In case we apply this notion to businessmen and according to a recent survey of CVVM, it seems to hold true.
The survey in question, whose author was Milan Tuček from the Department of Transformation of Social Structure of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences (SoÚ AV) of the Czech Republic, was based on comparing opinions of the Czech population on big businessmen with their opinions on medium and small businessmen.
We have surveyed these opinions with the help of an extensive array of statements, describing certain characteristics or manners. The respondents were supposed to indicate with each statement whether they found it typical or untypical for the first and the second group of businessmen.
It turned out that people have significantly more sympathies and trust for small and medium businessmen than for big businessmen. People usually assign “courage to risk and to set about new things“ to both groups and they perceive both big and medium and small businessmen as “enterprising, clever people with lots of ideas”, who “work many hours a day, to the detriment of their family and themselves”. However, they associate these characteristics much more frequently with small and medium businessmen than with big businessmen.
The opinion that both groups use information and contacts from their previous employment prevails in case of both groups. However, respondents found it typical significantly more frequently for big businessmen. The absolute majority of the public believe that big businessmen look for soft spots in legislation, cooperate in order to prevent price-reductions, have close relations with politicians, they used to belong to former nomenclature, get rid of their competitors indiscriminately and acquire their property dishonestly.
The number of respondents who find all of these characteristic features as “rather” or “certainly” typical for small and medium businessmen was more or less deep below the midpoint level. Almost one half of the questioned believe that deliberate counterfeiting of documents is typical for big businessmen, whereas only one quarter thinks the same about small and medium businessmen.
On the contrary, an absolute majority of citizens regard small and medium businessmen as professionals who understand their work and who provide quality services or products. Respondents also think that they add only reasonable profit to their prices. With big businessmen, number of similar statements was far below fifty percent.
