Theoretical and methodological apparatus for the study of the system of state support for youth entrepreneurship

Isaeva Aigul' Ernstovna Postgraduate student; Faculty of Public Administration; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119992, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovsky ave., 27k4 koidan@vk.com

Introduction

At the present stage, entrepreneurship plays one of the key roles in ensuring economic growth and development. Moreover, entrepreneurial activity carries with it a whole range of prerequisites for stimulating a qualitative transformation of economic relations. At the same time, youth entrepreneurship plays the greatest role. It has the main potential in terms of ensuring the development, including innovative, of the modern socio-economic system, because by its very nature it promotes the innovative development of markets, increases business activity at the regional and national levels, and also has a beneficial effect on the level of employment, the level of social security and self-realization in professional and personal terms. and, as a result, the standard of living of the young population. In such conditions, youth entrepreneurship acquires the status of an independent direction of economic activity, and its support at the state level becomes an important socio-economic task and, accordingly, receives the status of an independent direction of the internal policy of the state, existing at the junction of the policy of supporting entrepreneurship as such ^[14] and youth policy ^[13].

Nevertheless, the creation of an effective system of state support for youth entrepreneurship seems to be a rather difficult task, including due to the lack of a clear scientifically based understanding of the specifics of the issue under consideration. Despite the presence of a large number of applied research in modern scientific and practical literature, the theoretical and methodological apparatus in the field is practically not formed. There is no single generally accepted understanding of the essence and content of not only the phenomenon of state support for youth entrepreneurship, but also such basic concepts as "state support for entrepreneurship", "youth entrepreneurship" and even "entrepreneurship". In this context, the development of a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of the system of state support for youth entrepreneurship becomes an important theoretical and practical task on the way to developing a strategy to increase the effectiveness of the system of state support for youth entrepreneurship, including in the Russian Federation.

Entrepreneurship: the evolution of the concept content

A significant amount of research has been devoted to understanding the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. At the same time, due to the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, a single generally accepted definition (concept) of entrepreneurship has not yet been developed in science.

There are several main historical traditions of interpretation of the essence and content of the category "entrepreneurship" in the framework of economics - Table 1.

Table 1. Historical traditions of economic interpretation of the category "entrepreneurship": key representatives

Source: compiled by the author

The main, most relevant definitions of the concept of "entrepreneurship" in historical retrospect are presented in table 2.

Table 2. Evolution of the concept of "entrepreneurship": basic definitions

Source: compiled by the author

Taking a deeper look at the substantive aspects of all the approaches presented in economics to understanding the category of "entrepreneurship", we can identify 6 theoretical schools, which can be grouped according to the key emphasis that serves as the basis for defining entrepreneurship (personal qualities, capabilities, management approach, the need for business adaptation). The school's data and a description of their proposed approaches are presented in table 3.

It is also possible to identify such groups of entrepreneurship concepts as those based on a functional approach ("concepts of a specific entrepreneurial function") and those based on an interdisciplinary approach.

In the first group of approaches, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship is studied in the context of its functional component and its role in the economy. At the same time, within the framework of this group of approaches, it is possible to identify such basic interpretations of entrepreneurship as:

• Entrepreneurship as a type of economic activity, a special economic function, one of the key aspects of which is the acceptance of risk and, accordingly, its conscious bearing. This kind of approach is presented, for example, in the works of such researchers as A. Smith, R. Cantillon, F. Knight, I. Tunen.

2. Entrepreneurship as a specific resource used in the process of linking, coordinated use of production factors. This kind of approach is presented in the works of, for example, J.-B. Say.

3. Entrepreneurship as a specific function associated with innovation, the creation of new, often unique combinations of classical resources in the process of creating new material goods, new market opportunities, ways of managing or organizing labor. This kind of approach is presented in the works of, for example, J. Schumpeter.

4. Entrepreneurship as a category, an attribute of a market economy and a key factor in its effective development (the Neo-Austrian school - F. Hayek, L. Mises, I. Kirzner, M. Rothbard, and others).

It should be noted that within the framework of all the presented interpretations, entrepreneurship is positioned as a personalized phenomenon. It is also important that the considered approaches are largely divorced from applied economics and management and are rather manifestations of a philosophical, purely theoretical understanding of the problem.

