Roads less travelled: space and time in sustainable entrepreneurship

Abstract

The recognition of entrepreneurs as embedded within economies, societies, and natural systems indicates that the role of context in sustainable entrepreneurship may differ from that in traditional profit-focused entrepreneurship. This underscores the need for diversified contextual investigations in sustainable entrepreneurship literature. Lack of insights into the state of contextualisation can lead to neglect of specific dimensions of context, resulting in imbalanced contextual understanding. This review examines the state of knowledge on contextual factors in sustainable entrepreneurship literature. Focusing on empirical studies, we identify both influential and overlooked contextual dimensions and recommend future research directions. We find a bias towards business and institutional dimensions and identify Europe as a prominent geographical setting in the literature. We call for the exploration of the influence of space and time in sustainable entrepreneurship, encompassing spatial design, digital-physical space interactions, spatial distribution, geographic inclusivity, temporal constructs and processes, historical narratives, collective memories, and critical events.