder of a new system of values, embodying a new culture of entrepreneurship by their actions. “Extreme self-centredness” based on this behaviour is provided by the “determination and forwardness”, thanks to which well-established relations and traditions are torn, the system of conventional superindividual values becomes alien to them. The ability to move forward alone, despite the uncertainty and resistance of those groups whose interests will be threatened by the introduction of innovation, puts the entrepreneur-innovator in the position of revolutionary in the economy and the unwitting instigator of the social and political revolution (Schumpeter, 2008).

The fundamental ideas formed by the scientific picture of the world of XVII-XVIII centuries, likening the Universe to the grandiose mechanical device, learning of which through reason will provide social progress, were transformed into economic activity in the universe of building order and control over the future – the mechanistic organisation of production. The paradigm of entrepreneurship of the industrial era, combining the rationalisation and improvement of technology in the context of liberalisation, providing an opportunity for an extraordinary high monetary and reputational remuneration, comes from the fundamental idea of the modern era: the imperfection of the created world can be corrected by means of human thought. The mechanistic system of organisation of production is an instrument of subordination of nature and mastery of the world.

The rejection of traditional and class restrictions and the transition from artisanal to industrial production created an environment in which the main criterion for success was profit. If we understand entrepreneurship “as an inventive desire to take a certain position, without caring much about the means of achieving the goal”, then business activity can be not only unproductive, but also destructive (Baumol, 2013, p. 326). The business culture of the modern era is focused on productive activities, in which the creative destruction caused by innovation brings a positive social effect. Modernisation of the metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture is a transformation of the metalanguage of entrepreneurial activity aimed at its qualitative renewal. The modernisation reflects the main idea of the culture of the New time – the desire for progressive change. Revolutionary progress and rationality as the key metaphors of the modern business culture are based on the categories of metalanguage learnt by all entrepreneurs in the modern society: efficiency, productivity, centralisation, planning and innovations.

The incredibly fast pace of development of science necessary for the introduction of new technologies, new discoveries and scientific revolutions of the XX century laid new radical changes in the basis of the modern scientific picture of the world. Unlike classical science, which emphasises the order and stability of the universe, modern science highlights such characteristics as uncertainty, instability, chaos. The fundamental laws of physics only express probability, while determinism ceases to be in force: the future ceases to be determined in the present. The objects of modern interdisciplinary research have become complex self-organising systems, the interaction of the researcher with which alters the field of possible states. The fundamental categories of causality, time-space are filled with new content. The world, made up of multi-scale open systems, is infinitely diverse, and deeper penetration into its secrets raises more and more questions. The principal incompleteness and impossibility of visual representation of the modern scientific picture of the world in the transition to deeper levels of reality that do not correspond to the mechanisms of human perception developed by evolution, the use of complex mathematical apparatus lead to the need for the use of computer technology, which changes the nature of scientific activity. The concepts of fluctuation, bifurcation and coherence form a new metalanguage of the scientific picture of the world. Key areas of research in economics in recent decades, reflecting the perception of the era, find their support in the terminology of the metalanguage used. The metalanguage of modern economic theory forms a cognitive model expressed in the categories of impossibility, instability and incompleteness.

The use of an increasing variety of models forms reality from fragments of these models, appealing to their own reality. The more information, the greater the number of models expands the understanding of how the economic system works, the less you can rely on these sources of information, which are already a reflexion of reflexions existing in the conventionality of its existence. Instead of knowledge – an overdose of information, instead of feeling powerful – disorientation. This is a completely new uncertainty that comes not from a lack of information, but from an excess of it.

The entrepreneurial activity of the generators of technological transformations of the end of the XX century, implementing radically new ideas for the introduction of information systems, provided a shift in the entrepreneurial paradigm to the post-industrial, in which information has become the main economic resource, and the enterprise has become a system of processing information. Under the pressure of continuous innovation and rapidly changing demand, adaptation to the market situation is based on the information assessment of the situation and the use of computer technologies to reduce costs and improve product quality. The development of the digital economy is not just a change in technology, but also a change in the paradigm of economic development. Revolutionary changes, consisting in fundamental changes in the structure of the economy, which is dominated by the information industry, where digital resources and digital processes become creation centres of added value, enhance not only the virtualisation of the economy, but also cross-border economic cooperation on a global scale.

Giant transnational corporations, driven by the desire for monopolisation and the preservation of the level of profit in the face of declining demand, have become the main driving force of economic globalisation and the main players in global markets, forming new techniques and methods of competition. “Many global corporations now wield more economic power than national states... the share of the richest 200 corporations account for 25% of all global economic activity, but they employ less than 1% of the workforce” (Elwood, 2013, p. 83). There has never been anything like transnational giants in the history of humankind. High-tech multinational companies-leaders, releasing innovative products and services, and aggressively promoting them, are able to “creatively destroy” both local and national markets, breaking the traditional hierarchy of the market status quo and establishing new rules of interaction. The position of companies in the market is becoming more complex, as the forecast based on the analysis of long-term trends has become almost impossible.

