IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/bstrat/v21y2012i2p71-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Making Sense of Ecopreneurs' Decisions to Sell Up

Author

Listed:
  • Kate Kearins
  • Eva Collins

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of values‐based firms being sold to larger mainstream firms. Its focus is on the sensemaking rationale offered by a New Zealand ecopreneur who sold an organic beverage company after 20 years at the helm. The company case study is presented through two enterprise development narratives based on alternative sensemaking modes. Key values‐related challenges arising in ecopreneurial business are identified, including (1) adhering to the founder's values, (2) growing the business sustainably, (3) deciding whether and when to expand ownership to cope with undercapitalization, (4) deciding who to bring in as new owners to ensure values alignment, (5) determining how and when the founder might leave and (6) ensuring the attractiveness of the sustainability values so that they might be retained. Other factors implicated in the sale of values‐based firms are also postulated. It is argued that, although ecopreneurs might be accused of selling out their principles by selling up, there is some evidence that eco‐brands are being maintained and that growth prospects could be improved after acquisition. Serial ecopreneurship may even extend social benefits. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Kate Kearins & Eva Collins, 2012. "Making Sense of Ecopreneurs' Decisions to Sell Up," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 71-85, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:21:y:2012:i:2:p:71-85
    DOI: 10.1002/bse.710
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.710
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/bse.710?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tamsin Angus‐Leppan & Suzanne Benn & Louise Young, 2010. "A sensemaking approach to trade‐offs and synergies between human and ecological elements of corporate sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 230-244, May.
    2. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss, 2010. "Trade‐offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have your cake and eat it," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 217-229, May.
    3. Andrea L. Larson, 2000. "Sustainable innovation through an entrepreneurship lens," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(5), pages 304-317, September.
    4. Thomas Dyllick & Kai Hockerts, 2002. "Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 130-141, March.
    5. Chris Steyaert, 2007. "‘Entrepreneuring’ as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(6), pages 453-477.
    6. Karl E. Weick & Kathleen M. Sutcliffe & David Obstfeld, 2005. "Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 409-421, August.
    7. William Young & Fiona Tilley, 2006. "Can businesses move beyond efficiency? The shift toward effectiveness and equity in the corporate sustainability debate," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 402-415, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wendy Stubbs, 2017. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship and B Corps," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 331-344, March.
    2. Séverine Le Loarne Lemaire & Meriam Razgallah & Adnane Maalaoui & Sascha Kraus, 2022. "Becoming a green entrepreneur: An advanced entrepreneurial cognition model based on a practiced-based approach," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 801-828, June.
    3. Kirstie O'Neill & David Gibbs, 2016. "Rethinking green entrepreneurship – Fluid narratives of the green economy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(9), pages 1727-1749, September.
    4. Noelia‐Sarah Reynolds & Diane Holt, 2021. "Sustainable development and profit? A sensemaking perspective on hybrid organisations and their founders," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 2147-2159, May.
    5. Albert Jolink & Eva Niesten, 2015. "Sustainable Development and Business Models of Entrepreneurs in the Organic Food Industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(6), pages 386-401, September.
    6. Matthew P. Johnson & Stefan Schaltegger, 2020. "Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development: A Review and Multilevel Causal Mechanism Framework," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 44(6), pages 1141-1173, November.
    7. Olivier Boiral & David Talbot & Pascal Paillé, 2015. "Leading by Example: A Model of Organizational Citizenship Behavior for the Environment," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(6), pages 532-550, September.
    8. Kate V. Lewis & Sue Cassells & Hernan Roxas, 2015. "SMEs and the Potential for A Collaborative Path to Environmental Responsibility," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(8), pages 750-764, December.
    9. Christopher Wickert & Antonino Vaccaro & Joep Cornelissen, 2017. "“Buying” Corporate Social Responsibility: Organisational Identity Orientation as a Determinant of Practice Adoption," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 497-514, May.
    10. Anas A. Makki & Hisham Alidrisi & Asif Iqbal & Basil O. Al-Sasi, 2020. "Barriers to Green Entrepreneurship: An ISM-Based Investigation," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-17, October.
