1118097

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BRQ0010.1177/23409444221118097Business Research QuarterlyGallo et al.

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Business Research Quarterly

Business for peace: How entrepreneuring 2023, Vol. 26(1) 62­–78

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DOI: 10.1177/23409444221118097

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Peter Jack Gallo1 , Santiago Sosa2 and Andres Velez-Calle3

Abstract
We examine entrepreneurial ventures in a post-conflict context to identify practices that are helpful for companies
operating in conflict zones while contributing to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16)—Peace,
Justice, and Strong Institutions. Using emancipatory entrepreneuring as our theoretical lens, we analyze entrepreneurial
ventures where ex-combatants seek to create economic opportunities and challenge the status quo of violence, poverty,
and inequality in their rural communities. We develop four qualitative case studies of ex-combatant entrepreneurship to
identify the activities that enable them to grow their businesses while promoting peace. We identify actor distance and
entrepreneurial stage as key dimensions for defining a matrix of relationship arrangements that facilitate venture success
and peacebuilding efforts. We conclude with a summary of our contributions and implications for research and practice.
JEL Classifications: D63, D74, H56, L14, L26

Keywords
Business for peace, extreme context, entrepreneurship, emancipatory entrepreneuring, SDG 16

Introduction development, jobs to populations affected by conflict,

This article focuses on entrepreneurial practices in extreme
contexts that allow ventures to prosper while contributing
to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16—Peace,
Justice, and Strong Institutions. This SDG states that soci-
eties must strive to end violent conflict, strengthen insti-
tutions at all levels, and promote inclusiveness and
justice (United Nations, 2015). These issues are relevant
to private enterprises in all countries, not just those oper-
ating in war-torn regions, because all societies experi-
ence some degree of these challenges. SDG 16 has been
identified as an enabler of the other SDGs1 (Sachs et al.,
2019) since peace and the rule of law are prerequisites of
a stable society and, thus, economic development (North,
1990; Robinson & Acemoglu, 2012). Moreover, peace-
building and development cannot be top-down processes
but rather must be bottom-up and local (Autesserre,
2021; Christensen et al., 2019) and must draw on a broad
range of actors and interest groups (Melin, 2016).
Therefore, the private sector can have a fundamental
role to play by providing resources for peace and
and legitimacy to peace processes (Rettberg, 2020).
Although SDGs are receiving a great deal of attention
(e.g., Rosati & Faria, 2019), SDG16 is often neglected:
less than 1% of firms that joined the UN Global Compact
(UNGC) explicitly tackle SDG 16 in their sustainability
strategy (Reade, McKenna, & Oetzel, 2019). Moreover,
B-Lab’s B Impact Assessment (BIA) database (B Lab &
United Nations Global Compact, 2020) shows that not a
single firm answered any of the seven questions regarding
1
 epartment of Marketing and Management, Heider College of
D
Business, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA
2
International Business Department, School of Management,
Universidad EAFIT, Medellin, Colombia
3
International Business Department, School of Management,
Universidad EAFIT, Medellin, Colombia
Corresponding author:
Peter Jack Gallo, Department of Marketing and Management, Heider
College of Business, Creighton University, 2500 California Plaza,
Omaha, NE 68178, USA.
Email: petergallo@creighton.edu

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Gallo et al. 63
peacebuilding activities and human rights in their survey.
In fact, 40% of respondents answered only one question
out of the 40 related to this SDG. In addition, few studies
directly address SDG 16. They focus mainly on multina-
tionals (MNCs) lobbying and public/private partnerships
to achieve various SDG 16 targets and not on how a firm’s
everyday business activities can lead to peace (e.g., Silva,
2021). Indeed, the problem is that we do not know much
about which practices may help firms prosper in challeng-
ing contexts like (post)conflict zones.
In this article, we study four ex-combatant entrepreneur-
ial ventures in a post-conflict zone to identify which prac-
tices are useful for companies operating in a disrupted
context—unique and unprecedented events external to the
firms (Hällgren et al., 2018). Post-conflict transitions are
highly challenging contexts where extreme violence and
injustice are common. In the transition to peace, rebels must
not only disarm and demobilize but also return to civilian
life, reintegrate into society and participate in the legal econ-
omy. The difficulty of this undertaking is increased by the
fact that ex-combatants are highly stigmatized (McMullin,
2013). To overcome these challenges, some ex-combatants
have pursued entrepreneurship to reintegrate into their
country’s social and economic life. The success of these ex-
combatant ventures will have a de facto contribution to
peace by virtue of reducing recidivism.
