Sustainable entrepreneurs intend to create environmental and social value while they build their financially viable business. With this in mind, they are embedded in multiple institutionalized value systems (i.e., institutional logics) that provide them with different, often contradictory values, beliefs, and guiding principles. Adhering to these value systems and integrating multiple forms of value into a coherent business model is a key task for sustainable entrepreneurs, yet current efforts lack insight into how this can be achieved. To address this, the article utilizes the institutional logic perspective in conjunction with the componential approach to business models. By analyzing a longitudinal in-depth case study, this article develops a novel theoretical model linking shifts in the entrepreneur’s perception of institutional logic to business model alterations, and emphasizes the underlying mechanisms and behavior of the sustainable entrepreneur. Sustainable entrepreneurs integrate and blend institutional logic through multiple business model transitions, which are characterized by a personal reorientation of the entrepreneur and new practices to implement change. Furthermore, our findings show that the entrepreneur’s habitus, the pre-change business model, and the change-specific dominant logic are integral and previously overlooked concepts that contextualize their business model transition. The findings and discussion advance the theoretical and practical understanding of the processes through which sustainable entrepreneurs integrate multiple forms of value into their business models. With that, the article contributes to research on sustainable entrepreneurship, institutional logic and business models.
Entrepreneurial teams are dynamic entities that frequently experience the exit of individual team members. Such entrepreneurial team member exits (ETMEs) entail serious consequences for the exiting individual, the remaining team, and the performance of the affected venture. While ETMEs are receiving increasing scholarly attention, the research landscape is still considerably fragmented. This is the first article to take stock, analyze, and discuss this crucial and emerging field of research by providing a systematic review of the literature on ETMEs. We identify central themes comprising of antecedents, routes, consequences, and the contextual embeddedness of ETMEs and integrate them into a comprehensive processual framework. Based on this framework, we contribute to the research on ETMEs by discussing the themes in the light of promising theoretical perspectives, introducing novel ideas, concepts, and approaches to enrich future avenues. Specifically, we propose to expand the concept of team heterogeneity to advance our understanding of antecedents as well as to investigate power relations and negotiation behavior within ETME routes. In addition, we offer ways to resolve the sometimes inconsistent findings in terms of venture consequences and present a fertile approach for a more in-depth cultural contextualization of the phenomenon.
In times of increasing concerns and extensive political debates about social and environmental problems, incumbent firms are obliged to reduce their negative environmental impact by implementing sustainable business model innovation. Yet, realizing more sustainable business model variants entails several complexities and associated challenges that need to be overcome. To support this task, this article takes an entrepreneurship perspective on sustainable business model innovation and combines literature of business models and entrepreneurial lean thinking (ELT). In doing so, it derives a workshop design grounded in contemporary theory with state-of-the-art tools and methods. The workshop is framed as a stage-gate process facilitating the notions of ELT with iterative cycles of ‘create, test, and improve’ and spans the phases of opportunity identification, opportunity evaluation, opportunity development through sustainable business model design, and decision of opportunity exploitation. The article shows that ELT is an appropriate yet underutilized approach for sustainable business modeling. Further, it discusses how the workshop supports opportunities and mitigate pitfalls of ELT for sustainable business modeling. As such, the findings have theoretical implications for the intersection of sustainability and lean approaches in innovation research as well as implications for practitioners by providing a comprehensive framework to support sustainable business model innovation.
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