RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

Sustaining social and rural entrepreneurship towards hybrids 67
Rural resource comprises a wide range of economic, social, political and environmental
meanings. Sustainable development in the rural context relies on re-conceptualising rural
resources as ‘countryside capital’ Investing in countryside capital may benefit the local community
by improving the quality of the rural environment and communities (Garrod, Wornell
& Youell, 2008). The entrepreneurs in rural environment tend to play a relevant role as
partners for driving local economic development in the effort to achieve community-determined
(Bryant, 1989). Rurality as an entrepreneurial milieu tends to shape all the stages of
entrepreneurial process. The main characteristics of rurality concern: physical environment
in terms of location, natural resources, landscape (Stathopoulou, Psaltopoulos & Skuras, 2004).
Sustaining rural economy serves for developing regional landscapes and overcoming crises
and decline of agriculture. The task of public institutions should be that of promoting the sustainable
development of rural entrepreneurship encouraging communities to participate and
benefit from entrepreneurial opportunities in rural areas (Garrod, Wornell & Youell, 2008).
Rural development relies on local diversities emerging for enforcing local identity and culture
for reconstructing the eroded economic base of both the rural economy and the farm enterprise
(Douwe van der Ploeg & Roep, 2003). Rediscovering both social and economic values
and the strategic role of agriculture helps to build the sustainable development and management
of territories and rural areas in long term. Enhancing culture and identity of rural and
local communities as productive resource and asset (Doria, 2002) relies on encouraging the
construction of rural districts for enhancing and implementing the rural development paradigm
(Arzeni, 2008). Economic and productive activities should acquire an added value within rural
systems or areas emerging as sites of community and place potentially rich and adequate for
building and maintaining satisfying material infrastructures (Esposti & Sotte, 2001).
Changing rural development: an evolving path
Rural development tends to emerge as an important carrier for maintenance and revitalization
of rural economies and communities by creation and consolidation of new linkages
between agriculture and society, offer of new responses to the income squeeze, opening up
to new multifunctional enterprises and networks bridging rural and urban realities (Douwe
van der Ploeg & Roep, 2003). Redistribution of value between economic sectors, expectation
of people and consumer with regard to rurality tend to change over time. Rurality can
be seen as a dynamic concept and analyzed coherently with an evolutionary approach in which
three stages of rurality are elucidated; in the agrarian rurality the rural as synonym of agriculture
is the white between the dots and refers to marginal and disadvantaged areas characterized
by situations of unemployment, economic crisis and depression. Rural development
depends of development of agriculture; in the stage of industrial rurality there is an increasing
decline in the role of agriculture which contributes to economic and social stability by
transferring work force, capital, land and entrepreneurial skills to industrial district and
economies; the characteristics are the following ones: production capital intensive, productive
specialization and mono-cultivation, standardization of process and outputs, methods and
techniques for work efficiency; in the post-industrial rurality the preservation of the environment,
security and quality of food tend to become the main priorities of policy agenda; there
is an integration between economic activities, within territory between natural and social