Entrepreneurship and sustainable development: The "entrepreneurial society" put to the test by the health crisis

  • Category:
  • Dates : September 30 to October 1, 2021
  • Opening hours: 09h00 - 18h00
  • Location:

Montpellier Management Espace Richter, MDE Aimé Schoenig and building B - Rue Vendémiaire, 34960 Montpellier.

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

The sudden and brutal nature of the COVID-19 epidemic, and the emergency measures it imposed worldwide, triggered a systemic crisis which, beyond its purely health-related aspects, undermined many certainties, and even beliefs, about the regulatory principles of national and international societies. It has thrown a harsh spotlight on the fragility of the dominant economic and social models, which struggle to anticipate risks correctly and provide solutions that are indisputable in both efficiency and ethical terms. In this sense, it brings us back to the fundamental debate on development models and their implications for organizations that RIODD has been conducting since its inception. This debate first concerns the meaning of actions, the individual and collective objectives pursued, and the order of priorities. It then turns to the means of initiating these actions and pursuing these objectives. It also raises questions about the respective roles and legitimacy of public authorities and private players, and the appropriate level and type of coordination between them.

The initial objective of the 15th RIODD congress (2020) was precisely to tackle this debate, at the level of organizations, by questioning the "entrepreneurial society" model (D. Audretsch, 2006, 2007), claimed for several years by the leaders of many countries as being particularly relevant to meeting the major contemporary social and environmental challenges. Health constraints having led us to propose a slimmed-down, remote edition of the 2020 congress, the 2021 edition should enable us to continue and deepen the debate, by crossing the views of sociologists, philosophers, jurists, historians, geographers and ecologists with those of economists and management specialists. The health crisis, with the speed and scale of the upheavals it has brought about, has provided a formidable terrain for analysis of the "entrepreneurial society" model (and alternative models) on which the congress debates will be based, around the challenges of product and service innovation, process innovation and managerial innovation (Schumpeter, 1935; Carland, Hoy, Boulton and Carland, 1984) in public and private organizations, new or destroyed opportunities (Venkataraman, 1997; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), the development or disappearance of organizations (Gartner, 1985), the creation or destruction of economic and non-economic value (Gartner, 1990).

State intervention, made necessary to combat the pandemic and cope with the global economic and social crisis it has brought about, has re-emphasized the irreplaceable role of governments in crisis situations. This revival of public authority, with its regal powers, has also been accompanied by a number of initiatives from both the corporate sector and civil society groups, aimed at finding innovative solutions to the sometimes unprecedented problems posed by the events. In this largely renewed context, the conditions for the emergence of a "balanced society" (Mintzberg, 2017) between the "three pillars" of states, markets and organized communities (ib) are now at stake.

In the same perspective of renewing the frameworks for analyzing current economic and social policies, the question arises of revising the United Nations' "Agenda 2030" and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were set out, in a different context in 2015. In what sense should these SDGs be revised, and what role should organizations (public, private or communal) play in achieving true sustainability? This major issue will be at the heart of the debates at the 16th RIODD congress.