Applying the lens of entrepreneurship as emancipation,
which views entrepreneurial activities not only as profit
generators but creators of positive social change and lib-
erators from the status quo (Rindova et al., 2009), we rec-
ognize that these ex-combatant entrepreneurs use their
ventures not only to reintegrate economically but also to
repair the social fabric damaged during the conflict. This
lens highlights three dimensions of emancipation: auton-
omy seeking (breaking free of constraints), authoring
(defining new relations and rules for positive change), and
making declarations (communicating emancipatory
intent). We build upon recent work which relates this lens
to peace and conflict: entrepreneuring can help rehabilitate
former religious terrorists (Chandra, 2017), and overcome
the stigma of refugees (Adeeko & Treanor, 2022) and ex-
combatants by crossing social boundaries (Fajardo et al.,
2019), among others.
Our contribution is threefold. First, we develop a matrix
of actor engagement that shows useful practices for com-
panies operating in (post)conflict zones, which also sheds
light on the study of peacebuilding entrepreneurship, that
is, inclusive and value-creating practices (Fort, 2016;
Joseph & Van Buren, 2021). Understanding how ex-com-
batant ventures build relationships with different actors
and acquire, allocate and distribute resources to be eco-
nomically viable can help us guide firms operating in dif-
ficult contexts while building peace (emancipate
ex-combatants and their victims). Second, our framework
allows for furthering emancipatory entrepreneuring since
we provide more formal constructs to study and further
develop this theoretical lens and better understand the
autonomy seeking, authoring, and making declarations
dimensions. Finally, we link the observed firm-level activ-
ities to the targets of SDG 16.
The article is organized as follows. The second section
presents a brief overview of the literature that addresses
businesses and SDG 16 (directly and indirectly). The third
section develops the emancipatory entrepreneuring lens.
The fourth section discusses the context of our research
setting, sample, methodology, and sample case studies.
The fifth section presents our results and analysis of the
characteristics of the emerging ventures and their pro-
cesses, practices, and activities. We continue with a discus-
sion of the findings, limitations, and implications of the
study in the sixth section. Finally, we present our
conclusions.
Literature background
Business, SDG 16, and peacebuilding: from
MNCs to entrepreneurship
Studies on business and SDGs have focused primarily on
understanding how firms, especially MNCs, tackle the
social and environmental SDGs such as climate change
or poverty alleviation while overlooking governance-
focused issues like those under SDG 16 (Reade et al.,
2019). Such research focuses on studying firm-level
actions addressing environmental and social impacts but
less on how firms can tackle the institutional-level sus-
tainability challenges of governance, democracy, and
civil society. Since many of the targets of SDG 16 are
outside the scope of firms’ operational reach, such as tar-
get 16.9—By 2030, provide legal identity for all, includ-
ing birth registration—(United Nations, 2015), firms
and researchers may have the impression that the private
sector cannot directly contribute to this SDG (Van
Zanten & Van Tulder, 2018).
The focus of firms and researchers on environmental
and social sustainability issues reflects the somewhat
inconsistent makeup of the SDGs. Some SDGs define a
clear set of problems and targets that are more accessible
to traditional managerial action. In contrast, others focus
on socially complex and institutionally interconnected
challenges, which seem beyond the conventional reach of
a single firm’s management decisions since they require
complex cross-sector and stakeholder partnerships (Van
Tulder & Keen, 2018). This bias toward tangible SDG tar-
gets exists despite arguments that the socially complex
SDGs are more crucial to sustainable development. For
example, SDG 16 is acknowledged as both essential to
achieving other SDGs (Sachs et al., 2019), since peace is
necessary to ensure a healthy and productive society
(Wesley et al., 2016) and, according to the United Nations
64 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
(2020), as the foundation of both sustainability and firm
performance:
The themes of SDG16, peace, justice and strong institutions,
are core to sustainable business—they are the foundation not
only for business responsibilities, but also business success.
However, it can be difficult to understand concretely how
these concepts relate to a business’s strategies, operations and
relationships. (United Nations, 2020)
SDG 16 remains overlooked by businesses and man-
agement researchers since it is seen as external to the
firm. Few studies explicitly look at how firms address
SDG 16. For example, Van Zanten and Van Tulder (2018)
outline a research agenda for engaging MNCs with
SDGs. Their exploratory survey shows that companies
engage more with SDGs that have actionable targets.
