Sustainable Entrepreneurship Under Market Uncertainty: Opportunities, Challenges, and Impact

37 Pages Posted: 31 Mar 2021

See all articles by Brandon H. Lee

Brandon H. Lee

Melbourne Business School; Melbourne Business School

Panikos Georgallis

University of Amsterdam

Jeroen Struben

emlyon business school; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Date Written: March 9, 2021

Abstract

Entrepreneurs are often viewed as uniquely positioned to address neglected social problems, and sustainable entrepreneurship in particular has been presented as the ‘green panacea’ that will put us on a path to mitigate climate change and other sustainability challenges. However, sustainable markets are fraught with uncertainties that curb entrepreneurial ventures’ potential to deliver on such ambitious expectations. Despite several attempts to take stock of the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, we lack a rigorous framework for systematically incorporating the market uncertainty that entrepreneurs face across different types of markets. In this paper we draw upon recent literature on collective action during market emergence and growth to develop an organizing framework to map entrepreneurial efforts across markets with varying degrees of uncertainty. In applying this framework to sustainable entrepreneurship, we highlight how demand and supply uncertainty affect sustainable entrepreneurship opportunities and challenges, and discuss to what extent entrepreneurial efforts may drive or inhibit societal impacts.

Keywords: sustainable entrepreneurship, market uncertainty, collective action, climate change, sustainability, entrepreneurship

Suggested Citation

Lee, Brandon H. and Lee, Brandon H. and Georgallis, Panayiotis and Struben, Jeroen, Sustainable Entrepreneurship Under Market Uncertainty: Opportunities, Challenges, and Impact (March 9, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3800795 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3800795

Brandon H. Lee

Melbourne Business School ( email )

200 Leicester Street
Carlton, Victoria 3053 3186
Australia

Melbourne Business School ( email )

200 Leicester Street
Carlton, VIC 3053
Australia

Panayiotis Georgallis (Contact Author)

University of Amsterdam ( email )

Spui 21
Amsterdam, 1018 WB
Netherlands

Jeroen Struben

emlyon business school ( email )

23 Avenue Guy de Collongue
Ecully, 69132
France

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.marketformationdynamics.org/jeroen-struben

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

HOME PAGE: http://web.mit.edu/jjrs/www/

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