With the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), organisations worldwide are confronted with a set of predefined, external sustainability goals at field-level. Broadly endorsed by institutional champions, the SDGs offer opportunities for mobilising stakeholders and resources to work towards common societal goals. This is especially valuable for social ventures whose missions and organisational activities centre on societal goals. In this study, we explore how social ventures respond to the SDGs as external goals – specifically, how and why social ventures adopt the SDGs. Drawing on a qualitative study of 35 social ventures, we identify four distinct approaches: resisted, necessity-driven, pragmatic and strategy-making goal adoption. We identify goal adoption activities as well as distinct antecedents for goal adoption, including ethical imperatives and collaboration orientation. Our study contributes to research on SDG adoption as an example of the adoption of external goals, as well as the literature on collective entrepreneurship.
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