Also, Silva (2021) draws on the FTSE 100 list to show
how firms respond to different SDGs and finds only a
handful of companies address SDG 16. Finally, Montiel
et al. (2021) suggest that multinational investment geared
toward reducing harm to social cohesion could not only
have a positive impact on the host country’s SDG agenda
but also reduce negative externalities for the firm and
boost competitiveness.
Beyond these studies explicitly linking firms and SDG
16, both management and political science scholars have
studied how firms, in particular MNCs, fare in conflict
regions or how they contribute to peace. However, these
two research disciplines rarely intersect so there is little
systematic analysis of how firms and other actors seek or
impact peace (Melin, 2016). The business literature has
addressed peace issues on topics such as the effects of
conflict on MNC operations (e.g., Dai et al., 2013), and
MNC responses to conflict and peace accords (e.g.,
Albino-Pimentel et al., 2021; Jallat & Shultz, 2011). This
has been dubbed the peace-through-commerce literature
(Williams, 2008). More recently, the Business for Peace
(B4P) literature presents a paradigm shift in which busi-
nesses are put at the forefront of peacebuilding alongside
public actors, thus changing the balance between public
and private authority and responsibility in ensuring suc-
cessful conflict management and institutional develop-
ment (Schouten & Miklian, 2020). This is reminiscent of
corporate diplomacy, that is, activities in the intersection
of business, politics and society to create value for firms
and stakeholders (Henisz, 2016).
Indeed, the private sector can be fundamental in build-
ing peace by providing resources for peace and develop-
ment, jobs to populations affected by conflict, and
legitimacy to peace processes (Rettberg, 2020). According
to Miklian (2017), there are five ways in which MNCs pro-
mote peace at a grass-roots level: improving the dividends
of peace (economic opportunities), promoting local capa-
bilities development, importing international norms that
encourage accountability, constraining root causes
of conflict (such as poverty and inequality), and even
undertaking diplomatic actions themselves. In other words,
through employment, business-to-business trade, and
stakeholder engagement, among other actions, firms can
impact governance, peace, and justice—either as enablers
or as disablers (Miklian & Medina Bickel, 2020).
Beyond MNC activity, a recent line of research has
focused on peace entrepreneurs (Fort, 2016), that is, firms
that focus on peace within their corporate strategy.
However, as Joseph and Van Buren (2021) point out, busi-
nesses in conflict zones may either build peace or foster
conflict depending on how they make their profits. Indeed,
it is not enough for an entrepreneurial venture to have an
economic impact; it also has to make beyond-business
contributions. To be peacebuilders, entrepreneurs have to
be inclusive and value-creating. In other words, ventures
have to create a shared identity within conflict zones to
promote integration between stakeholders and create soci-
etal value beyond simple profit, like community engage-
ment and above-average working conditions and wages.
To analyze ex-combatant entrepreneurial practices as
peacebuilding, we use the lens of emancipatory entrepre-
neuring, which we turn to in the next section.
Ex-combatant ventures as
emancipatory entrepreneuring
Emancipatory entrepreneuring states that entrepreneurs
are motivated to start new ventures not just for profit-seek-
ing but to emancipate themselves or society from the status
quo (Rindova et al., 2009). It has three dimensions: auton-
omy seeking (breaking free of constraints), authoring
(defining new relations), and making declarations (com-
municating emancipatory intent). We utilize this lens as we
study our sample of entrepreneurial firms to identify how
they contribute to SDG 16. By focusing on the specific
activities inherent in these three dimensions, we hope to
surface firm-specific activities that impact peacebuilding
and SDG 16. In this section, we first explain the three com-
ponents of emancipatory entrepreneuring and then situate
our work within the literature.
Autonomy Seeking refers to the entrepreneur’s efforts
to escape, change, or circumvent perceived constraints in
their economic, political, or social environment (Rindova
et al., 2009). This has also been characterized as seeking
methods and activities to break free from the oppression of
their status quo, in the act of establishing their venture
(Chandra, 2017). Therefore, we should see examples of
specific activities, business models, and firm missions that
address the post-conflict challenges surrounding our ven-
tures. In our sample, the status quo is riddled with con-
straints such as inequality, bias, a history of mistrust, and
competing social philosophies that result from many dec-
ades of violence. Therefore, studying ex-combatant ven-
tures’ autonomy-seeking dimension should shed some
Gallo et al. 65
insights into specific activities or venture decisions that
directly impact SDG 16.
