Sustainability-driven entrepreneurship: Principles of organization design

Concern about whether the social-ecological processes that provide for human wellbeing can be sustained has given rise to sustainable development as a broad social goal. As a dynamic force for change, entrepreneurship is increasingly expected to contribute to this goal. This article reports on the results of an intensive empirical study investigating the organization design expertise necessary for sustainability-driven entrepreneurs to succeed in a competitive market context. Results reveal five principles of organization design that diverge in important ways from the conventional principles of entrepreneurship, suggesting the expertise required for venture success differs depending on entrepreneurial values and motives.

[1]  R. Weiss.  Learning from strangers : the art and method of qualitative interview studies , 1995 .

[2]  Philip Selznick,et al.  Leadership in Administration : A Sociological Interpretation , 2012 .

[3]  Andrew Sayer,et al.  Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach , 1984 .

[4]  Edward Toomer,et al.  Qualitative Methods in Management Research , 1989 .

[5]  S. Schmidheiny.  Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment , 1992 .

[6]  H. Simon,et al.  Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization. , 1959 .

[7]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[8]  C. K. Prahalad,et al.  The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid , 2004 .

[9]  W. Richard Scott,et al.  Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach , 1962 .

[10]  Andrea L. Larson.  Sustainable innovation through an entrepreneurship lens , 2000 .

[11]  Karen Locke.  Grounded Theory in Management Research , 2000 .

[12]  Robert Chia,et al.  On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change , 2002, Organ. Sci..

[13]  Giles Atkinson,et al.  Measuring Corporate Sustainability , 2000 .

[14]  Roger L. M. Dunbar,et al.  Special Issue: Organizational Design: Learning to Design Organizations and Learning from Designing Them , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[15]  J. Aken.  Management Research as a Design Science: Articulating the Research Products of Mode 2 Knowledge Production in Management , 2005 .

[17]  Nils Brunsson.  THE IRRATIONALITY OF ACTION AND ACTION RATIONALITY: DECISIONS, IDEOLOGIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIONS , 1982 .

[18]  Sarah Dixon,et al.  Green-Works: a model for combining social and ecological entrepreneurship , 2006 .

[19]  A. Nilsson,et al.  Marine protected areas in the eastern African Region: how successful are they? , 2002 .

[20]  D. Gibbs.  Sustainability Entrepreneurs, Ecopreneurs and the Development of a Sustainable Economy , 2006 .

[21]  Barbara J. Bird.  Implementing Entrepreneurial Ideas: The Case for Intention , 1988 .

[22]  F. Schmidt‐bleek,et al.  The Factor 10/MIPS-Concept: Bridging Ecological, Economic, and Social Dimensions with Sustainability Indicators , 1999 .

[23]  Elliot Aronson,et al.  The handbook of social psychology, 2nd ed. , 1968 .

[24]  Ronald K. Mitchell,et al.  Toward a sustainable conceptualization of dependent variables in entrepreneurship research , 2008 .

[25]  S. Ranson.  The Structuring of Organizational Structures. , 1980 .

[26]  C. Robson,et al.  Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers , 1993 .

[27]  Ilkka Niiniluoto,et al.  Futures studies: science or art? , 2001 .

[28]  R. Harré.  Rom Harré on Social Structure and Social Change , 2002 .

[29]  H. Tsoukas.  The Validity of Idiographic Research Explanations , 1989 .

[30]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[31]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[32]  Victor J. Papanek,et al.  Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change , 1972 .

[33]  Ronald K. Mitchell,et al.  Enhancing Entrepreneurial Expertise: Experiential Pedagogy and the New Venture Expert Script , 1995 .

[34]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  Special Issue: Organizational Design: From Organization Design to Organization Designing , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[35]  Lutz E. Schlange.  WHAT DRIVES SUSTAINABLE ENTREPRENEURS , 2005 .

[36]  Paul DiMaggio.  Culture and cognition , 1997 .

[37]  Jeffery S. McMullen,et al.  Toward a theory of sustainable entrepreneurship: Reducing environmental degradation through entrepreneurial action , 2007 .

[38]  M. Patton.  Qualitative research and evaluation methods , 1980 .

[39]  W. Young,et al.  Can businesses move beyond efficiency? The shift toward effectiveness and equity in the corporate sustainability debate , 2006 .

[40]  R. Amit,et al.  Value creation in E‐business , 2001 .

