The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: Crime, Ethics, and Counterstrategies

This seminar explores the dark side of entrepreneurship by analyzing cases in which entrepreneurial ventures crossed ethical or legal boundaries. Students will investigate how entrepreneurs can mobilize resources, build legitimacy, and scale businesses while engaging in deceptive, manipulative, or outright criminal behavior. By applying established entrepreneurship frameworks, such as opportunity recognition, resource acquisition, entrepreneurial identity, and institutional work, students will critically analyze these cases and develop counterstrategies for prevention. Working in teams, students choose one real-world case to examine in depth. Examples could include: - Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos): Leveraging narrative and social capital to legitimize a non- functional product. - Travis Kalanick (Uber): Using aggressive market entry strategies to circumvent regulation and establish first-mover advantage. - Adam Neumann (WeWork): Vision-driven entrepreneurial storytelling masking governance and financial mismanagement. - Anna Sorokin (Delvey): Constructing an entrepreneurial identity to gain access to elite networks and capital without a viable venture. The seminar enables students to explore instructive examples of how entrepreneurial activity can interact with and at times exploit societal blind spots, such as regulatory gaps, cultural narratives of success, or the celebration of disruptive innovation. In their final presentations, students propose prevention or intervention strategies, drawing on insights from frameworks from entrepreneurship theory, business ethics, and policy-making to address the societal conditions that enable unethical ventures to thrive.

After successful participation, students are able to: 1. Identify and analyze cases of unethical or criminal entrepreneurial behavior based on publicly available materials (e.g., media reports, documentaries). 2. Critically assess the structural, individual, and contextual factors that enabled the misconduct. 3. Reflect on the ethical dimensions of entrepreneurial decision-making and business model design. 4. Develop and justify potential counterstrategies or prevention measures at different levels (e.g., policy, law enforcement, education, organizational culture). 5. Work effectively in teams to synthesize diverse materials and viewpoints into a coherent analysis. 6. Communicate findings effectively in an oral presentation 7. Engage constructively in academic discussions on entrepreneurship and ethics.

The final examination for this module consists of an oral group presentation (100% of the final grade). Each team selects a case of an entrepreneur whose actions are considered unethical or criminal. Based on publicly available sources such as journalistic articles, podcasts, or documentaries, students will investigate the individual’s background, business model, and operating context. Building on this analysis, students will develop prevention strategies and/or policy measures that could have addressed or mitigated the misconduct. Each team will present their case and recommendations in a presentation of approximately 10 minutes, followed by a 10-minute discussion session with the audience. All team members need to actively participate in both the presentation and the discussion to ensure that individual contributions are identifiable and can be assessed accordingly. The final presentation serves to assess students' ability to critically evaluate unethical entrepreneurial behavior, analyze the structural or contextual conditions enabling such behavior, and formulate well-reasoned counterstrategies. In addition, the presentation evaluates students’ ability to communicate their findings clearly and to engage in critical academic discourse with their peers.

English language skills (fluent); interest in reflecting about the topic of ethics in entrepreneurship; willingness to work in teams

The seminar combines guided theoretical input with student-led research and case analysis. Teaching methods include: - Introductory sessions to present key frameworks from entrepreneurship literature and ethics and to introduce the seminar structure. - Team-based case research, where students investigate a real-world example of unethical or criminal entrepreneurship, using media sources, documentaries, and public records. - Workshops at key milestones to support the identification of cases and frameworks, analytical thinking, and strategy development. - Peer discussion and reflection rounds to exchange perspectives across cases and refine ethical and theoretical understanding. - Final group presentations, where students present their case analysis and proposed counterstrategies, followed by class-wide discussion