    11. Gabriel Eweje, 2020. "Proactive environmental and social strategies in a small‐ to medium‐sized company: A case study of a Japanese SME," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(7), pages 2927-2938, November.
    12. Olivier Boiral & Charles Baron & Olen Gunnlaugson, 2014. "Environmental Leadership and Consciousness Development: A Case Study Among Canadian SMEs," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 363-383, September.
    13. Stefano Pogutz & Monika I. Winn, 2016. "Cultivating Ecological Knowledge for Corporate Sustainability: Barilla's Innovative Approach to Sustainable Farming," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(6), pages 435-448, September.
    14. Tamara Galkina, 2021. "International ECOpreneurship: Environmental commitment and international partner selection of Finnish firms from the energy sector," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 300-320, June.
    15. Torbjörn Ljungkvist & Jim Andersén, 2021. "A taxonomy of ecopreneurship in small manufacturing firms: A multidimensional cluster analysis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 1374-1388, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura F. Sasse-Werhahn & Claudius Bachmann & André Habisch, 2020. "Managing Tensions in Corporate Sustainability Through a Practical Wisdom Lens," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 53-66, April.
    2. Felipe Hernández-Perlines & Nina Rung-Hoch, 2017. "Sustainable Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-16, July.
    3. Maria Vincenza Ciasullo & Raffaella Montera & Nicola Cucari & Francesco Polese, 2020. "How an international ambidexterity strategy can address the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability: Evidence from Chinese emerging market multinationals," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 2110-2129, July.
    4. Frank Martin Belz & Julia Katharina Binder, 2017. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship: A Convergent Process Model," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 1-17, January.
    5. Fabien Martinez, 2014. "Corporate strategy and the environment: towards a four-dimensional compatibility model for fostering green management decisions," Post-Print hal-02887618, HAL.
    6. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss, 2010. "Trade‐offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have your cake and eat it," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 217-229, May.
    7. Morgan X. Yang & Ji Li & Irina Y. Yu & Kevin J. Zeng & Jian‐Min (James) Sun, 2019. "Environmentally sustainable or economically sustainable? The effect of Chinese manufacturing firms' corporate sustainable strategy on their green performances," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(6), pages 989-997, September.
    8. Muñoz, Pablo & Dimov, Dimo, 2015. "The call of the whole in understanding the development of sustainable ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 632-654.
    9. Cory Searcy, 2016. "Measuring Enterprise Sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 120-133, February.
    10. Timo Busch & Marcel Richert & Matthew Johnson & Sven Lundie, 2020. "Climate inaction and managerial sensemaking: The case of renewable energy," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(6), pages 2502-2514, November.
    11. Markus Milne & Rob Gray, 2013. "W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 13-29, November.
    12. Munten, Pauline & Vanhamme, Joëlle & Maon, François & Swaen, Valérie & Lindgreen, Adam, 2021. "Addressing tensions in coopetition for sustainable innovation: Insights from the automotive industry," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 10-20.
    13. Pablo Muñoz & Boyd Cohen, 2018. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 300-322, March.
    14. Ozgur Isil & Michael T. Hernke, 2017. "The Triple Bottom Line: A Critical Review from a Transdisciplinary Perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(8), pages 1235-1251, December.
    15. Jeremy Galbreath, 2018. "Do Boards of Directors Influence Corporate Sustainable Development? An Attention‐Based Analysis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(6), pages 742-756, September.
    16. Annina Lattu & Yuzhuo Cai, 2020. "Tensions in the Sustainability of Higher Education—The Case of Finnish Universities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-15, March.
    17. Kazunori Kobayashi & Gabriel Eweje & David Tappin, 2018. "Employee wellbeing and human sustainability: Perspectives of managers in large Japanese corporations," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(7), pages 801-810, November.
    18. Brunella Arru, 2020. "An integrative model for understanding the sustainable entrepreneurs’ behavioural intentions: an empirical study of the Italian context," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3519-3576, April.
    19. Jay Joseph & Marc Orlitzky & Bruce Gurd & Helen Borland & Adam Lindgreen, 2019. "Can business‐oriented managers be effective leaders for corporate sustainability? A study of integrative and instrumental logics," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 339-352, February.
    20. Catherine Le Roux & Marius Pretorius, 2016. "Navigating Sustainability Embeddedness in Management Decision-Making," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-23, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:21:y:2012:i:2:p:71-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.