[41]  Robert MacIntosh,et al.  Conditioned emergence: a dissipative structures approach to transformation , 1999 .

[42]  Timothy J. Foxon,et al.  Sustainability Entrepreneurship and Equitable Transitions to a Low-Carbon Economy , 2006 .

[43]  Saras D. Sarasvathy,et al.  Making It Happen: Beyond Theories of the Firm to Theories of Firm Design , 2004 .

[44]  T. Hahn,et al.  Sustainable Value Added - Measuring Corporate Contributions to Sustainability Beyond Eco-Efficiency , 2004 .

[45]  J. Maxwell.  Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research , 1992 .

[46]  Dimo Dimov,et al.  Beyond the Single-Person, Single-Insight Attribution in Understanding Entrepreneurial Opportunities , 2007 .

[47]  Lowell W. Busenitz,et al.  The Central Question in Entrepreneurial Cognition Research 2007 , 2007 .

[48]  A. Georges L. Romme,et al.  Making a Difference: Organization as Design , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[49]  Chris Steyaert,et al.  A Qualitative Methodology for Process Studies of Entrepreneurship: Creating local knowledge through stories , 1997 .

[50]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Special Issue: Trust in an Organizational Context: Trust as an Organizing Principle , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[51]  M. Crossan,et al.  The Nature of Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Understanding the Process Using the 4I Organizational Learning Framework , 2005 .

[52]  Robin Holt,et al.  Immaturity The Constraining of Entrepreneurship , 2006 .

[53]  Matthew B. Miles,et al.  Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook , 1994 .

[54]  James D. Thompson.  Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory , 1967 .

[55]  A. Pettigrew.  Longitudinal Field Research on Change: Theory and Practice , 1990 .

[56]  M. Clarkson.  A Stakeholder Framework for Analyzing and Evaluating Corporate Social Performance , 1995 .

[57]  J. Dillard,et al.  Entrepreneurship as the nexus of individual and opportunity: A structuration view , 2006 .

[58]  H. K. Downey,et al.  Cognitive and Organizational Structures: A Conceptual Analysis of Implicit Organizing Theories , 1983 .

[59]  Michael T. Schaper,et al.  Making Ecopreneurs: Developing Sustainable Entrepreneurship , 2012 .

[60]  A. V. D. Ven,et al.  Longitudinal Field Research Methods for Studying Processes of Organizational Change , 1990 .

[61]  Joseph A. Maxwell,et al.  Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach , 1996 .

[62]  W. Young,et al.  Sustainability entrepreneurs: could they be the true wealth generators of the future? , 2009 .

[63]  Richard Whittington,et al.  ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURE AND THEORIES OF STRATEGIC CHOICE , 1988 .

[64]  Paul Shrivastava,et al.  Organizational Frames of Reference , 1984 .

[65]  N. E. Gallopoulos,et al.  Strategies for Manufacturing , 1989 .

[66]  R. Allen.  World conservation strategy. Living resource conservation for sustainable development. , 1980 .

[67]  Dee W. Hock.  Birth of the Chaordic Age , 2000 .

[68]  Jeffery S. McMullen,et al.  Entrepreneurial Action And The Role Of Uncertainty In The Theory Of The Entrepreneur , 2006 .

[69]  H. Hansmann,et al.  The Ownership of Enterprise , 1996 .

[70]  Bradley D. Parrish.  Designing the sustainable enterprise , 2007 .

[71]  Monika I. Winn,et al.  Market imperfections, opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship , 2007 .

[72]  O. Williamson.  Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size , 1967, Journal of Political Economy.

[73]  Scott Shane,et al.  Explaining Variation in Rates of Entrepreneurship in the United States: 1899-1988 , 1996 .

[74]  Jeremy P. Birnholtz,et al.  Organizational Character: On the Regeneration of Camp Poplar Grove , 2007, Organ. Sci..

[75]  William B. Gartner,et al.  Words lead to deeds: Towards an organizational emergence vocabulary , 1993 .

[76]  J. Orton.  From inductive to iterative grounded theory: Zipping the gap between process theory and process data , 1997 .

[77]  M. Rabin.  Psychology and Economics , 1997 .

[78]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind , 1991 .

[79]  A. Gibb.  Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management: Can We Afford to Neglect Them in the Twenty-first Century Business School? , 1996 .

[80]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .

[81]  Sabine U. O'Hara,et al.  Toward a sustaining production theory , 1997 .