Organisational inertia for positive social change: Theory and Evidence from a Housing Association

In a time when the global economy continues to stutter, social justice and climate change mitigation simultaneously increase in urgency and complexity. In this context,existing organisations are put under pressure to display sustainable entrepreneurial behaviour,transforming their strategy to meet new social and environmental goals. This paper analyses the process of sustainable entrepreneurship in the context of existing hybrid organisations. We conducted extensive fieldwork at a Dutch housing association in transition. The case organisation set an ambitious climate mitigation target to be achieved by 2030 inducing a chain of organisational changes. At the same time, the strategy department is also dealing with a number of social challenges, among which a worrying increase of poverty, an ageing target group, and a rising refugees’ requests for housing. We offer a set of new propositions to underpin the mechanism fostering and contrasting the sustainable entrepreneurship process. One key finding is that some of the mechanisms that fuel organisational inertia in its conventional (negative)connotation, might be the ones enabling positive long-term social and environmental change.