Visionary or Criminal: From Profit through Morality to Socially Sustainable Entrepreneurship

From pirates and warlords to accountants and corporate raiders, successful business practice has always incorporated a degree of volatility. At the same time, business leaders have too frequently neglected social responsibility in their pursuit of expanded reach, market advantage and, ultimately, increased profit. In a climate of immediate economic uncertainty, the need for responsible practice has become central to recovery from an ongoing global recession. Strategic differences between commercial, moral and social entrepreneurs point to the need for a more integrated theory of entrepreneurship.Successful entrepreneurial activity is based in sound moral principles. As a consequence, this paper observes that exploitation, corruption and criminality may masquerade as business in the short term but are unsustainable in the longer term because they detract from the common good. Instead, it is argued, innovative business is good business when it generates a net increase in social capital. In consequence, effective definitions of entrepreneurship must be grounded in social advantage from which economic advantage must necessarily arise.Identifying entrepreneurial activity ranging from criminal through opportunistic to well-intentioned and visionary, this paper explores the increasing demand for transparency in business activity, the necessity for a sound moral position undergirding innovation within a culture of entrepreneurship and the complexity of maintaining a socially responsible vision when minor departures might seem to assure profit -stability. Ultimately, when issues of accountability and net benefit are accepted as measures of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial activity, then good business generates a net increase in social capital.