Table 3. The main schools of entrepreneurship

Continuation of table 3

Source: compiled by the author on the basis of ^[11]

At the same time, the current stage of the development of scientific thought is more characterized by a tendency towards applied concepts of an interdisciplinary nature. Such concepts of entrepreneurship are presented in the works of scientists of the German historical school and the works of representatives of institutionalism. Here, entrepreneurship is interpreted as:

1. A specific type of economic behavior of a person, which is based on special value orientations, motivation and social role. This kind of approach is presented in studies, for example, by V. von Sombart, M. Weber, and others.

2. A specific social institution that arises as a result of the complex impact of business traditions, the activities of regulators and, in general, national policy in the field and is in constant interrelation, interaction with other public institutions in the general institutional environment. This kind of approach is presented in studies, for example, by D. Johnson, A. Gibb, A. E. Nelson, D. Storey, R. Brooksbank, A. Oslund, and others.

Thus, it is possible to form the following alternative classification of approaches to the interpretation of the concept of entrepreneurship – Figure 1.

Figure 1. Alternative classification of approaches to interpreting the essence of entrepreneurship

Source: compiled by the author

From the point of view of Russian legislation, entrepreneurship is an independent activity carried out by specially registered persons in conditions of taking on risk, focused on systematically making a profit as a result of work performed./provision of services / sale of goods/use of property.

In our opinion, based on the applied significance of the phenomenon in modern conditions, it is most generally relevant to define entrepreneurship as a special type of economic activity carried out for the purpose of systematically extracting income (making a profit) through the creation of a new economic good with value (sale of goods and services, use of property) in conditions of acceptance and bearing by the person carrying out this activity. business, risk, and financial, property, moral, and social responsibility. Thus, the goal of entrepreneurship can be considered to be the extraction of income through the production and supply of goods and services in demand to the market. It is important that entrepreneurship can also be considered as one of the business options.

The proposed definition allows us to consolidate both the formal objective socio-demographic framework of the phenomenon and reflect its substantive aspect in the context of defining its specific essential features. This kind of approach makes it possible to remove the contradiction existing in modern science between the formal legal and theoretical-philosophical perception of the problem, integrate the main theoretical and methodological approaches, and thereby create a solid and at the same time internally variable basis for further research.

The concept of youth entrepreneurship

There is no single generally accepted definition of the phenomenon of "youth entrepreneurship" in modern scientific literature. At the same time, the whole set of author's definitions can be conditionally divided into several basic categories, i.e. it is possible to identify several fundamental approaches to the interpretation of the concept of "youth entrepreneurship" – Table 4.

Table 4. Main approaches to the definition of "youth entrepreneurship"

Source: compiled by the author

In the framework of this study, the economic approach is considered as the main one, as the most practice-oriented and most widespread in the scientific and practical environment. Thus, in most modern studies, youth entrepreneurship is considered precisely as an entrepreneurial activity carried out by a certain social group - young entrepreneurs, while in determining this age group, the real age of individuals (youth) is used as the fundamental criterion in most cases. Nevertheless, some foreign studies also present concepts in which the categorization of young entrepreneurs is based on the criteria of the duration of entrepreneurial activity, which, however, seems rather controversial and, in our opinion, is rather a somewhat distorted construction that arose due to the existence of certain difficulties in translating a number of studies into Russian..

In scientific and practical discourse, the problem of defining the specific age range of youth as a social group for the purposes of forming a definition of youth entrepreneurship is quite acute. So, according to Ivanova A.V., ^[4] the age limit of 35 years should be applied to youth as a subject of youth entrepreneurship, while according to the position of Akhiyarov N.V., ^[1] the age limit of youth entrepreneurship should be set at 30 years, because it is the persons of this age category who have the most pronounced common features of thinking and behavior in the field under consideration. National regulators in the world practice, the age limit is most often set between 30-40 years, but the choice of a specific point is always determined by the socio-cultural characteristics of the country. In the Russian Federation, for example, the age threshold is set at 35 years. Thus, the category of youth entrepreneurship includes the entrepreneurship of individuals under the age of 35 (or the entrepreneurial activity of legal entities, the founders owning at least 50% of the authorized capital, managers and staff are on average under the age of 35).

