This paper discusses the dilemma between competition and co-operation among entrepreneurial elite, focusing on the study of entrepreneurs in Bahia. Analytically, it approaches the understanding of issues such as initiative, power relations, decision-making systems and ethical and social values in business. Contemporary debates flesh out that despite the entrepreneurs pursue their aims in a world marked by a rationality and a formal order - articulating their cultural heritage with the new values of economic action that involves restructuring labour and production organisation - they are faced with a continuum tension between competition and co-operation. This affects the formal and informal networks related to business organisation. This paper approaches some of the issues involved in this dilemma, according to a case study carried out with entrepreneurs in Bahia, by identifying guidelines related to the modes of producing synergism in societies, characterised by differentiated types of social capital and of civic engagement, among the entrepreneurial elite.