Entrepreneurial Narratives in Sustainable Venturing: Beyond People, Profit, and Planet

Abstract

Sustainable venturing, the process of starting a new sustainable enterprise, has been studied extensively through the triple‐bottom‐line lens. The narratives employed by sustainable entrepreneurs, however, have proven to be more complex and diverse. In this paper, we set out to inductively explore the narratives underlying sustainable venturing. We conducted an interpretative analysis to elucidate how these entrepreneurs perceive, think about and give meaning to sustainability as they develop their ventures. Findings allow for an expansion of the role of narratives in business venturing toward a more sophisticated conceptualization grounded in how actual entrepreneurs experience and enact sustainability in the context of their ventures.

Notes

1 Other questions we used in the interviews included: What was the problem you wanted to solve and why did you want to solve it? What was the original idea and why did you decide to pursue this particular idea? How has the original idea changed since you started this business? What are your dreams for the future? What would you say is the main contribution of your business? What does it mean to you trying to pursue social, environmental and economic goals at the same time? What are the implications of that for you and your business? What were the risks involved in starting this business? How did you feel about these risks? Do you remember any ethical issues you faced while developing your business?

2 Nodes in the cluster analysis that appear close together are more similar than those that are far apart. To measure the similarity between each pair of nodes that will appear in a cluster diagram, NVivo first builds a table where the rows are the nodes that will appear in the diagram, and then calculates a similarity index between each pair of items. Using the similarity index, the analysis groups the items into a number of clusters using the complete linkage (farthest neighbor) hierarchical clustering algorithm.

3 It is important to note that these three change narratives are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some sustainable entrepreneurs may exhibit some combination, in varying degrees, of all three over time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pablo Muñoz

Pablo Muñoz is Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at University of Liverpool Management School and Visiting Professor at Universidad del Desarrollo.

Boyd Cohen

Boyd Cohen is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at EADA Business School and Joint Professor at Universitat de Vic.