Sustainable Entrepreneurship at the Bottom of the Pyramid: An Identity-Based Perspective

Abstract

Entrepreneurial behavior research has widened its scope to focus on founders who engage in creating enterprises for both their economic self-interest and their concern for others. Yet, there is a lack of an empirically grounded understanding of the sustainable enterprise creation behavior of entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid. This study contributes to sustainable entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior literature streams by applying founder identity theoretical perspectives to explore and understand bottom of the pyramid entrepreneurs’ self-perceived identities in the creation of sustainable enterprises. The study applies a multiple case study design with qualitative data collected through field observations and in-depth interviews with enterprise founders and stakeholders. The data were complemented with secondary materials such as websites, founder blogs, online videos, news articles, and other media coverage. The data were analyzed in stages through thematic analysis. Findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid possess multiple frames of reference, basic social motivations and adopt either single or multiple role identities, which influence their behavior during the process of creating their enterprises. Moreover, the analysis reveals that Fauchart and Gruber’s social identity typologies and the role identities of Cardon et al. can be applied to entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid to understand their identity profiles and illuminate on how these identities result in observed behavioral differences during the process of creating their enterprises.

Measuring Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Eco-Innovation: A Methodological Proposal for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)

“…Recently, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the causes and factors that influence sustainable entrepreneurship. Studies have been made in relation to crowdsourcing [22], rural businesses [23], training, and motivation [24], digital technologies [25], and sustainable entrepreneurship at the bottom of the pyramid [26]. The Netherlands, United States, Germany, UK, and Spain have been the most influential countries in terms of publications on this topic, as shown by [27].…”

Organizational unlearning and inclusive innovation: The moderating role of green control ambidexterity

“…With the continuous advancement of BoP strategy and resources investment, enterprises began to regard the poor as producers (Hernandez-Cazares et al, 2020;Roxas &Ungson, 2011) andentrepreneurs (Fitz-Koch et al, 2018;Musona et al, 2021) and create value by providing equal opportunities to participate in the market (Hart, 2015), which can be defined as substantive inclusive innovation.…”

“…With the continuous advancement of BoP strategy and resources investment, enterprises began to regard the poor as producers (Hernandez‐Cazares et al, 2020; Roxas & Ungson, 2011) and entrepreneurs (Fitz‐Koch et al, 2018; Musona et al, 2021) and create value by providing equal opportunities to participate in the market (Hart, 2015), which can be defined as substantive inclusive innovation. Given the particularity of production, consumption, and trading behaviors in the BoP groups (Dembek et al, 2020), the products and business models of enterprises in the top (top of the pyramid) market cannot be directly used in the BoP market.…”

Founder CEO, CEO Characteristics, and Firm Innovation Efficiency: An Empirical Study of China’s GEM-Listed Companies

“…The impact of founders on start-up firm performance seems to largely depend on founder identity. For example, researchers find that when founders distinguish their founder role and self-concept (self-concept refers to an organic cognitive concept composed of attitudes, emotions, beliefs, and values, which runs through the whole experience and action and organizes the various specific habits, abilities, thoughts, and viewpoints expressed by the individual), i.e., there is incongruent founder identity, enterprise sustainable management declines [11,12]. In this case, founders take their own economic interests into consideration when establishing and operating the enterprise, and will likely make decisions to serve their self-interests.…”