Abstract

In common discourse, economic activities run by profit-oriented managers and entrepreneurs are considered to be at the root of social and ecological crisis and hence, hamper sustainable development. With this perspective, government, policymaking institutions, and civil societies take the center stage in shaping a sustainability-oriented industry by using the tools of command and control to curb the negative environmental and social impacts of business. However, this view not only overestimates the role of legal regulations and policies but also underestimates and, in a sense, distorts the relationship between innovative entrepreneurial activities and sustainable development. With growing impetus in the domain of sustainable entrepreneurship since the early 1990s, researchers have increasingly advocated sustainability-driven entrepreneurs and managers as the core movers of sustainable production and consumption. Presently, sustainable entrepreneurship remains an extremely relevant yet under researched area of investigation. Debates regarding semantic and practical approaches to sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs impede empirical and theoretical developments in this area. Hence, in the context of the existent gap in literature, this study adopts a qualitative approach to conceptualize sustainable entrepreneurship, by building upon a typology of this phenomenon. In doing so, the overlapping yet conceptually distinct terms, “green” entrepreneurship, “social” entrepreneurship, and “institutional” entrepreneurship are incorporated to understand how entrepreneurs induce sustainable innovations to meet the objectives of social benefits and profit maximization in the context of changing market indicators. The relevance of the study lies in its theoretical as well as practical implications as it attempts to develop a framework to identify, under which specific conditions a particular firm is most likely to adopt sustainable innovations, hence, indicating the need to refine and extend the existing models of sustainable entrepreneurship with respect to motivations for sustainability innovations.