Who Is Servig Whom?

Publications of the Department of Social Research 2015:13 Entrepreneurship is expected to serve a multitude of societal interests. It is assumed to enhance competitiveness, create jobs and services, and contribute to social and ecological development. As such, enterprise promotion has become an integral part of Finnish policymaking. In the rural context, enterprise promotion is an essential part of regional, agricultural and rural policies. Considering the governmental interests in entrepreneurship, a problem noted by both scholars and policy actors is that business owners do not make the most of public enterprise promotion. The present dissertation studies enterprise promotion in rural Finland from a relational social psychological perspective, by focusing on agency and interests.