How Do Entrepreneurs Make Sense of and Respond to Sustainability Tensions? Insights From Sustainability‐driven Enterprises

Abstract Sustainability tensions in business have increasingly received attention in prior literature; yet, there is still a dearth of studies on how entrepreneurs in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises – and more specifically in sustainability‐driven enterprises – navigate these tensions. Building on the process orientation strand of the entrepreneurial cognition literature, we examine how sustainability‐driven entrepreneurs address sustainability tensions by using Weick's stages of the sensemaking process as an analytical lens. Undertaking a qualitative study of sustainability‐driven ventures, we identify two distinct strategies for managing tensions. Firstly, entrepreneurs employ linear sensemaking when dealing with straightforward sustainability tensions, utilizing clear and focussed strategies. Secondly, entrepreneurs engage in elaborate, open‐ended sensemaking for more ambiguous tensions, which requires more time and cognitive effort. These strategies consist of different patterns of scanning, interpreting and learning, highlighting the varied approaches entrepreneurs take to navigate sustainability tensions. As our theoretical contribution, we offer a finely grained process perspective to explain how the various combinations of the stages of the sensemaking process work together (or not) to create more aggregate cognitive concepts, like entrepreneurial motivation. We conclude by drawing out implications of our research for leveraging entrepreneurial decision‐making in the context of the considerable uncertainty that sustainability entails.