Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead

Abstract

The recognition of entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation and social inequality moved the field to identify a new type of entrepreneurial activity, namely sustainable entrepreneurship. Scholarly interest has spiked in recent years; however, aside from its aspirational appeal, there remains a lack of understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and the future of sustainable entrepreneurship in theory and practice. This review seeks to provide a conceptual basis for stimulating scholarly thought and improving our collective understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship as a distinct subdomain within entrepreneurship research. Based on boundary definition and delineation of main features, this review critically discusses the main challenges ahead and elaborates on the research implications and future research directions beyond current, dominant approaches to entrepreneurial action. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Factors Affecting Entrepreneurship and Business Sustainability

“…Finally, they must develop empathy for sustainability, which builds a connection with people, the surroundings, and the environment. These results are consistent with recent findings reported by Reference [2]. As discussed, recent research has investigated the characteristics of sustainable entrepreneurs.…”

“…In recent years, scholars have conducted research into sustainable entrepreneurship, although the debate is ongoing [1,2]. Sustainable entrepreneurship consists of entrepreneurial actions to improve the environment and advance social wellbeing, but also generate profits.…”

“…Until now, the analysis has essentially focused on either one of two groups of factors: The first consists of entrepreneurial, economic, and social factors [5][6][7], while the second consists of cognitive elements, values, attitudes, and motivations [2]. In contrast, this study employed a broader scope that spanned entrepreneurial, economic, and social factors as well as psychological, motivational, and emotional factors.…”

Identifying business opportunities for sustainable development: Longitudinal and experimental evidence contributing to the field of sustainable entrepreneurship

“…Accordingly, it is possible to argue that entrepreneurs and sustainability entrepreneurship could play an important role in the pursuit of sustainability, without underestimating or neglecting the necessity of a systemic approach, networks, and collaborative efforts to deal with the complexities of many ecological and social problems. Unfortunately, the field of sustainable entrepreneurship is still in a nascent stage (Belz & Binder, ; Munoz & Cohen, ). We aimed at contributing to the field of sustainable entrepreneurship by testing a model of the identification of business opportunities for sustainable development.…”

Introductory Chapter: Entrepreneurship as a Trend and as a Challenge

“…Beyond the future, the entrepreneurship will be sustainable if a mentality change occurs that concerns dominant approaches to entrepreneurial action [16], central to all business venturing [17] and very important for academic knowledge development [18] to overcome the following challenges [19]: learning vs. resources, induction vs. autonomy,a n dco-alignment vs. co-creation.…”