Advancing SDGs through beneficial constraints in ethical entrepreneurship: a critical review and future research agenda

Frederick Ahen

Chapter 24 in The Elgar Companion to International Business and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2026, pp 470-492 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter critically evaluates the central role of (international) entrepreneurship in achieving progress toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through brand-building innovations. We argue that a significant gulf exists between promises (brand) and delivery (sustainable value) in entrepreneurship's dominant instrumental structure for growth and profits – partly morphing sustainability discourses into mere political/entrepreneurial rhetoric. A problem that raises many uncomfortable questions is that over time, the pipeline from talk shops to business-as-usual renders repeated sustainability discourses increasingly meaningless or, at best, offers only a shallow analysis of the underlying burning questions. The more entrepreneurial practices deviate from the optimum socio-ethical expectations by evading institutional limits, the more entrepreneurs undermine society and the environment. We propose ethical entrepreneurship (EE) as a redemptive reorientation towards SDGs and the defining ethos for institutionally meaningful and foresighted outcomes within the limits of beneficial constraints. This forthrightly confronts destructive entrepreneurial behaviors by redirecting scarce resources to socially beneficial uses for achieving SDGs.

Keywords: Sustainability; SDG 12; International entrepreneurship; Ethical entrepreneurship; Sustainable innovations; Destructive entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035348473
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