Entrepreneurship has long been acknowledged as a means of generating economic rewards for those involved in it. As the notion of sustainable development has emerged as a critical problem impacting the existing system, it has been suggested that it should not be limited to the generation of money alone. The field of sustainable enterprise (SE) has received a lot of academic interest in the previous 10 years. The SE literature is becoming more difficult to explore because of its fast growth and interdisciplinary nature. Because of the growth of research, there is a lack of a theoretical framework; thus, this area must be investigated, structured, and synthesised to offer clarity. The goal of this study is to give a bibliometric analysis of the field's current state. The study is conducted on a sample of 352 articles published during 2002-2022. This study's results may help both novice and experienced sustainable entrepreneurship scholars by providing a comprehensive overview of the field's development and present state.
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Economists and policymakers have always supported the promotion of entrepreneurship to boost economic growth. Past research has also proved a significant impact of entrepreneurship on the performance of macroeconomic indicators of a country (Atems and Shand 2018). However, past researchers also documented some contradictory findings where entrepreneurship is detrimental to macroeconomic indicators under given economic scenarios (Andersson and Noseleit 2011). The intricate link between entrepreneurship and economic development may provide a rationale for these contradicting findings. In the first published findings of entrepreneurship's macroeconomic effect, characteristics such as industry affiliation (Fritsch 1996), nation development level (Carree et al. 2002), and the density of local firm owners were shown to be relevant. On the other hand, some new businesses, like those that are very innovative or have high growth expectations, only make money and start the “creative destruction” process defined by Schumpeter (Szerb et al. 2018).
Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been examined, evaluated, and applied to develop a kind of self-employment that can generate economic advantages (Segal et al., 2005) or as one of the means to create job opportunities (Sarango-Lalangui et al., 2018). It means that entrepreneurial activity has been studied from an economic development perspective (Kirzner, 1973), but societal and environmental concerns have been neglected (Sarango-Lalangui et al., 2018). With more entrepreneurship datasets available, researchers found that this is true. However, over the last decade, scientists have explored a wide range of pertinent indicators (e.g., new firm longevity rates, structural and institutional contexts, and the entrepreneur's possible motives and academic credentials), resulting in an increasingly complex web of interconnected determinants surrounding the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship.
However, the increasing attention being paid to environmental issues by governments, non-governmental organisations, researchers, and businesses (Aghelie et al., 2016), as well as the emergence of the concept of sustainable development (Kerlin, 2006), have led several academics to assert that entrepreneurship should not be based solely on the generation of profits. According to the findings of this research, entrepreneurship should be focused on activities that have commercial, social, and environmental goals and that are responsive to the demands and requirements of today's economic environment (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011). Additionally, according to the second study results (Shepherd and Patzelt, 2011), entrepreneurs who want to construct a profitable company that also contributes to development must include and adopt sustainable practices or non-economic advantages into their business strategy (Urbaniec, 2018). According to some analysts, entrepreneurship may also guide economic sectors toward long-term development (Shepherd and Patzelt, 2011).