According to the author's position, youth entrepreneurship is a type of entrepreneurial activity carried out by people under the age of 35, because in modern conditions it is precisely this threshold value that allows for the most accurate intergenerational differentiation and, as a result, the most accurate coverage of the behavioral specifics of business entities as members of the social group in question. At the same time, the definition of youth entrepreneurship must also include parameters reflecting the special features of youth entrepreneurship arising from the specifics of youth as a social group and the specifics of its existence in an economic environment, which may include:

· Not only financial, materialistic (income, quality of life), but also personal, spiritual (self-realization) motivation to conduct entrepreneurial activity ^[5];

· A greater predisposition to risky decisions, maximalism and excessive ambition;

· Nonconformism, innovative thinking;

· The presence of motivational difficulties in conditions of lack of support from the immediate environment, lack of self-confidence;

· Lack of professional training, work experience, and behavioral competencies;

· Reduced availability of the entire range of resources;

· The presence of regulatory and legal barriers.

In this context, youth entrepreneurship can be defined as a special type of entrepreneurship (entrepreneurial activity) carried out by young people, i.e. persons under the age of 35, with the aim of systematically generating income and self-realization in conditions of reduced availability of resources, including knowledge and skills, professional and behavioral competencies, and the existence of significant administrative, legal and institutional economic barriers associated with the young age of entrepreneurs, which is characterized by increased risk-taking and innovation, ambition. The proposed definition of the term has an advantage in comparison with the available spectrum, because it not only clearly defines the formal boundaries of the category, but also includes significant explanatory potential in terms of its essential features and underlying factors of the phenomenon's functioning, thus initially clearly setting the vector for further research in the context of the development of youth entrepreneurship support systems..

State support for youth entrepreneurship: the essence and content of the phenomenon

In the most general sense, state support for entrepreneurship is a special type of state regulation of entrepreneurial activity, implemented through a set of legal, economic and organizational measures.

However, the concept of "state support for entrepreneurship" is not synonymous with the concept of "state regulatory and legal regulation of entrepreneurial activity." Thus, state regulatory and legal regulation is associated with the creation of a legislative framework for business introduction and the implementation of an appropriate control and supervisory function. At the same time, government support is associated with the development and implementation of specialized programs, methods and measures aimed at creating comfortable business conditions that stimulate entrepreneurial activity. ^[2] At the same time, state support is necessarily targeted ^[7] and includes measures of direct and indirect stimulating effects, ^[8] as well as supportive measures (auxiliary – environmental management) ^[15].

According to the author of this study, state support for entrepreneurship can be defined as intentional conscious selective activities carried out by government agencies to create specific economic, social and legal conditions that stimulate and ensure the effective development and competitiveness of business structures, including including investments of material and financial resources in business structures on special, preferential terms. conditions, as well as the impact on public consciousness in order to promote the interests and values of the middle class in it and the formation of a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship as a specific type of activity as a basis for creating an independent socially active group of entrepreneurs. This kind of definition makes it possible to capture both the formal and substantive aspects of the phenomenon under study, which is most convenient in the context of applied research. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this definition does not include an indication of the institutional component (for example, a wide range of actors can be included in the system of state support for entrepreneurship, including commercial and non-profit organizations, which, however, do not have the right to make strategic macro-decisions), which reduces it to a certain extent. cognitive potential, however, allows it to be used in a more variable environment, which is desirable in the context of the prospects for using the results of this study.

At the same time, it is important that government support for entrepreneurship is primarily focused on eliminating market and system failures. ^[19] In this context, the urgent tasks of state support for entrepreneurship are, for example, reducing information asymmetry, creating an effective system for managing external effects, and ensuring accessibility of capital (finance, knowledge, etc.) to entrepreneurial structures. The need to solve such tasks necessitates government intervention, for example, in R&D processes, venture capital markets. capital, etc. ^[10] The main areas of state support for entrepreneurship are: ^[9]

1. Creation of favorable regulatory and legal conditions for doing business;

2. Creation of favorable conditions for financial support of entrepreneurship;

3. Creation of favorable organizational and infrastructural conditions for doing business.

Here, however, it is important to note that state support for entrepreneurship is not an obligatory function of the state and an end in itself. At the current stage of economic development, it should act as one of the tools for solving national social and economic problems. In this context, the strategic goal of support should be to create conditions for effective business development, which, in turn, requires the creation and strengthening of the role of the middle class as a key consumer in the market and a source of entrepreneurial activity, as well as ensuring the overall growth of the national economy as the basis for the growth of national business.

It is necessary to understand that state support for entrepreneurship is a complex multi-component system for choosing development directions and support measures that have a synergistic effect due to the high heterogeneity of business as such. At the same time, state support for entrepreneurship is carried out simultaneously at 3 levels – micro ^[18], meso, and macro ^[16]. At the micro level, support is associated with the impact on the individual in the direction of the formation of the required competencies and motivation to conduct business. At the meso level, the impact is carried out on business entities in the direction of reducing the burden on them and increasing the efficiency of their functioning, stimulating their activities. At the macro level, the impact is carried out on the economic system as a whole, which implies the improvement of infrastructural and socio-economic conditions, and the financing of entrepreneurial activities.

