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Entrepreneurs, dirty businesses and unintentional environmental benefits: Plastic recycling in the Dharavi slum - 08 May 2024

We had the honour to welcome Erling Persson Visiting Professor Dean Shepherd from the University of Notre Dame for a research seminar at the House of Innovation.

Paper title and abstract

Entrepreneurs, dirty businesses and unintentional environmental benefits: Plastic recycling in the Dharavi slum

Abstract: Individuals pursuing sustainable ventures tend to be motivated to preserve the natural environment and are often celebrated by society for their efforts.  However, the extant research offers little recognition that efforts to clean up environmental degradation may require rolling up one’s sleeves and getting into the dirt.  People engaged in such dirty work can be stigmatized by others even when they are generating a public benefit. Indeed, the stigma of dirty work might mark entrepreneurs more heavily (than employees) because their identity is tightly entwined with the business. In this inductive study, we explore entrepreneurs’ dirty businesses based on a sample of entrepreneurs engaged in plastic recycling located in the slum of Dharavi, India. Our model generates various new insights into how: (1) despite acknowledging that their business and home are mired in dirt, the entrepreneurs have an uncomplicated relationship with their work, experiencing high positive and low negative affect; (2) the co-location of dirty businesses eliminates entrepreneurs’ experience of stigmatization; and (3) a collective of entrepreneurs can generate environmental benefits without any members explicitly intending to do so. We hope this study generates new research into the dirty businesses of sustainable entrepreneurship.

 

Co-authors: Vinit Parida | Lulea Technical University & Joakim Wincent | Hanken School of Economics and St Gallen University

 

About Dean Shepherd

Dean Shepherd is the Erling Persson Visiting Professor at the House of Innovation and the Swedish House of Finance. Dean is also Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University.

His research and teaching are in the field of entrepreneurship; he investigates the decision making involved in leveraging cognitive and other resources to act on opportunities, responding with resilience to adversity, and learning from experimentation (including failure). Dean is a fellow of the Academy of Management. He has been awarded three honorary doctorates (Jonkoping University [Sweden], Technical University of Munich [Germany], and Lulea University of Technology [Sweden]). From the Entrepreneurs Division of the Academy of Management, Dean has been awarded the “Dedication to Entrepreneurship award”, the “Mentor Award”, and the “Foundational Paper Award” (twice). He is the past editor-in-chief of the Journal Business Venturing. He has authored over 20 books and 180 publications in top management and entrepreneurship journals with over 75,000 Google cites. (Source: University of Notre Dame).

House of Innovation Labor Entrepreneurship Environment Innovation Management Sustainability Lunch seminar Research seminar