FOSTERING ENDURING CORPORATIONS AND ENABLING SUSTAINABLE GROWTH THROUGH RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

This conceptual paper explores the responsible entrepreneurship notion - being responsible not only for oneself but also to others - in the context of the long-term growth and healthy survival of organizations. Continued healthy survival of organizations requires organizational renewal to face the ever-changing environment. Because renewal is a by-product of qualitative growth, and entrepreneurship a necessary process for growth to occur, this paper offers a typology of seven different modes of growth, which enables distinguishing different sources of entrepreneurial opportunities, a gap identified in the entrepreneurship literature. The typology contributes refinement to entrepreneurship and growth-related concepts such as imbalances whose occurrence is mandatory for growth to occur. In addition, the paper departs from the widespread success-oriented bias commonly found in the entrepreneurship and growth literatures, maintaining that entrepreneurial initiatives may bring out entrepreneurship's far less divulged dark side. Actually, entrepreneurial choices may give rise to unsustainable business practices that eschew social responsibility and jeopardize the natural environment. Hence, responsible entrepreneurship comprises conceiving a business model that ensures genuine value creation to stakeholders and value capture to the organization; identifying the types and amount of resources and capabilities that would be required to implement a conceived expansion; assessing the likely implications of the entrepreneurial initiative for the organization, should a worst-case scenario materialize; checking on the spillover effects of the growth move on the surrounding environment and society; and assessing whether entrepreneurial aspirations and the drive to pursue them are not disproportionate, so as to avoid costly 'day-dreaming' perilous situations.