Creating economic, social, and environmental change through entrepreneurship: An entrepreneurial autonomy perspective informed by Paulo Freire

Abstract

We extend to the context of entrepreneurship Paulo Freire's concepts including “limit-situation” representing constraints to be surpassed, such as inequalities or crises, “untested feasibility” representing a new vision based on awareness that a given reality can be altered, and “limit-acts” representing actions to change reality. In our abductive analysis, we focus on Brazilian women technology entrepreneurs as individuals transcending barriers such as gender inequality. Our entrepreneurial autonomy perspective represents a process in which individuals (1) identify economic, social, and/or environmental issues that they can improve via entrepreneurship, (2) develop a new vision that articulates better economic, social, and/or environmental conditions, and (3) take actions to enhance these conditions and benefit diverse stakeholders by creating a nonprofit or for-profit enterprise. We provide future directions for the integration of Freire's concepts and the entrepreneurial autonomy perspective in research, and offer our entrepreneurial autonomy worksheet for educators to empower individuals to develop ideas of socially responsible new ventures that create value for diverse stakeholders.