Responsible entrepreneur in sustainable development : an integrative conceptual framework
According to Schumpeter (1935), the entrepreneurial function is, in essence, the vehicle of a perpetual transformation of the economy. Is not the responsible entrepreneur this actor capable of starting the necessary economic revolution to make the world more fair and more sustainable ? How can this entrepreneur combine his freedom of enterprise with his creativity in the service of others ? In this paper, we engage in a quest for this responsible entrepreneur. We try to highlight the ethical capacities which are necessary to his action and we wonder about the way it translates with regard to the four paradigms of entrepreneurship put forward by Verstraete and Fayolle (2005) : namely, the creation of value, business opportunities, innovation and the creation of organisation(s). Two main figures emerge from our investigations: the economic entrepreneur in sustainable development (SD) and the SD responsible entrepreneur. As regards the latter, we propose a synthetic and integrative conceptual framework to characterise his action and the foundations thereof, and the set of capacities he has to harness.