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 imposed worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a systemic crisis that—beyond purely public health considerations—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 uncontested in terms of both effectiveness and ethics. In this sense, it ties back to the fundamental debate that RIODD has been advancing 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 to questions about 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), which leaders in many countries have been advocating for several years as particularly relevant to 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 edition 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). The conference discussions will center on these models, focusing on challenges related to innovation in products, services, and processes, as well as managerial innovation (Schumpeter, 1935; Carland, Hoy, Boulton, and Carland, 1984) in public and private organizations; on new opportunities and those that have been destroyed (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 once again highlighted the irreplaceable role of governments in times of crisis. This resurgence of public authority, which holds 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. In this vastly changed context, the conditions are now emerging for the emergence of a “balanced society” (Mintzberg, 2017) among the “three pillars” of states, markets, and organized communities (ibid.).

As part of 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—whether 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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