Walking the tightrope and stirring things up: Exploring the institutional work of sustainable entrepreneurs

Sustainable entrepreneurs (SEs) operate under different institutional pressures, but they also aim to provoke changes in their institutional environment in order to advance the goals of sustainability. These changes are not always large-scale, successful transformations. This article adopts the conc...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Arenas, Daniel, strumińska-kutra, marta, LANDONI, PAOLO
Format: article
Publication Date:2020
Country:España
Institution:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repository:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:recercat____::361cd4bc8080160da53c1e29f1719645
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14342/6158
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2557
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Entrepreneurship
Institutional logics
Institutional work
Politicizing
Sustainable entrepreneurs
Description
Summary:Sustainable entrepreneurs (SEs) operate under different institutional pressures, but they also aim to provoke changes in their institutional environment in order to advance the goals of sustainability. These changes are not always large-scale, successful transformations. This article adopts the concept of institutional work to explore how SEs engage in purposive, mundane activities to both fit in and influence the prevailing institutional environment. In particular, our findings allow us to introduce and discuss four specific types of work: making sustainability convenient, politicizing economic action, maneuvering around regulation, and relational work. At the end, we suggest that SEs may find themselves in a situation where they aim to transform the prevailing commercial institutional logic in order to promote sustainability goals while also trying to adapt to, and hence reproducing, this same logic they would like to transform.