Authoring is the second dimension of the process,
where the entrepreneur seeks to define “relationships,
arrangements, and rules of engagement that preserve and
potentially enhance the change potential of a given entre-
preneuring project” (Rindova et al., 2009, p. 483). The
complexity of the authoring process is dependent on
exactly how far the venture plans to impact or stray from
the institutions of the status quo. In our sample, the very
identity of our entrepreneurs is a significant challenge to
the status quo, let alone the specific products or social
goals of their ventures. Their authoring decisions regard-
ing employees, customers, suppliers, and other actors are
essential to the success of their ventures in surviving and
achieving the emancipatory goals of their founders.
Understanding how these firms engage in bricolage of
their physical, social, and institutional inputs to construct
their resource base and accomplish their organizational
goals (Mair & Marti, 2009) can reveal insights on how
exactly firm-level stakeholder engagement can impact the
broad peacebuilding goals of SDG 16.
The final dimension is Making Declarations, where the
venture telegraphs its contradictions with the norms of the
environment in “an effort to generate stakeholder support
for the intended change in the status quo” (Rindova et al.,
2009, p. 485). But it is uncertain which declarations will
gather support and which may threaten stakeholder rela-
tionships. It may seem that with a goal of peacebuilding
that any declarations would be well received; however, our
firms have a complex history with their communities. Any
declaration by an ex-combatant venture could likely spark
contestations from other economic actors, challenging the
veracity or authenticity of the ventures claims toward
peacebuilding. Studying the declaration choices of our ex-
combatant ventures can provide significant insight into
how firms can promote or advertise their SDG 16 efforts
while maintaining the viability of their business models.
The literature on entrepreneurship as emancipation has
developed into two streams. One stream focuses on the
entrepreneurs’ emancipation from individual constraints
and the second on the broader emancipation of society
from the status quo (Zayadin et al., 2022). In the first, stud-
ies have focused on exploring how entrepreneuring in a
number of traditional industries can liberate entrepreneurs
from the constraints of their identity. This includes free-
dom from gendered constraints for women entrepreneurs
in India (Roy et al., 2021), the stigma of refugee status for
refugee women entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom
(Adeeko & Treanor, 2022), extremist religious ideology
for Indonesian religious-based terrorists (Chandra, 2017),
and identity-based obstacles for reintegrating ex-combat-
ants in Colombia (Fajardo et al., 2019). In addition, this
stream has addressed the emancipation from structural,
cognitive, and emotional constraints of entrepreneurs
operating in a stigmatized industry, that is, the sex industry
(Ruebottom & Toubiana, 2021). The results of the studies
in this first stream include recommending additional
dimensions to the emancipatory entrepreneuring frame-
work (Chandra, 2017), identifying three types (structural,
cognitive, and emotional) of individual emancipation
(Ruebottom & Toubiana, 2021), and evidence that the ben-
efits of emancipation from individual constraints can be
limited if not followed by emancipation of societal con-
straints more broadly (Adeeko & Treanor, 2022; Roy et al.,
2021).
The second stream of the literature addresses the poten-
tial of entrepreneurs to emancipate their society or com-
munity from the constraints of the status quo. A study of
Indigenous-owned small- and medium-sized enterprises in
Canada (Pergelova et al., 2021) operationalizes the main
constructs of the emancipatory entrepreneuring framework
using archival data and identifies linkages across the
dimensions of Autonomy Seeking, Authoring, and Making
Declarations (Rindova et al., 2009). The study finds that
Authoring and Making Declarations practices mediate the
relationship between entrepreneurs’ motivation (whether
seeking individual vs. collective autonomy) and venture
outcomes (Pergelova et al., 2021). Indigenous communi-
ties face unique challenges competing in a socioeconomic
status quo that has historically excluded them and is built
on vastly different cultural principles of property owner-
ship, and this study finds that indigenous entrepreneurs
can create benefits of employment and service to the
broader indigenous community (Pergelova et al., 2021).
Another study focuses on 25 entrepreneurs in Jordan and
how their efforts might emancipate from the “wasta” social
network system that limits access to economic opportuni-
ties (Zayadin et al., 2022). Zayadin et al. (2022) find evi-
dence that these entrepreneurs can emancipate from the
individual constraints imposed by the “wasta” system.
