Put Your Style at Stake: A New Use of Sustainable Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This article uses the concept of style to rethink sustainable entrepreneurship. Our point of departure is the conceptual distinction between organization as style made durable and entrepreneurship as the disruption of style. We show that style is not simply an aesthetic category, but rather what ties different social practices together. While organization makes the connections between social practices durable, entrepreneurship disrupts such patterns. We further elucidate how organization and entrepreneurship are two intermingled processes – those of durability and disruption – that together enable the creation of new styles. In order to conceptualize this creative process, we explore how play can create disharmonies within the organization, but we also maintain that any new practice will remain marginal without a collective assemblage capable of adopting it. On this basis, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurship consists of making an environmentally friendly and socially conscious style durable, but also of disrupting such a style. In order to illustrate our argument, we use the example of the sustainable smartphone producer Fairphone. In conclusion, we argue that the concept of style may strengthen the dialogue between entrepreneurship studies and organization studies.