Detecting Light Amid Dark: A Veblenian Refinement of Dark-Light Entrepreneurship Theory

Among the critical perspectives emerging in the entrepreneurship literature, dark-light theory presents as consistent with the normative principles of original institutional economics—entrepreneurial behavior has light or beneficial consequences as well as dark or detrimental consequences. This article seeks to refine the incipient dark-light theory with the preconceptions and normative principles of Veblenian institutional economics and, in so doing, not only introduce institutionalists to a promising line of inquiry and enhance the dark-light theory, but also provide direction towards establishing a Veblenian theory of entrepreneurship. By defining entrepreneurship broadly as purposeful behavior aimed at altering or disrupting the unfolding patterns of production and distribution, the current article does not interrogate the source or determinants of entrepreneurial agency, but rather focuses on the social valuation process that govern such agency and warranted standards of judgment for assessing the consequences of it. By examining the practice of entrepreneurship occurring within the existent socioeconomic valuation processes that incentivize wasteful undertakings, the conditions for and characteristics of non-invidious and serviceable creative endeavors can be illuminated.