Abstract
The current development of energy management services is stimulated by a series of factors that are both external and industry-specific. One important external factor is the pressure coming from legal provisions in favour of sustainable development. This qualitative, descriptive research is focused on an international group with a strategic orientation to sustainability. The aim is to analyse the strategic changes of several group members over a period of 15 years (2004–2019) in order to identify their entrepreneurial behaviour (EB), contributing to scarce literature on EB of sustainability-oriented SMEs—medium-sized enterprises, in particular. The methodological approach included both secondary and primary research (direct observation and in-house interviews). The results match the research objectives and research questions in that they are able to identify different types and degrees of enterprise EB (EEB). The findings demonstrated here support a proposed finer EEB typology: independent EEB and induced EEB. Besides the natural limitations of the research (only comprising companies of a group and single industry), the main limitation of the study is its pre-pandemic characteristic, which is also a challenging research opportunity for further post-pandemic studies on EEB. The promising results of this exploratory research on EEB and novel EEB typology proposed should also be tested in more industries. The research results are useful for scholars, company managers, and entrepreneurs as well as for strategists involved in designing sustainable development policies.
Highlights
IntroductionPublished: 15 November 2021The development of services in the energy management sector is currently stimulated by a series of factors both industry-specific (as advance of the newer metering technologies) and external influences
Published: 15 November 2021The development of services in the energy management sector is currently stimulated by a series of factors both industry-specific and external influences
The aim is to analyse the strategic changes of several companies with relative homogeneity that are active in the same industry and in the same market (EU) and that are medium-sized companies of the same age in order to identify their entrepreneurial behaviour (EB) as defined by Howard Stevenson’s approach
Summary
Published: 15 November 2021The development of services in the energy management sector is currently stimulated by a series of factors both industry-specific (as advance of the newer metering technologies) and external influences. While many companies see the legal provisions targeting a cleaner environment in the future as a source of new operational problems and costly investments, other companies, many of whom have predicted the changes brought by newer technologies, have already considered in their strategies and have considered cleaner technologies in their investment plans. This qualitative, descriptive research is focused on an international group that is active in the energy metering sector, with a strategic orientation to sustainability—according to its mission (posted on its website)—for the orientation of its line of products and services. The group is headquartered in Europe and owns companies in more than twenty countries spread over two continents (Europe and Asia), yet most of the offices are in Europe
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