Public entrepreneurial opportunities: How institutional logics shape public servants' opportunity evaluation

Abstract

Which entrepreneurial opportunities do public servants find appealing, and what influences their evaluation? Our investigation of 14 Norwegian municipal entrepreneurial projects indicates that public servants positively assess the attractiveness of welfare, economic, and participatory opportunities. Their evaluations are shaped by public sector logics. Our contribution is twofold: first, we connect the discourse on entrepreneurial opportunities with that of institutional logics, demonstrating that evaluations of public entrepreneurial opportunities depend on the presence and hierarchy of state, market, and community logics. This underscores the limited yet meaningful agency of public servants in these evaluations. Second, we illuminate underexplored public entrepreneurial opportunities by proposing a taxonomy that categorizes them based on the interplay of state, market, and community logics.