In this article, we revisit the relationship between ethics and entrepreneurship. Research on the ethics of entrepreneurship has largely centered around binary distinctions such as normative versus descriptive, intrinsic versus extrinsic, and retrospective versus prospective approaches. These distinctions have been used alternatively to understand how entrepreneurs act or how they should act, whether new ventures have inherent worth or are merely valuable because of their contribution to society, and to contrast normative judgments made after the fact with their use to envision desirable futures. To chart these binaries, and suggest ways of transcending them, we engage with the literature on ethics and entrepreneurship from three perspectives: the personal question ‘Who is an (un)ethical entrepreneur?”: the organizational question ‘What constitutes an (un)ethical opportunity?’, and the societal question ‘When is it ethical to break rules in entrepreneurship?’ In answering these questions, we suggest a more complex interrelationship between ethics and entrepreneurship.
