Exploring Entrepreneurship as Misbehavior

Purpose – To explore the links between entrepreneurship and misbehavior. Approach – Conceptual development using cases as illustrative examples. Findings – The chapter finds that there is an overlap between the way misbehavior is defined and the way entrepreneurship is conceptualized in the literature. It also finds previous research, distinguishing between desirable and undesirable misbehavior based on the intentions or the outcomes of behavior, insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship as misbehavior. The reason is that for entrepreneurial ventures, the underlying intentions are often good, but the outcomes often not; and that making assessments of the outcomes of entrepreneurial ventures a priori is notoriously difficult. Assessing misbehavior based only on organizational level evaluations is likewise insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship. The reason for this is that support for the venture may be needed also from actors outside of the organization. Furthermore, what constitutes the organization is not always clear. Therefore, we argue that it is necessary to broaden the view of what institutions determine whether a venture classifies as misbehavior when analyzing entrepreneurship. Research limitations – The cases used to illustrate the overlap between entrepreneurship and misbehavior are conspicuous and not necessarily representative of entrepreneurship and misbehavior in general. Originality – This is a first attempt at merging the misbehavior and entrepreneurship literatures, which highlights an important niche with a great promise for future research