Exploring policy entrepreneurs' modes of action: Positioning, networking, outmaneuvering, and worldmaking

Abstract

Policy entrepreneurs interact with their wider social environment to create social and policy change. To understand entrepreneurial behavior in this context, adopting multi-level approaches becomes increasingly important. They are crucial to explaining the interdependencies of individual entrepreneurs, immediate stakeholders (such as team members), and their wider context. Scholars focus on specific links, such as those between entrepreneurs and their local community. Very few papers have to date take a holistic approach, even though studying how entrepreneurs interact with multiple levels of stakeholders over time has the potential to better explain entrepreneurial processes. By following a qualitative research approach using two case studies of policy entrepreneurs in Bolivia and Germany, we show that policy entrepreneurs employ different modes of action over time when interacting with their immediate and wider contexts in attempting to foster policy change. Our results suggest that they co-create with policymakers in order to shape their ecosystems and society at large.