1.
INTRODUCTION:
Entrepreneurship is the wider area of research for
researchers from many years. Traditionally, researchers has been linked it to
wealth creation and economic development. Subsequently, this entrepreneurial
research has gone through a process of development throughout the years. Many
fields of entrepreneurship have emerged; for instance, one of them is green
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are now making changes in their ways of doing
business so as to address the society’s new concerns. They are called green
entrepreneurs and are being called upon to take leading roles for sustainable
development through green entrepreneurship (Porritt and Winner, 1988), creating
wealth and meet the current generation needs while saving the environment for
future (Daft, 2008). The increasing challenges, governments are also seeking
more novel ways to promote economic activity and enhance sustainability by
moving towards “greening” economic activities. Green entrepreneurs undertake new
business opportunities or activities that differentiate them from the
traditional entrepreneur.
This shift in the business
architecture provides diverse and number of alcove that the prospective
entrepreneurs and existing firms can diagnose and service. There lies an
unexplored spectrum of opportunities for entrepreneurs by adopting “eco-business
practices” or “green practices”. Entrepreneurs in adoption of green practices
act as a ‘pull’ strategy to attract and motivate former firms to go green,
compare to the ‘push’ factors of government environmental guideline. Green
practices activities involved reducing, reusing and recycling of resources as
they are related to products or processes for economic, environmental and social
sustainability. Moreover, Ambec and Lanoie (2008) said that the costs or risk
can be reduce or create differentiation from competitors by adopting green
practices. Thus, green practices have become more relevant in everyday life. The
importance of green practices can not only be justified as it provides new
opportunities for the budding entrepreneurs but also because it acts as a
primary force in the overall transition of market dynamics. Therefore, using
green practices in start-ups can push the overall process of sustainable
reformation of any industry or business.
In the recent studies, it has
been seen that firms have only recently begun generating strong research and
policy interest for green practices (Shepherd et.al, 2009). The concept for
green practices to the students or budding entrepreneurs is at the infancy
stage. Thus, green practices is important among the future techno-managers and
budding entrepreneurs as they are the one who are going to govern the dynamics
of future market. Because of the relative newness of green entrepreneurship and
sustainability in the entrepreneurship literature in Indian context, the amount
of systematic, research-based knowledge about them is limited. Therefore, in
this paper we aim to contribute a brief overview of literature which discusses
green entrepreneurship and a detailed descriptive analysis of the awareness
about green practices among the students and entrepreneurs in India. Thus, this
research intends to identify the concern of students and entrepreneurs towards
the awareness about the green practices among them.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW :
Although researchers traditionally define
entrepreneurship as a field primarily concerned with wealth generation and
economic growth (Majid, 2012), it has gone through different stages of
development. As stated by Parrish (2010) entrepreneurial action can help
alleviate these environmental and social predicaments, which gave rise to the
concept of sustainable development (Shepherd and Patzelt, 2011). Abidin (2010)
said that to increase the awareness on environment and sustainable development
various actions had been taken place. In line with this description, several
different terms have been used by researchers while analysing the environment
and entrepreneurship. Commonly used terms are green entrepreneurship (Berle,
1991), ecopreneurship (Schaper, 2002a), eco-entrepreneurship (Schaper, 2002b)
and environmental entrepreneurship (Keogh and Polonsky, 1998). Schaper (2005)
argues that these terms capture the same concept and may be used
interchangeably. As explained in the previous subsection, sustainable
entrepreneurship (Dean and McMullen, 2007) describes a somewhat different
phenomenon and needs to be differentiated from these terms. Hence, in line with
Schaper (2005), this paper assumes that the four terms mentioned above are
interchangeable. In accordance with the latter and for the sake of clarity and
readability, this paper will state any of these terms solely as green
entrepreneurship.
As diverse as the terminology
used by researchers to name the phenomenon, so are the definitions of green
entrepreneurship they advance. These definitions may be classified according to
the dimensions of green entrepreneurship to which they relate. For example,
Isaak (1998) defines green entrepreneurship as breakthrough innovation which can
transform system and environmental business, while focusing on the distinctive
organisational characteristics of the venture and emphasises an environmental
purpose of the latter. Researchers have also focused on the process involved in
green entrepreneurship when the economic opportunities are exploited from market
failures significant to environment (Dean and McMullen, 2007). Correspondingly,
Kotchen (2009) suggests that green entrepreneurship as starting new businesses
to earn a profit and provide environmental sustainability. Lastly, there exist
definitions who relate more to the dimension of environmental outcomes that
green entrepreneurs aim for. For example, a rather broad definition is advanced
by Anderson and Leal (1997) who define green entrepreneurship in context of
entrepreneurs as they are engaged in conserving the open space, growing wildlife
habitation, saving endangered species, and improving quality of environment
using business tools. Looking at these definitions it can be noted that
researchers still seem to struggle with capturing the phenomenon of green
entrepreneurship. This can be substantiated by the fact that to date there
exists no generally accepted definition of green entrepreneurship (Hall et
al.,2010).
