How sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change: insights from biomass torrefaction in the Netherlands

Abstract

Sustainable entrepreneurship often requires a purposeful change to the existing business environment, market regulations, and societal norms and values (institutions) to ensure sustainable products and services become legitimate and competitive. Yet, how sustainable entrepreneurs alter or create institutions remains unclear. We employ a two-year comparative case study with four entrepreneurs commercializing torrefied biomass in the Netherlands. Consistent with insights from institutional entrepreneurship research, findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs create new symbols, theorize, construct new measures, build consensus, and forge new relations to alter or create new institutions. Moreover, we find that entrepreneurial collaboration, in the form of a trade association, has three feedback effects: it creates accessible modes; diversity of scope; and an increased scale of institutional change strategies. We conclude that future studies should further connect sustainable and institutional entrepreneurship research, and take group and individual factors into account when explaining how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change.

The Development of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research Field

“…Other important factors to carry out future researches are motivations for innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship models, which need to be adjusted to the corporate environment [19] through different perspectives, in order to explore variables that focus on nature and lifestyle [23] and that should strengthen the connection between sustainable institutional entrepreneurship research and institutional entrepreneurship research [60]. Besides, the directly proportional relationship between uncertainty and innovation opportunities must be analyzed by performing empirical tests on social entrepreneurship initiatives in the field of sustainable energies [57] and by analyzing how ecologically sustainable entrepreneurs and their companies influences communities and society [30], since social and ecological factors can be a source of business opportunities [44].…”

“…Also, [56] claims that translating a sustainability message into a tangible product involves the support of three techniques: preservation, transformation and adding novelty. Other authors [44] [57][58][59][60] refer to the key findings that the triple bottom line of ecological, social and economic goals is integrated sequentially, not simultaneously, that is to say, sustainable entrepreneurs must: (1) be motivated by identities based on both commercial and ecological logics; (2) prioritize commercial and/or ecological goals; and (3) approach stakeholders in a broadly inclusive, exclusive, or co-created manner in order to acquire financial resources through crowdfunding, because sustainable entrepreneurs do not seem to be ready to respond to the challenges or to take any risks by investing in green business, but also that the government and educational institutions do not recognize their own role and the need of supporting the development of green entrepreneurship.…”

Economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two Spanish municipalities

“…Sustainable innovations are characterised by both 'radicalness', the extent to which they challenge established methods of operating, and 'systemness', the extent to which they can transform the larger social systems in which they are embedded . Previous research has examined the role of entrepreneurs in forging new institutional structures that enable a systemic impact (Block and Paredis, 2013;Thompson et al, 2015). Thus, we ask whether crises foster actions with the potential to develop sustainable innovations.…”

Sustainability and CSR orientation through “Edutainment” in tourism

“…Moreover, it is tied to its social capital, that is the systems of values, norms and behaviors that the entrepreneur ant the top management share with the stakeholders (Del Baldo, 2014). The business is thus interpreted as a 'tool' to generate returns in terms of responsible tourism, improved well being of the people (starting from employees and customers), the local and global communities, and the environment (Bocken et al 2014;Thompson et al 2015). In other words, the company acts an actor involved in contributing to the integral development of the local and global context (Sorci 2007;Schieffer et al, 2014;Jakobsen et al 2017).…”

“…The need for developing SBMs and their implementation in practice has been pointed out by several authors (Visser 2011;Dean and McMullen 2007;Hall et al 2010) who consider them fundamental for trigger more outward-oriented conceptions of CSR (corporate social responsibility) and sustainability (Schaltegger et al 2016;Looser and Wehrmeyer 2015;Del Baldo 2012;Del Baldo and Baldarelli 2017) fashioned through dynamic and continuous interactions between individuals and groups inside and outside companies (Thompson et al 2015). The elements that contribute to driving a transformation toward SMBs requires the building of networks and collaborative practices for learning and action around a new shared vision and generate social value creation Mair 2005, 2006;Johnson 2010;Patzelt and Shepherd 2011).…”