Also, support for entrepreneurship at the state level implies the mandatory alignment of the policy content with the interests and needs of business entities and society and the state as a whole, including taking into account current internal and external economic and political conditions. At the same time, the management of state support for entrepreneurship should be carried out taking into account the local specifics of business development, as a result of which it must necessarily be decentralized at the operational level while maintaining the centralization of the strategic management function.

State support for youth entrepreneurship is a special type of state support for entrepreneurship, aimed at stimulating and supporting entrepreneurial activity among young people. From an institutional point of view, the youth entrepreneurship support system also includes a wide range of organizations that, through joint coordinated activities, create favorable conditions for the development of youth entrepreneurship, which is primarily related to their solution of a number of educational, information and consulting, organizational, financial, infrastructural and other issues that directly or indirectly affect young people. entrepreneurs.

The specifics of state support for youth entrepreneurship are based on the objective characteristics of youth as subjects of entrepreneurial activity. In the context of the most pressing problems of young entrepreneurs ^[12] and their socio-economic and behavioral characteristics, the following measures to support youth entrepreneurship are most relevant: ^{[17, 6]}

1. Improving the quality of the business environment and climate (taking into account the unique needs of young people and the challenges they face);

2. Direct assistance in the implementation of business projects (financing, guarantees, training, promotion, etc.);

3. Facilitating access to non-governmental financial capital through the creation of specialized institutions, mechanisms, etc.;

4. Structural and infrastructural support for the implementation of entrepreneurial ideas of young people;

5. Formation and development of entrepreneurial thinking;

6. Information, analytical and consulting support at all stages of the business idea implementation lifecycle;

7. Implementation of educational programs and projects, including practice-oriented, etc.

At the same time, it is important that government support is necessarily consistent with the specifics of the recipients' functioning in society and the economy, and therefore, at the present stage, previously unconventional solutions are becoming the most relevant in relation to youth entrepreneurship – the development of digital finance infrastructure, the creation of digital educational and information advisory platforms, providing access to the digital environment for business implementation.-ideas, etc.

Analytically summarizing all the theoretical provisions described above, it is possible to form the following conceptual model of state support for youth entrepreneurship – Figure 2.

Figure 2. Conceptual model of state support for youth entrepreneurship

Source: compiled by the author

Currently, a comprehensive youth entrepreneurship support system has been established in Russia, operating within the framework of the national project "Small and Medium-sized Entrepreneurship and Support for individual Entrepreneurial Initiative." The key elements of this system are:

1. The federal project "Creating conditions for an easy start and comfortable business", which implements:
   1. Preferential lending program at a rate of up to 8.5%
   2. Grant support for young entrepreneurs under the age of 25 (up to 500 thousand rubles)
   3. Educational programs on the basics of entrepreneurship
2. Support infrastructure through the My Business centers:
   1. Consulting support on starting and running a business
   2. Assistance in making business plans
   3. Assistance in business registration
   4. Educational events
3. Initiatives of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI):
   1. Federal competition "Create OURS"
   2. The Russia - the Land of Opportunities platform
   3. Acceleration programs for young entrepreneurs

According to Rosstat, at the beginning of 2024, the share of entrepreneurs under the age of 35 is about 12% of the total number of individual entrepreneurs in Russia. At the same time, there is a steady increase in the number of young entrepreneurs: in 2023, 12% more young entrepreneurs were registered compared to 2022.

Statistics on the effectiveness of support measures show:

• In 2023, more than 5,000 young entrepreneurs received grant support.
• The educational programs of the My Business centers have reached over 200,000 young people
• The survival rate of a business created using government support measures is 30% higher than the average.

The main sectors in which youth entrepreneurship is concentrated are: IT and digital technologies (28%), trade (25%), services (20%), manufacturing (15%), and other industries (12%)

It is important to note that the existing support system is constantly being improved, as we have pointed out in our other studies. To list just a few of the new mechanisms: this is a digital SME platform.The Russian Federation with a personalized selection of support measures, this is the "Young Entrepreneur of Russia" competition with an expanded set of support tools, these are special tax regimes for aspiring entrepreneurs and more.