Further, from the review of past
researchers it has been seen that firms have recently begun generating strong
research and policy interest for green practices (Shepherd et al., 2009). In
earlier research, the concept of greening has been measured as performance of
business ecologically while meeting the stockholders’ expectations (Gupta,
1995). Similarly, Shrivastava (1995b) incorporates the concept as a tool called
“environment management” to robust social as well as environmental system. In
the similar vein, Gupta and Sharma (1996) define green practices as management
principles where natural resources are converted into better outputs or
environmentally friendly product. This transition occurred not only for
generating financial performance and returns owing to a greater popularity and
demand towards sustainable products and services offerings by them, but also for
their intent to curtail environmental impacts and respect the protocols laid by
the environmental regulatory boards. Additionally at the core of the green
entrepreneurship literature, the traditional notions and use of large firm tools
together with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and triple bottom line as
measurement acts as green concept and measure how it affects firm performance.
In a simple way, it has been seen that the motivations for adapting green
practices was taken in context of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Hussain,
1999; Tzschentke et al., 2004). However, the use of these tools may not be
appropriate in all contexts: young and nascent firms face dissimilar business
environments and experience multiple constraints during firm development
(Shepherd et al., 2005).
We considered that the adoption of environment
friendly business models can, conceivably, open up better avenues for budding
entrepreneurs. Decision makers must recognize the benefits of green practices or
policies and the necessity for developing green models. But, there is lack of
awareness of environmental legislation or green practices among the new firms.
Stuart (2000) identified that the environmental legislation complexities further
confuse matters and deter business from fully grasping the implications of green
practices. Thus the aim of the present study was to assess the awareness
regarding the green practices among students and entrepreneurs to make relevant
suggestions.
3.
METHODOLOGY :
A small structured questionnaire was
developed to collect the data. It was mainly focused to collect the level of
knowledge and information among students and entrepreneurs regarding their
awareness on green practices and belief regarding green start-ups. The
questionnaire was constructed with close-ended questions.
Table
1: Target Sample Size
|
S.N
|
Description
|
Sample Size
|
|
1
|
Students
|
50
|
|
2
|
Entrepreneurs
|
50
|
3.1 Questionnaire
Development
Questionnaire
here is a systematic and standardized instrument for collecting data to measure
response to the same set of questions presented in the same way to all target
audience. The format has been designed to obtained responses on scales like
High (H), Moderate (M), and Low (L), yielding meaningful numerical scores.
3.2 Methodology of
Survey and Research
A sampling
survey method has been adopted to sample the target audience to bring out the
overall conclusion.
3.3 Data Collection
Method
Total
response to effectiveness of awareness factor was measured on a three pointer
scale.
High (H) – Above 2.2
Moderate (M) - Between1.9-2.2
Low (L) – Less than 1.9
4.
Analysis and Interpretation of Data (Profile of Respondent and Data Discussion) :
4.1 Weighted Mean: To analyze the weighted mean of the responses from the respondent each of
the questions in the questionnaire is tabulated like below:
Weighted Mean
(
4.2 Concept Awareness
Aspect
5.
FINDINGS:
Based on the analysis of the data
collected from 100 respondents, students and entrepreneurs together using a
questionnaire instrument, this study identified
that awareness is an important process on the use of green practices by student
and entrepreneurs but tends to be low among them. The non awareness of green
practices led low interest in the concept origin. In addition to that,
understanding the definition of green practice is also less in entrepreneurs
rather than students. Whereas, the day-to-day green practice concept repetition
is higher in students than entrepreneurs. The study has also shown that in
Indian context, the scope of green practice concept adoption has been seen
higher among entrepreneurs, and can be improvised more only once proper
information is channelized along with the technology innovation building a successful
work culture as shown in Table 3. Furthermore, the importance of green practice
concept education in Indian scenario is affirmably supported by entrepreneurs
and concluded that green practice can leads to sustainable economic model for
industry.
6.
Recommendations:
Based
on these findings, the following recommendations are proposed:
·
There is a need for educational programmes/training courses
for students and entrepreneurs on green practices so as to be more familiar
with green entrepreneurship and can be put forward from the initial stage of
learning among the students.
·
There is a need for additional persons to lay more emphasis
on green practices in such a way that it increases the practice reliability and
benefits.
·
There is a need for more publicity on green practices which
should be done mostly on radio and television so as to create more awareness
among the people.
·
Global and domestic players should bring certain changes in
their ideas of implementation by increasing the cultural and traditional
approach.
·
A dedicated websites containing all the major beneficial
attributes of green practices can also be advertised and linked to major
government websites, email services websites and social networking sites.
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and
and n=10
= 0.8108