Still, despite pro-entrepreneurial government policy, none
of these entrepreneurs enacted venture practices that pro-
vided emancipation to the broader society.
Both streams of the emerging emancipatory entrepre-
neuring literature address themes and contexts relevant to
our proposed study. The studies include contexts of indig-
enous communities, conflict zones, and terrorism. And
both address themes regarding overcoming stigma, pro-
moting employment, and challenging institutional inequal-
ity. Our study builds on the second stream of the literature
(emancipation from the status quo more broadly) by
exploring firm-level activities of ex-combatant ventures
founded and motivated by the goal of peacebuilding. We
now turn to our research design.
Setting, sample, and methodology
To explore how ex-combatant entrepreneuring ventures can
survive and build peace, we conduct inductive qualitative
66 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
research based on a multiple-case method. This method is
appropriate to explore how and why questions and for the-
ory building (Yin, 2009), in our case building on emancipa-
tory entrepreneuring. To fit and build on this theory, we
chose four ex-combatant entrepreneurial ventures in
Colombia that allow us to identify themes within and across
cases: Cerveza La Roja, Muñecas Ex-combatientes,
Confecciones la Montaña and Café Paramillo. As
Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007) exemplify, we chose these
four cases by first selecting one main case (La Roja) and
then adding three additional cases to increase the analytical
power, as we explain later.
Research setting: ex-combatant
entrepreneurship in Colombian post-conflict
zones
We propose studying the link between business and SDG
16 in an extreme context, such as economic recovery after
a civil war. Our research setting is the ex-combatant entre-
preneurship in post-conflict Colombia, specifically the
ventures of former FARC members, who demobilized in
2016 after signing a peace agreement with the govern-
ment. The country’s 60-year-long civil war left more than
220,000 dead, 45,000 missing, and close to seven million
displaced, and FARC was one of the conflict’s principal
antagonists with more than 18,000 fighters (Baumohl,
2020). Surveys of ex-combatants by the government rein-
corporation agency reveal that a vast majority, 96%, dream
of starting their business ventures (Colombia2020, 2019).
This research setting is appropriate for our study of the
links between business practice and SDG 16 for three rea-
sons. First, this type of post-conflict zone fits Hällgren et al.’s
(2018) definition of disrupted contexts. A disrupted context
is initiated by unique and unprecedented events external to
the core activities of the organizations under study (Hällgren
et al., 2018). While the end of a civil war is a positive envi-
ronmental change, it is still a context riddled with uncertainty
and risk, as well as the broken institutions and damaged
social fabric created by the war itself. Exploring the practices
and processes of firms operating in disrupted contexts is said
to provide insight into “how knowledge and skills are mobi-
lized to help safeguard well-being, security, and human free-
doms” (Hällgren et al., 2018, p. 145).
Second, by studying the decisions and actions of firms
operating in a post-conflict zone, we can identify what
opportunities businesses have for promoting peace and
avoiding a return to hostilities, therefore contributing to
SDG 16. Finally, these entrepreneurs operate in a unique
institutional environment stemming from novel cross-sec-
tor collaborations that resulted from the Colombian peace
process, which allows engaging and collaborating with
multiple and diverse stakeholders. We study entrepreneurial
ventures taking place in Espacios Territoriales de
Capacitación y Reincorporación (ETCRs), which translates
to territorial spaces for training and reincorporation. They
are the physical locales in which FARC ex-combatants are
reincorporated into civil society while living in and con-
tributing to the economic life of nearby communities
(Comisión de Conciliación Nacional, 2017). These special
conditions make Colombia a unique setting for exploring
the theorized dynamics and challenges of organizations
tackling complex societal challenges (Bryson et al., 2015).
Case selection, data collection, and data
analysis
As in previous research using inductive qualitative
research, we selected cases in a purposive and adaptive
manner following the principle of theoretical sampling
(Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Gallo et al., 2018). Our
sample consists of four ex-combatant entrepreneurial ven-
tures created in Colombia after the 2016 signing of the
peace accords. We start by first selecting one of the firms
that had gathered the most media attention, and based on
analyses of the collected data about the company and its
emerging themes, further cases were purposely selected to
gather additional evidence for theory building and vari-
ance generation (Corbin & Strauss, 2014; Yin, 2017). A
further advantage of this approach is that the comparisons
allow for eliminating purely idiosyncratic findings, there-
fore ensuring that the theory built upon the cases is more
generalizable (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007).