The desire of transnational corporations to achieve global consolidation of status and technological leadership through disruptive innovation, when even large but insufficiently flexible companies lose their dominance, and new technologies allow to develop a more preferable product for the buyer, is a manifestation of the expansion of the instrumental mind, the continuation of the European idea of rationalisation of the modern era in conjunction with economic rationality and its key concept – efficiency. The metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture in the new paradigm of economic development, based on the use of digital Internet technologies, was supplemented by new key concepts: data generation, information, destabilisation, uncertainty, intangible assets, digital transformation, network effect, decentralisation. The updating of the metalanguage reflects the process of ongoing modernisation, as prepared by the whole course of the previous evolution process of changing technologies, but in the conditions of complex non-equilibrium systems, the knowledge and management of which is faced with the need to use appropriate digital tools that perform operations of thinking and rational judgment. The culture of entrepreneurship, driven by the ideas of modernity about the transformation and subordination of the world, domination over external circumstances, through the development and improvement of digital technologies continues to express the desire to acquire new opportunities for transformative activities.

Globalisation is not only a powerful movement of people, goods and capital that forms the global economic space, but also a diffusion of Western values spread by telecommunication and media corporations, generating global cultural flows that promote Western models of “good life”. The expansion of English vocabulary through journalism, media texts, and advertising is a broad front, capturing both common vocabulary and terminology. In journalism, in scientific literature, and even more so in advertising, the use of Anglicism-borrowings is a technique of speech strategy, derived from the installation that English terms mark everything new and modern. Achievements in science and advanced technological development, correlated with high technology and the digital revolution, are imported from advanced countries, which are scientifically and technically far ahead, with the help of the English language. Global English, being the language of international conferences, publications, international economic relations, advertising, higher education, providing access to knowledge and information, is a tool of cognitive communication and the language of business communication in the global cultural space.

The borrowing of Anglicisms (Globalisms) creates a linguistic mélange that erases the boundaries between languages. English-language inclusions functioning in different ethnic languages (for example, merchandising, Wi-Fi, flash mob, PR, etc.) lead to the creation of terminological systems based on the leading language and the formation of a new metalanguage in a certain field of activity serving new fields of knowledge. The use of the world lexicon as an introduction to the language experience of humankind, which has existed at all times, in the conditions of global cultural expansion, turns into a broadcast of ideology dominating the world arena. The culture of entrepreneurship of the new generation of any ethnic group, functioning in the information field of the new mental lexicon, will be based on the matrix of Western thinking and values of liberalism, the most important components of which are: liberation from the limitations of tradition, the priority of individual freedom over common interests, pluralism of values, the separation of powers and the restriction of any power, technological transformation of nature and society.

We can agree with the reflection of Habermas (2011) on the consequences of the modernisation of public consciousness in Europe, given in the article “Equal treatment of cultures and the limits of postmodern liberalism”: “Globalisation of markets, mass media and other networks today no longer gives any nation various options to exit from capitalist modernization” (p. 291).

In the conditions of highly dynamic development of the metalanguage of the entrepreneurial culture, the importance of efforts aimed at maintaining the optimal proportions between innovations and tradition in the language increases. Constructive adaptation to global modernisation is possible on the way of mastering the achievements of modernity with the help of our own resources.

Conclusion

Fundamental reorientation of perception of nature, accomplished by the scientific revolution of the XVII century found its reflection in economic theory and the political program of laissez faire , providing the conditions for entrepreneurial abilities to be implemented in manufacturing entrepreneurship. The metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture oriented on transformative activities in the spirit of Modern Age has reflected a transition to the rational mentality and the acceptance of the rational world picture in such key terms as effectiveness, efficiency, centralisation, planning and innovations.

Further intensive development of telecommunication and computer technologies, enabling to significantly increase the efficiency of production, delivery, maintenance, in the beginning of the XXI century leads to the change of economic development paradigm, based on instantaneous speed of information processes and cross-border scope of cooperation, increasing economic virtuality, global and innovative character of competition. New economic reality as well as laws of nature of the new era, change dramatically, expressing the fundamental role of probability. Limited predictability and uncertainty, having influenced the way of thinking in all fields of science, did not manage to radically transform entrepreneurial culture based on Modern ideals. The analysis of the key concepts of the entrepreneurial culture metalanguage shows that the values of rational knowledge and progress found their application in digital technologies, which are necessary to ensure economic efficiency in highly competitive and unpredictable environment.

Under the conditions of globalisation the English language as the language of international business and international scientific conferences, acting as a leader-language, is intensively used for term system forming in new fields of knowledge and activities securing the property of a marker for anything novel, modern, that is opposite to tradition. The metalanguage of entrepreneurial culture cannot remain static in the changing world. The entrepreneurial culture of any ethnos functioning in language mélange environment is modernised, to some extent, assimilating an extract of a different world picture. Response to the culture challenge of global modernisation could be found through the equivalents of own culture.

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