Entreprenörskap i industrialismens gränsområde? : en studie av lokala förutsättningar och företagarnätverk i Skelleftebygden under 1800- och 1900-talen

Sammanfattning: Today's research into entrepreneurship focuses largely on the influence of small-scale business enterpriseon regional development. How has this appeared from an historical perspective, and has small-scaleentrepreneurship been an important prerequisite of regional development? This dissertation is a casestudy and illuminates how changes in the local environment influence entrepreneurship in conjunctionwith new relationships and conditions over a protracted period of economic transformation. It analyses aninteraction between different factors at local level over a long period of time between changes ineconomic conditions and changes in the socio-cultural sphere from which the development of localentrepreneurship has benefited. In this interaction between such factors as the economic and sociocultural,new demarcation phenomena can arise in the enterprise culture. Such a demarcationphenomenon is whether the local environment in the Skellefteå region creates, to a greater extent than inother regions, a propensity to develop entrepreneurship in industrial enterprises. Norrland has often beencharacterised as a region of Sweden where lack of entrepreneurship has been considerable and animportant partial explanation of the economic problems of that province. How well does such anobservation accord with the facts, and is it the case that entrepreneurship has difficulty in developing inperipheral parts of the country because conditions are not good enough?The dissertation studies changes in business enterprise, business networks and entrepreneurship in aregion situated in the northern part of Sweden, i.e. in the Skellefteå region. The case study may beregarded as an attempt to test a thesis about how local entrepreneurship can develop in a region over aprotracted period. When the great international Boliden corporation was established in the 1930s, wasthere, either already or alongside it, a tradition of local entrepreneurship which subsequently developed inunison with the expansion of the corporation?The study shows that even at the beginning of the 1930s, there was already a more elaborateenterprise environment than was previously known, and that important changes occurred at an early stagein the entrepreneurial network which was built up in the region. What the study also shows is that theenterprise culture which developed in the Skellefteå region was largely a result of a combination ofNorrland and other entrepreneurial traditions for example from Småland. In this encounter at local levelbetween entrepreneurs from different peripheral parts of Sweden, where domestic manufactures andoccupational versatility had been prominent features, entrepreneurship did develop. The study gives aninsight into how local business networks can be changed and linked together in new constellations duringperiods of economic transformation. The results indicate that small-scale entrepreneurship is an importantprerequisite of regional development.