Entrepreneurial Capital and Sustainable Value Creation: Advancing an Eight‑Capital Model, Definitions, and an Empirical Validation Agenda

Abstract

The resources underpinning entrepreneurship continue to be theorised in largely separate disciplinary traditions. Sociological accounts emphasise processes of cultural and social reproduction, strategic management focuses on valuable, rare, and inimitable resources, while development studies frame livelihoods as portfolios of capital assets. In parallel, sustainability practice has increasingly operationalised value creation through multi-capital lenses embedded within ESG governance and disclosure regimes. Taken together, these perspectives offer partial insights, but their fragmentation limits theoretical integration and slows the accumulation of comparable empirical evidence.
This paper brings these strands together through the development of an Eight-Capital Entrepreneurial Capital Model (ECM), incorporating cultural, experiential (human), financial, intellectual, manufactured, natural, social, and spiritual capital within a single framework. Entrepreneurial capital is conceptualised as a multidimensional and dynamic resource system, consistent with work on sustainable livelihoods and capital portfolios. Within this framework, entrepreneurial outcomes—including opportunity recognition, resource mobilisation, innovation, resilience, and sustainability performance—are understood to depend both on the configuration of capital endowments and on the capacity to orchestrate, reconfigure, and legitimise these resources over time.
The paper proceeds by developing theory-informed propositions that link individual and interacting forms of capital to key outcomes, alongside an integrative mechanism in which resource orchestration and dynamic capabilities mediate the translation of capital into performance. To support empirical application, operational definitions are provided, together with indicative measurement constructs and survey items. A staged research agenda is also outlined, combining qualitative exploration, scale development, cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, and mixed-method approaches.
The ECM can be theoretically aligned with multi-capital approaches embedded within ESG and integrated reporting frameworks, particularly those advanced by the International Integrated Reporting Council. These frameworks conceptualise value creation as a function of multiple interacting capital stocks, including financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social, and natural capital.
The ECM extends this perspective by incorporating cultural and spiritual capital, thereby addressing behavioural, normative, and ethical dimensions of entrepreneurial activity that are not fully captured in existing ESG models. In doing so, it provides a more comprehensive account of how entrepreneurial ventures create, sustain, and legitimate value within increasingly regulated and sustainability-oriented environments.