These measures demonstrate the government's comprehensive approach to the development of youth entrepreneurship, combining financial, educational and infrastructural support tools. At the same time, statistics show a positive trend in the development of this sector of the economy, which indicates a certain effectiveness of the measures taken.

It is fundamentally important that the conceptual model proposed in this article is one of the few comprehensive tools presented in modern science that make it possible, within the framework of a single mechanism/process, to understand state support for youth entrepreneurship as a single open system, rather than a basic function, process or institutional structure. The fact is that almost all the research presented in modern science focuses on one, less often two aspects of the system's operation – support measures (instrumental aspect) and support structures (institutional aspect). This approach is most likely based on an analysis of current Russian legislation, where Federal Law No. 209-FZ of July 24, 2007 "On the Development of Small and Medium-sized Businesses in the Russian Federation" focuses specifically on specific groups of support measures (financial, property, information, consulting). At the same time, the internal relationship of these aspects, and even more so their connection with the external environment and goal-setting in the field at the state level, is extremely limited and not systematized. Moreover, most of the research and, consequently, the developed models are purely applied, reflecting the form and content of exclusively real national systems (e.g., Russian – see, for example., ^{[15, 12, 8, 3]}), and thus they do not reach the proper level of conceptualization of the problem. Otherwise, the presented studies are rather descriptive in nature and do not imply the creation of a theoretical and methodological outline. Thus, they do not provide a reliable basis for further systematic study of issues in the field. All this reduces the cognitive potential of the models.

At the same time, the proposed model:

1. He offers a comprehensive, holistic, systematic view of the phenomenon under study, which involves considering state support for youth entrepreneurship as an open system in the context of environmental incentives, which includes various subsystems reflecting various aspects of its functioning – targeted, institutional, instrumental. At the same time, it is important that the functional element is distributed within the framework of the presented subsystems, due to which it is possible to ensure the internal unity of the process of state support for youth entrepreneurship.

2. It has a proper level of abstraction and offers precisely a conceptual interpretation of the problem, which creates opportunities for further research based on it in comparative horizontal and vertical perspectives.

3. Despite the high level of conceptualization, it is practice-oriented.

It is fundamentally important that when studying the actual national approaches to government support for youth entrepreneurship (for example, domestic) on the basis of the proposed model, it will be possible to obtain more visual, accurate and formalized results, on the basis of which it will be easier and more effective to develop recommendations for improving the effectiveness of national systems.

Conclusion

Within the framework of this study, the theoretical, methodological, and conceptual foundations of the study of the problems of state support for youth entrepreneurship were formed. The main conceptual approaches to interpreting the essence of entrepreneurship were identified (6 basic schools of entrepreneurship, which are divided into 4 main groups - Table 3, as well as two key approaches – Figure 1).

The author's definition of entrepreneurship was formed. Thus, it is determined that entrepreneurship is a type of economic activity carried out for the purpose of systematically extracting income (making a profit) through the creation of a new economic good with value (sale of goods and services, use of property) in conditions of acceptance and bearing by the person carrying out this activity, risk and financial, property, moral and social responsibility..

The main approaches to the definition of the concept of "youth entrepreneurship" have been identified (Table 4) and the author's definition of youth entrepreneurship has been formed. Thus, it was determined that youth entrepreneurship is a special type of entrepreneurship (entrepreneurial activity) carried out by young people, i.e. persons under the age of 35, with the aim of systematically generating income and self-realization in conditions of reduced availability of resources, including knowledge and skills, professional and behavioral competencies, and the existence of significant administrative andlegal and institutional economic barriers associated with the young age of entrepreneurs, which is characterized by increased risk-taking and innovation, ambition.

As part of the research, the author's definition of state support for entrepreneurship was formed. Thus, it was found that state support for entrepreneurship is an intentional conscious selective activity carried out by government agencies to create specific economic, social and legal conditions that stimulate and ensure the effective development and competitiveness of entrepreneurial structures operating at the micro, meso and macro levels. The author's definition of state support for youth entrepreneurship has been formed. Thus, it was determined that state support for youth entrepreneurship is a special type of state support for entrepreneurship, focused on stimulating and supporting entrepreneurial activity among young people by creating favorable business conditions for young people, which implies the implementation of a set of measures adapted to the real needs, values and behavioral patterns of modern young entrepreneurs to provide them with educational services., consulting, organizational, material, financial and other assistance.

Based on the results of the study, a conceptual model of state support for youth entrepreneurship was also developed (Figure 2).