Identifiying and linking causal mechanisms related to entrepreneurship for sustainable development

What is it about?

Entrepreneurship is seen as a powerful approach to achieve sustainable development of society and for the natural environment. The question how or with which mechanisms entrepreneurship for sustainable development links with sustainability at the natural environment and societal level is therefore of key importance to achieve the underlying aim. Previous research on entrepreneurship for sustainable development has addressed multiple different processes of sustainability-oriented venture development. The interplay between these processes, however, and the different levels from organizational and individual to network and macro-level phenomena of sustainability has so far not been structured and analyzed in much depth. This paper proposes a framework to identify, analyze and improve causal mechanisms linking societal and field-level contexts to venture development and transformational change.

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Why is it important?

The paper proposes a framework to identify, analyze and improve causal mechanisms between different levels of society. By means of a systematic review, we are able to identify various mechanisms in the literature linking entrepreneurial challenges and opportunities on multiple levels, including wider sociocultural environments (macro-level), markets and local communities (meso-level), and entrepreneurial ventures (micro-level). We organize these mechanisms in three categories: situational mechanisms (i.e., contextual influences), action-formation mechanisms (i.e., developmental processes in ventures and markets), and transformational mechanisms (i.e., collective effects from multiple ventures). We encourage future research to build "chains of mechanisms" that may link situational mechanisms to entrepreneurial efforts leading to the transformational outcomes favorable for sustainable development.

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