| This three-paper dissertation is motivated by the question Under what conditions and using what process can entrepreneurial action overcome the logic of collective action to provision public goods? I examine this puzzle through three studies, each focused on a specific question: (1) Study 1: How does entrepreneurship influence the adoption of voluntary environmental standards? The process of green building, the use of environmentally friendly construction practices provides a rich context to develop and test a theoretical model for the role of entrepreneurial action in producing public goods. I hypothesize on the relationship between green building project volume, government policies, private activism and entrepreneurial action. A panel was constructed from data on 11,934 projects registered for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program for the years 2000-07. (2) Study 2: Under what conditions and how will entrepreneurs address environmental issues? I build upon a recent stream of research that has proposed entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation. My theoretical proposition is that under certain conditions entrepreneurs are likely to supplement the efforts of governments, NGOs and existing corporations to achieve environmental sustainability. Utilizing illustrative examples from interviews with the founders of 20 environmentally focused firms, my model illustrates how entrepreneurs (1) address environmental uncertainty, (2) provide innovation and (3) engage in resource allocation to address environmental degradation. (3) Study 3: What is the entrepreneurial process of creating public goods? In this paper I engaged in a grounded theory, qualitative study to build on recent work which relates collective action to institutional change (Hargrave & Van De Ven, 2006a) and technology emergence (von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003). I thematically coded and analyzed interviews with 22 founders and stakeholders in renewable energy startups to develop an entrepreneurship based model of collective action. The model shows how individual entrepreneurs can kick start collective action solutions either by (a) actively creating selective incentives that overcome the tragedy of the commons, and/or (b) effectually creating corridors for self-selected stakeholders, allowing selective incentives to emerge from the process itself. |
