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Entrepreneurship is ubiquitous, but it is not unequivocally a human force for social and economic good. Critical perspectives of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial success (and failure) are evolving in the scholarly literature. Dark side theory has emerged as a language for critiquing the dominant narratives of entrepreneurship portrayed in scholarship, education, planning, policy, and other forms of practice. This chapter draws from dark side entrepreneurship theory, Baumolian entrepreneurship, and exemplars of counterculture to craft language for an emerging theory of misfit entrepreneurship, which consists of misfit entrepreneurs and alternative enterprises. Alternative enterprises and misfit entrepreneurs are conceptualized, and literary examples (i.e., Robin Hood and Song Jiang) and modern-day examples (i.e., Hacker groups) are supplied. The unique actions and impacts of misfit entrepreneurs and alternative enterprises are offered for discussion. This new theory of misfit entrepreneurship leaves readers with exploratory questions that enhance critical perspectives and modern understandings of entrepreneurship today.

This paper aims to extend social entrepreneurship theory by investigating the darker sides of innovation and enterprise. Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship theories regarding shifting equilibriums are considered alongside other traditions. This research presents how individuals see enterprises as dark and light and discusses how such perceptions are important to building emerging theories of light and dark social entrepreneurship.

The study uses a survey of public perceptions (n = 631) regarding the social and economic impact of a total of 15 different enterprises to create a map of the darker variations of enterprises. An 11-point scale was used to evaluate perceived impact.

The mapping of each enterprise on a coordinate plane resulted in four thematic areas: traditional enterprises (light social, light economic), taboo enterprises (dark social, light economic), dark enterprises (dark social, dark economic) and alternative enterprises (light social, dark economic). Some enterprises crossed between the thematic areas.

This study opens up new directions for research on dark social entrepreneurship and research on enterprises that influence social equilibriums.

This study provides guidance for practitioners and policymakers to better understand phenomena such as dark, taboo and alternative enterprises and their nuances.

This study allows for a broader look at social entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise to better understand dark and light nuances. Similarities between the lighter and darker forms of enterprises are noted.

This study builds on dark entrepreneurship and dark social entrepreneurship theories and concepts using empirical methods.

Social media has been gaining importance in recent years as an integral part of entrepreneurs’ business and marketing strategies. At the same time, the entrepreneurial use of social media can lead to dark and negative consequences. This aspect has received less attention in the literature so far. The purpose of this study is to advice entrepreneurial practitioners to balance the sides of pros and cons as being an inherent reality to acknowledge the full scenario of business life and the interplay of diverse influences.

The qualitative interviews focused on the dark side experiences of micro-entrepreneurs on social media and on strategies to protect their private identities and businesses from those dark side effects. For the theoretical classification of dark side experiences, the framework of Baccarella et al. (2018) was used and adapted based on the experiences reported.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is one of the first to provide an understanding of the negative experiences micro-entrepreneurs face on social media. The research showed the relevance of five out of the seven dark-side building blocks and identified time as a further influential aspect. Thereby, the authors learn to comprehend the negative sides of social media for micro-operated businesses. The findings highlight the need to understand entrepreneurial social media use with simultaneously negative hazards and economic and social challenges. Addressing the entanglement of the entrepreneurial and private selves of micro-entrepreneurs, the findings demonstrate entrepreneur’s attempts of distancing or cleaning the negativity from their private identities and their businesses.

This paper problematizes dark sides as critical elements in entrepreneurial practice, which are too often neglected when discussing entrepreneurial marketing in general and entrepreneurship in social media specifically. The self is always captured between two sides, including the problematic (“dark”) and the bright.

The paper aims to relate the potential elements identified as the dark side of the family business (DSFB), where these elements can be productive or destructive. The “dark side” comprises an important contribution for entrepreneurship and family business (FB) studies, a novel perspective.

The relevant literature on entrepreneurship and FB was selected and analyzed according to the “dark side” framework.

The results suggest that many perspectives remain for research, starting with a clarification and a more precise definition, not only of the construct itself but also of the factors or forces that drive this dark side, from the entrepreneur/founder, the FB itself and the context. This approach considers a systemic position in which the context plays a significant and decisive role.

The paper has implications for the development of public policies. Business incubation entities, federal, state and local entrepreneurship/small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) programs, educational institutions and entrepreneurial families and their founders can become more aware and establish courses of action.

This paper makes a call to propose an initial point for conceptualizing the logic behind the DSFB for obtaining a deeper understanding with regard to future research. Researchers are encouraged to test the conceptual model further.

There is a growing interest on how critical perspectives can help us understand family businesses. Current literature suggests that critical reflection is needed in aspects such as conflict, fear, and emotions. In this chapter, we argue that the use of a critical perspective illuminates the intricate complexities of family business behavior and that a critical discussion around fear, which is conceptualized as both an inhibitor and a motivator for business, plays a significant role in the dark side of family business. To advance understanding, we review recent conversations that can help us understand better the role of fear; how does this impact on resilience? And, how do feelings and emotions impact family firms? In our review, we argue that perspectives that focus on specific tangible resources (e.g. financial) are limited to explain how families in business may deal with fear. A critical perspective suggests that three areas merit further attention: fear of failure, effects of failure, and the intersection between entrepreneurial learning and the effects of fear in the dark side of family businesses. By contextualizing critical approaches, we provide insight for researchers, policymakers, and those operating family businesses alike.

Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits are often viewed as negative or undesirable personality traits. However, recent research demonstrates that individuals with these traits possess qualities that may be personally beneficial within the business contexts. In this chapter, we conceptualize a balanced perspective of these traits throughout the entrepreneurial process (opportunity recognition, opportunity evaluation, and opportunity exploitation) and discuss human resources management strategies that can be employed to enhance the benefits, or minimize the challenges, associated with Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits. Specifically, we propose that Machiavellian qualities are most beneficial in the evaluation stage of entrepreneurship, and Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic qualities are beneficial in the exploitation stage of entrepreneurship.

Scholars have examined the importance of culture in entrepreneurship since at least the 1970s. Lounsbury and Glynn (2001) gave these efforts new impetus by explicitly theorizing entrepreneurship as a cultural process. In the intervening 20 years, work in this area has proliferated. To date, however, this work has emphasized the positive aspects of cultural entrepreneurship almost exclusively. Not all episodes of cultural entrepreneurship are positive, though, and not all entrepreneurial stories have a happy ending. Acknowledging this, we develop a framework for investigating the dark sides of cultural entrepreneurship. We posit four pathways through which cultural entrepreneurship might lead to negative outcomes. Along one dimension, we distinguish false promises and harmful practices. The second dimension differentiates between negative outcomes and negative spillovers. We illustrate our arguments with real-world examples, and discuss how our framework signals new research opportunities related to corruption and wrongdoing, as well as the potential for cultural entrepreneurship research to focus on authenticity as well as legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insights to understanding trust as a relational form of social capital, and its effects on entrepreneurial processes, in small- and medium-sized family businesses.

This paper adopts a qualitative case-study approach, with data from fieldwork interviews, observations, and secondary sources analysed by using interpretative methods.

Although multiple types of trust exist concurrently in small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses, it is interpersonal trust on the basis of goodwill and competence that prevails, while contractual trust is weak and marginal. Three patterns of trusting relationships are identified, each of which has both positive and negative effects on entrepreneurship and innovation in family businesses. There is a potential “dark side” of trust, which incurs extra cost and commitment to small- and medium-sized family businesses in their entrepreneurial processes.

Future research with larger sample sizes is suggested to generalise the insights, by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. More empirical work is needed to further clarify the antecedents of trust as a social capital and the potential “dark side” of trust in small- and medium-sized family businesses, particularly across generations.

Family business owner-managers should try to avoid relying on a single type of trust, which may incur extra costs to the entrepreneurial processes. They need to better understand why they trust certain actors in their business and social networks before assigning resources to specific business activities. Policy makers are suggested to recognise the “benefits” of the traditionally family-oriented values and that kinship-based trust is also a relational form of social capital and can produce entrepreneurial outcomes.

The paper critically reviews existing literature on social capital, trust, entrepreneurship, and family business at their point of intersection and identifies gaps and oversights. Drawing on case studies from China, the paper explores different patterns in which trust develops in second-generation small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses and their varying effects on entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to study the dark side of cooperative buyer-seller relationships to improve our knowledge of this phenomenon.

A selective definition of dark side has been adopted, linking it to relationships of a cooperative nature within which one of the two partners assumes an opportunistic behavior. Taking into account this definition, the first part of the paper critically reviews those studies which have analyzed cooperative relations along the supply chain, drawing attention to the formation of a dark side. The second part of the paper re-examines the association between cooperation and opportunism, taking the point of view of the disadvantaged partner and adopting the networking perspective developed by the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group.

The literature review enables one to identify two types of dark side. In the first case, the partner at a disadvantage is aware of what is going on, but remains trapped in the relationship because of a power imbalance and a strong dependence. In the second case, the relationship is spoilt by one partner keeping a secret from the other, exploiting an information asymmetry. The main constructs of the IMP approach have made possible to shed light on the two different types of dark side – trap and secret – that were examined from the perspective of the disadvantaged partner.

The analysis of the disadvantaged partner has made it possible to understand what strategies he can use to prevent or mitigate such a disadvantaged position.

The paper develops an original view of the phenomenon of dark side in cooperative relationships.

Failure as an integral part of the entrepreneurial process has recently become a hot topic. The purpose of this paper is to review this debate as expressed both in research on entrepreneurship and in the public discourse, in order to understand what kind of failure is being incorporated into the entrepreneurship discourse and what is being repressed.

The research design is twofold: an empirical investigation modelled as a discourse analysis is followed by a psychoanalytically inspired deconstruction of the identified hegemony. Where the discourse analysis treats what is omitted, the purpose of the psychoanalytic analysis is to point out more concretely what is being repressed from the hegemonic discourses that the first part of the paper identified.

The paper identifies a discursive shift from focusing on entrepreneurial success while at the same time negating failure, to embracing failure as a “learning experience”. Second, we trace this “fail better”-movement and identify a distinction between the “good failure” from which the entrepreneur learns, and the “bad failure” which may also imply a moral breakdown. Finally, the paper attempts to deconstruct this discourse deploying Kristeva's idea of the abject. The paper argues that the entrepreneurship discourse seeks closure through abjecting its own, real kernel, namely: the everyday, common, entrepreneurial failure. This image comprises the abject of entrepreneurship, and abject which does becomes visible, however, rarely: Bernie Madoff, Jeff Skilling, Stein Bagger.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the darker and unwanted sides of entrepreneurship and extends our understanding of failure in entrepreneurial processes.