Article of Philippe JOURDAN & Jean-Claude PACITTO, in GESTION2000 , 2017/5-6, Vol. 34

RESUME

It is never easy to answer complex questions such as why the differential of entrepreneurial dynamism between countries or continents. As often the causes are multiple. Confronted with the need to understand and act, actors involved in entrepreneurial development and especially public authorities need more comprehensive explanations that can mobilize energies and simplify the search for causes.
We will never understand the success of culturalist explanations if we do not place them in a context of demand for causal simplification of the phenomena studied. These explanations have tended to become seductive theories in the sense of Boudon (1986) and have lost their scientific validity.
Examining the differentiated trajectories of France and England in terms of entrepreneurship will allow us to better reveal the influence of the politico-institutional context on entrepreneurial development and thus relativize the “culturalist” explanations that ultimately explain not much.