Critically reflexive autoethnography of sustainable entrepreneurship in Scotland

Abstract

We face an unprecedented climate crisis that urgently requires sustainable solutions. Sustainable entrepreneurship is one way that we can rapidly develop solutions to the climate crisis through the creation of sustainable ventures. However, in order for this form of entrepreneurship to be successful, we need to learn lessons from experiences and experiments to-date. But entrepreneurs themselves are often too busy on the job to carry out research or share their data, making it difficult to examine their work in-depth. In this PhD thesis I employ a reflexive autoethnographic method combined with a case study approach to investigate my own experience of sustainable venture creation. Presented using a ‘portfolio of papers' format I draw on a wealth of data from personal archives to reflexively describe, analyze and compare three individual cases of sustainable venture creation that I led in Edinburgh, Scotland from 2009-2019. I employ a critical political economy framework to interweave each case, identifying cross-cutting themes that help make sense of the data. In the context of each case, I examine myself as both researcher and subject to present a personalized, contextual, critical account of my efforts to address the climate crisis through the medium of sustainable venture creation. I argue that reflexive autoethnography when combined with a case study approach can enable sustainable entrepreneurs to capture and share their experiences for others to learn from, in a manner that will complement and enrich their work, while providing detailed data about their experiences that is valuable to researchers. I further argue that a critical political economy perspective enables researchers and practitioners to go beyond narrow economic perspectives to identify crucial individual and state/market factors that greatly influence and shape the practice of sustainable entrepreneurship.