From flashlight to spotlight: Illuminating gray shadows that shape entrepreneurship’s dark sides

Research on entrepreneurship has predominantly focused on its positive dimensions, overlooking the complex dynamics that lead to harmful or unethical outcomes. This special issue advances our understanding of entrepreneurship’s dark sides by introducing the “entrepreneurial fulcrum” model, which conceptualizes entrepreneurial activities as existing in a precarious balance between light and dark manifestations. Moving beyond simplistic characterizations of entrepreneurs or ventures as inherently good or bad, we illuminate how various contextual forces—institutional environments, regulatory systems, financial incentives, and legitimacy-building strategies—can tip entrepreneurial activities toward either constructive or destructive outcomes. The five papers in this special issue examine these contingent factors across multiple levels, from formal and informal institutions to individual entrepreneur behaviors, revealing entrepreneurship as neither inherently light nor dark, but rather existing in dynamic equilibrium. By spotlighting these systemic and interactive influences, we challenge prevailing assumptions and provide a foundation for research that considers not only the diagnosis of dark side manifestations but also potential remedies and transformative pathways.