Cultural barriers in the moulding of prosocial attitudes among participants in economic life in Poland

Abstract

The aim of the article is to point to those elements of broadly understood culture that may constitute various obstacles and barriers to the effective development of prosocial attitudes among participants of Polish economic life. The author assumes that the satisfactory education of appropriate civic attitudes – among present and future students, staff and managers, and even consumers and customers – cannot be detached from the cultural context. In other words, if the educational activities are to produce the desired result, they cannot abstain from the v alues, norms, attitudes or behavioural patterns prevailing in a given society. It is important to realise that changes in the sphere of culture are quite limited, and always stretched out in time. The paper attempts to point to the most characteristic features of Polish mentality, grounded in particular in the last decades, that constitute a burdensome legacy of communism. It was then that the antisocial attitudes of selfishness, self-interest, learned passivity, and a lack of motivation or initiative emerged. The author of the paper emphasises that both as a society and its individual members, we have been unable to break free of this legacy. It seems therefore that modern educational activities will not produce satisfactory results until we get rid of this redundant ballast.