Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development: The “Entrepreneurial Society” Facing the Challenge of the Health Crisis

Montpellier Management Espace Richter, MDE Aimé Schoenig, and Building B – Rue Vendémiaire, 34960 Montpellier.

16th Conference of the International Research Network on Organizations and Sustainable Development

Through its sudden and severe nature and the emergency measures it has imposed worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a systemic crisis that—beyond purely health-related aspects—has undermined many certainties, and even beliefs, regarding the principles governing societies, both nationally and internationally. It has thus laid bare the fragility of the dominant economic and social models, which struggle to accurately anticipate risks and provide solutions that are unquestionably sound in terms of both effectiveness and ethics. In this sense, it ties back to the fundamental debate that RIODD has been fostering since its inception regarding development models and their implications for organizations. This debate focuses first on the meaning of actions, the individual and collective objectives pursued, and the order of priorities. It then addresses the means of undertaking these actions and pursuing these objectives. It thus leads us to question the respective roles and legitimacy of public authorities and private actors, as well as the appropriate level and nature of coordination between them.

The original goal of the 15th RIODD Congress (2020) was precisely to address this debate at the organizational level by examining the model of the “entrepreneurial society ” (D. Audretsch, 2006, 2007)—a model that leaders in many countries have for several years touted as particularly relevant for addressing major contemporary social and environmental challenges. Since public health constraints led to the decision to hold a scaled-down, virtual version of the 2020 conference, the 2021 conference should provide an opportunity to continue and meaningfully deepen the debate by bringing together—more than ever before—the perspectives of sociologists, philosophers, legal scholars, historians, geographers, and ecologists with those of economists and management specialists. The health crisis, through the speed and scale of the upheavals it has caused, has indeed provided a formidable basis for analyzing the model of the “entrepreneurial society”  (and alternative models)—a framework that will anchor the conference’s discussions. These will center on challenges related to innovation in products, services, processes, and management (Schumpeter, 1935; Carland, Hoy, Boulton, and Carland, 1984) within public and private organizations, as well as on new opportunities and those that have been lost (Venkataraman, 1997; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), the growth or decline of organizations (Gartner, 1985), and the creation or destruction of economic and non-economic value (Gartner, 1990).

Government interventions—made necessary to combat the pandemic and address the global economic and social crisis it triggered—have reemphasized the irreplaceable role of governments in times of crisis. This resurgence of public authority, as the holder of sovereign powers, has also been accompanied by numerous initiatives from both the business sector and civil society groups, aimed at finding innovative solutions to the problems—sometimes unprecedented—posed by these events. This raises, within a largely transformed context, the conditions for the emergence of a “balanced society” (Mintzberg, 2017) among the “three pillars” of states, markets, and organized communities (ibid.).

In line with the ongoing effort to renew the analytical frameworks for economic and social policies, one key question that arises is whether to revise the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda” and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were established in 2015 under different circumstances. In what ways should these SDGs be revised, and how should the role assigned to organizations (public, private, or community-based) be defined in order to achieve true sustainability? This major issue will be at the heart of the discussions at the 16th RIODD Congress.

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