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The purpose of this paper is to give an up-to-date assessment of key topics and methods discussed in the current literature on responsible entrepreneurship. In the past years, sustainable development itself has become a more popular and important topic in the academic literature and hence the field of sustainable entrepreneurship has become a greater topic of interest and opportunity for solution. Therefore, a systematic literature review is conducted to assess new contributions to the field and its potential for the future of sustainable development, with a focus on responsible innovation.

Systematic, evidence-informed literature review following Tranfield et al. (2003).

Based on a conceptual literature review, five streams of research that responsible entrepreneurs distinguish from purely for-profit entrepreneurs are identified and discussed: walking the line between profit creation and value creation for society; business models of responsible entrepreneurs; their role in transforming society; getting ready to innovate responsibly; and the role of market incentives to foster sustainable business practices.

The structured literature review allows to identify future research paths. In detail, ideas as regards the management of upcoming tensions when trying to combine profit creation and value creation for society, and finally, the way innovation processes need to be rethought when innovating responsibly are discussed and outlined.

Increasingly complex societal challenges call for new, innovative solutions that social hybrid business models can provide. Social supermarkets (SSMs) are one example offering access to affordable food to people living in poverty while reducing food waste of nearby retailers. Finding the “right” location is an essential part of this retail marketing strategy. However, limited research has attempted to investigate the specific conditions of locational planning for hybrid and nonprofit retail organizations. This paper illustrates the case of Austria where SSMs are well established.

A GIS-based white space analysis was carried out to identify potential neighborhoods or rural areas for new social supermarkets with sufficient nearby demand, supply and no existing SSMs. The empirical parameters for this spatial analysis can be transferred to European countries with similar ecosystems. The authors collected a unique data set of 79 (2014) and 88 SSMs (2019) and 4,665 (2014) and 4,211 (2019) food retailers as (potential) suppliers to SSMs. To determine demand, the authors relied on small-scale integrated wage and income tax data and unemployment rates (2011) from Statistics Austria.

Overall, Austria has very good spatial access to grocery stores, including to SSMs. SSM access increased especially in the capital of Vienna between 2014 and 2019. The GIS-based white space analysis identified several other regions where residents have a high demand for affordable food with sufficient potential suppliers of surplus food but no SSM yet. Neighborhood-level findings are released as part of a publicly accessible spatial decision support system.

The methodology allowed a specific definition of the key areas of relevance by matching the demand for SSMs, calculated as the number of people with low incomes in the respective regions in Austria, with the supply of SSMs, calculated as the amount of potential food loss prevention by nearby retail stores. These parameters have proven to help in identifying the white spaces and therefore can be used in Austria and other European countries with similar ecosystems.

Group decisions have taken a prominent part in strategic decision making but managerial research still lacks techniques to study these interpersonal processes comprehensively. Assuming that efficient decision making depends on shared cognitive structures within groups, an approach to analyze these structures and the affective and communicative dimensions causing convergence/divergence of individual cognitions is introduced. Suitable methods to study these variables are discussed and applied in an actual strategic decision to be made by a management team. The method shows a high degree of realism and preciseness in analyzing strategic group decisions.

In order to ensure consistency in brand management activities, employees need to develop a shared understanding of what their brand stands for. This process receives even greater complexity in a multicultural workforce. Despite an increase of interest in internal branding, literature widely lacks an understanding of how employees from different cultural backgrounds develop a shared brand understanding and how leaders can facilitate this process. This paper introduces a road map to action research: First, a justification as to why action research is considered an appropriate model to capture internal brand building processes is provided. Subsequently, the main steps that led to the development of the presented methodological framework are outlined by referring to results of pre‐tests or to already published material where appropriate.

This paper is a brief historical examination of brand, organisation identity and reputation in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The discussion is situated within the context of the challenges that the global knowledge‐based business environment poses to organisations of differing sizes.

The authors' approach is discursive. The argument is supported by findings from published studies and empirical reality. The authors analyse and distill our thoughts (and the empirical findings) in a way that is relevant to the activities of entrepreneurs and SMEs.

Organisations are better able to create strong firm by integrating branding, reputation building, relevant and appropriate organisational identity beyond their visual façade. They need to be more proactive, and also have to express and embed their brand value propositions within their identity and reputation in their dealings with customers. The authors surmises that researching about (and evaluations of) brand, reputation and organisation identity need to play more active roles in offering novel ways of conceptualising and documenting the realities of the contemporary (global) business environment in which firms operates.

The study offers new horizons on brand, organization identity and reputation as they relate to economic reality. The authors unequivocal articulation is that these concepts are critical factors in the success of enterprises and small businesses in competitive markets.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how branding can facilitate small business development of new ventures.

A conceptual approach was used for understanding branding in new ventures. A model with eight propositions has been developed and then validated using ten existing case studies of exceptional entrepreneurs.

The key mechanisms proposed for branding to assist small business create new ventures include opportunity recognition, innovation, business model development, capital acquisition, supplier acquisition, customer acquisition, and success harvesting.

The paper helps redress a relatively lack of research into small business branding. Previous research has mainly focused on small business brand management of existing ventures. The findings are readily translatable to small businesses launching new ventures. The paper extends the existing small business branding literature into a new domain, having a strong entrepreneurial character.