Our first case was Cerveza La Roja, a firm that has
gathered wide local and international media attention. It is
one of the flagship firms of the post-conflict process in
Colombia. As we collected data from La Roja and started
analyzing it, other important ventures continued appearing in
national media or peacebuilding conferences and events we
attended. The second project that caught our attention was
Muñecas Ex-combatientes por la Paz, which utilized a differ-
ent business model and was founded by a team of all-female
entrepreneurs. This case also became an essential part of our
sample because the project failed during our study, giving us
contrasting patterns in our data and more details unidenti-
fied in our first case (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007).
Following more data analysis, our third case,
Confecciones La Montaña, stood out as an interesting
entrepreneurial venture because they used pre-existing
combatant knowledge, resources (facilities, etc.), and
capabilities, to start the venture. They turned their combat-
ant uniform workshop, materials, and know-how into an
outdoor apparel firm that created gear with sufficient qual-
ity to compete with brands like North Face, Columbia, and
Patagonia. The product quality resulted from their found-
ers’ years of experience manufacturing outerwear for the
extreme heat and humidity of Colombia’s rainforests. Our
final case chosen was Café Paramillo, which engages in
one of Colombia’s most traditional and internationally
successful industries. This case allows for analyzing two
Gallo et al. 67
important aspects of entrepreneuring for peace in our par-
ticular context: first, rural Colombia (i.e., agricultural
regions) was the hardest hit in the conflict by FARC itself,
and second, Colombia’s coffee industry requires engaging
with multiple stakeholders, especially farmers. Therefore,
Café Paramillo confronted the challenge of working
directly with FARC victims.
The cases offer some similarities in being founded by
ex-combatants after the peace agreement and all operating
with minimal start-up budgets. Still, they are different
enough in their business models to offer unique insights
into the activities, relationship building, and decision-
making of ex-combatant entrepreneurs. Most of the data
were collected from secondary sources such as local,
national, and international news articles, press releases,
and videos. These sources were used to construct the nar-
ratives of the four chosen ventures, which we present in
the next section. These narratives do not include all rele-
vant details but provide a useful introduction and summary
to the firms. However, the full richness of these sources
was used in our coding and analysis.
We did not schedule official interviews with ex-com-
batants because our attempts to contact them through
their intermediaries were unsuccessful. However, we
attended events where they presented their stories, ven-
tures, and products. These events included ex-combat-
ants, representatives from the private sector, Colombian
Government, The United Nations and nongovernmental
organization (NGOs) engaged in supporting ex-combat-
ant ventures. After these events, we could speak infor-
mally with members of three of the four projects under
study. We asked them about their funding, sourcing and
distribution challenges, and current performance and
prospects. Finally, we conducted some informal inter-
views with sustainability managers at traditional firms in
relevant industries and the director of a peace and eco-
nomic development foundation.
In these four case studies of ex-combatant ventures, we
observed various operational practices, industries, and actor
relationships. Similarities existed in commitment to prior
political ideals, acute concerns about safety, and uncertainty
about institutional promises. All three authors began manu-
ally micro-coding the secondary data for each case. As we
added cases to our sample and used our primary data from
our informal interviews, we identified additional micro cod-
ing items of interest until reaching saturation and finally
grouped them to create a 45-item codebook. The following
techniques included open and axial coding, category crea-
tion and abstraction for the final aggregate dimensions
(Corbin & Strauss, 2014; Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Using the
codebook, each author open-coded the secondary data for
three cases to generate overlap that allowed comparisons
and triangulation. Then, all authors revised each other’s
coding and a further iterative consensus-building process
was used to resolve any inconsistencies. We grouped the
items into first-order concepts, which we then analyzed
and grouped, taking into account key items relevant to
entrepreneurial ventures such as size, location, industry,
founders, and ownership structure and also through the
emancipatory entrepreneuring lens to identify elements
related to seeking autonomy, authoring, and making decla-
rations. We then refined these categories into 10 second-
order themes in consensus, which led us to identify two
key underlying dimensions.
The following section presents the narratives of the four
cases.
