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

Abstract

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.