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Typically social entrepreneurs try to meet their stakeholders expectations and avoid mission drift. This qualitative study involving 36 social entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa showed that the key concern for social entrepreneurs was impact drift (a deviation from a trajectory leading to long-term and systemic resolution of a social problem). Drawing on research in behavioral theory and mission drift, we elaborate a process model that shows how entrepreneurs frame an imbalance in social enterprise due to a local historyof deprivation and dependence and inadequacy in existing approaches for helping, which leads to an impact-focused approach to social enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship scholars have recently recognized that stakeholder and entrepreneurship theory have developed in complete isolation from each other, which has led to the field of entrepreneurship research being too inward-looking. Therefore, our study aims to contribute to the integration of both domains by investigating one of the most important but least researched concepts in stakeholder and entrepreneurship theory – trust. By choosing a dual-sided approach – through the inclusion of the entrepreneur's and stakeholders perspective – our qualitative study analyzes the role of trust in initiating new cross-border stakeholder relationships. Our findings show that new ventures and their potential new stakeholders face unique challenges compared to established companies. Interestingly, contrary to previous assumptions, the key challenges identified are rather context-related than interpersonal. More specifically, we find that interpersonal trust is needed to substitute for institutional trust. In addition, we were able to isolate three practices that can be applied to overcome these challenges in forming trusting relationships. Finally, our study highlights the significant weight of intentionality in trust formation in stakeholder relationships of new ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on opportunity formation has recently moved toward an evolving process perspective in which identities may play a critical role in understanding how entrepreneurs form, evaluate, and enact opportunity beliefs. Although current scholars argue for a dynamic perspective of identities, we lack in studies that connect both, an evolving perspective of opportunity formation as well as a changing identity. Therefore, we investigate how changes in identities, or more specifically identity reconstruction processes, influence opportunity belief formation. We conducted an explorative field study consisting of 100 interviews with 18 nascent entrepreneurs in South Africa during the COVID-pandemic. Our findings illustrate a three-step process in which the enactment of opportunity beliefs feeds both an identity verification and a resilience loop. Considering our findings, we advance research on entrepreneurial identities by taking a dynamic perspective on how individuals actively reconstruct and verify their identities, expanding our understanding of identity work beyond activities that ensure fit with pre-defined (role) identities. Furthermore, we contribute to research and practice on entrepreneurial opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradox of embedded agency has received considerable attention since the rise of institutional entrepreneurship literature brough attention to the work of individuals to change the institutional environments within which they operate. However, we argue that the structural forces that determine the embeddedness of an actor vary considerably across Williamson's four-level institutional hierarchy, which implies that the relationship between structure and agency is not paradoxical. We interviewed a sample of institutional entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry in Kenya and Nigeria and found that embeddedness varied depending on the institutional level at which changes were being made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental entrepreneurship as a field had gained attention in recent years, yet, although it represents a growing field of research, we still know little about identity of environmental entrepreneurs. On the foundations of identity theory and by applying the lens of identity work, the study investigates how entrepreneurial identity evolves over time. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and additional data from 36 entrepreneurs from the Italian wine industry, the findings highlight entrepreneurial identity evolves from an initial appearance to a developed self-consciousness as environmental entrepreneurs. This identity work includes moments of identity contestation and/or elaboration, triggered by the interplay of environmental and place identity. The article contributes to research on environmental entrepreneurship and identity work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs in developing economies rely extensively on informal institutions such as family and political relationships to cope with weak or absent formal institutions. However, in many cases, informal institutions are also unreliable, adding risks and costs to doing business and increasing the severity of institutional voids in the surrounding ecosystem. We investigate the practices followed by 47 entrepreneurs in Kenya to 'workaround' these severe institutional voids to achieve business creation and growth. We find that severe institutional voids create a need for a more strategic orchestration of available means, stimulate the hybridization of goals to include blended impact and economic value, and motivate entrepreneurs to proactively cross- brace the institutional infrastructure around them. We contribute by unveiling the important role of entrepreneurs as microinstitutional agents in developing economies and by detailing how commercial and social goals become intertwined in the context of African entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a field study of 28 family firms in Germany and Italy, we investigate how familiness can leverage sustainable innovations. Prior research highlights that family firms are less innovative. In contrast, our findings reveal that local embeddedness as well as congruent family and firm identity can stimulate sustainable innovations. However, we also show that they intentionally build up formal and informal institutions and therefore fulfill the role as change agents. Our work contributes to family firm research by detailing how a personal sustainable lifestyle of the owner together with local embeddedness can trigger sustainable product and process innovation which leads family firms to build institutions for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]