Ex-combatant ventures case studies
Cerveza La Roja
La Roja is an artisanal beer produced by ex-combatants
residing in the ETCR—Antonio Nariño, founded in
November 2018. At the heart of this micro-brewery’s ori-
gin story lies the strength of personal bonds and childhood
friendship. Nicolas Hurtado and Wally Broderick were
adolescent friends who took very different paths shortly
after graduating high school. Of Irish/Colombian descent,
Broderick left the country and traveled to Europe to pursue
higher education opportunities. Hurtado remained in
Colombia and joined the FARC at 18 under the pseudo-
nym Carlos Alberto. The two friends eventually reunite
when Broderick returns to Colombia to teach English in
the capital city of Bogota. The English professor learns
that his childhood friend is serving an 11-year sentence for
crimes related to his membership in FARC and decides to
reach out and visit Hurtado in prison (Atehortua, 2019).
After the Peace Agreement of 2016, Hurtado turned him-
self in at the ETCR-Antonio Nariño in the department of
Tolima, about 124 kilometers from Bogota. Broderick
continues to visit with his childhood friend, now at the
ETCR, and also starts to volunteer as a literacy instructor.
Hurtado and Broderick’s friendship played a crucial
role in the formation of La Roja. Broderick introduced
the idea of producing beer as a potentially successful
business venture for Hurtado and his partners. Broderick
had a long-standing interest and passion for brewing, and
after teaching a brewing class to members of the ETCR
he helped Hurtado, and four other members, brew 25 lit-
ers of beer in October of 2018 (Atehortua, 2019). The six
founders distributed this initial batch of beer by word of
mouth. They named the beer “La Roja,” meaning the red,
symbolizing their strong socialist sympathies. After they
supplied beer to the anniversary celebration of the com-
munist party, the resulting buzz and attendees’ social
media postings gave the nascent beer brand a substantial
boost in recognition. With this popularity and the found-
ers reinvesting their profits in the venture, they grew to
600 liters/month production capacity by January 2019
(Atehortua, 2019).
68 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
The beer built a decent customer base in Tolima’s local
bars but was also available in specialty shops in Bogota
and through online orders (Viaño-Montaña, 2019). In
online videos and crowdfunding pitches, the founders
claim that demand has continuously outpaced their pro-
duction capabilities, reaching only 800 liters/month by
November 2019 (DW Español, 2019). The venture was
founded with minimal capital investment and needed sig-
nificant funding to meet its growth ambitions. In fact, at
presentations and sales events, we heard from firm repre-
sentatives regarding frustrations with the national govern-
ment’s lack of support for the venture. They had plenty of
demand for their products but felt they did not have the
capital support nor the infrastructure development in the
ETCR to support their growth and development. According
to Ruben Dario, a La Roja representative, the infrastruc-
ture challenges included a poor-quality connection to the
electric grid and a lack of good roads (Menéndez, 2019).
They turned to crowdfunding and outside investors with a
pitch emphasizing the pride of a Colombian-based artisa-
nal beer brand.
Cerveza La Roja is an example of a successful ex-com-
batant venture, managing to grow demand for a new beer
brand while supplying ownership and job opportunities for
ex-combatants looking to reintegrate into civil society. By
April 2019, they employed 29 ex-combatants, 11 of whom
were women, while being named one of the three most popu-
lar ex-combatant brands by a national newspaper (Forero-
Rueda, 2019). The company still faces many challenges,
including achieving less than 1% of its crowdfunding goal as
of June 2020 and the challenging economic times precipi-
tated by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This hasn’t stopped
them, however. La Roja moved production from the ETCR
to a stainless-steel brewing facility in Bogota, closest to their
largest market (Redacción Colombia, 2020).
La Roja has demonstrated a commitment to the peace
process and their local and ex-combatant communities. In
the last 3 months of 2020, the firm introduced a special
edition amber ale, whose proceeds would support the con-
struction of kindergartens in three ETCRs. These early
childhood education centers would be available to the chil-
dren of the ex-combatants and locals from neighboring
communities (Redacción Colombia, 2020). Two other ex-
combatant beer brands joined this fundraising initiative,
demonstrating the willingness to collaborate across firms
when the results benefit their children’s future. This initia-
tive is precisely the type of social sustainability activity
that theory predicts these types of embedded cooperative
ventures are likely to seek (Gallo et al., 2018).
Muñecas Excombatientes Por La Paz
(Ex-Combatant Dolls for Peace)
Muñecas Excombatientes Por la Paz (Muñecas) was a rag
doll company founded in 2018 by ex-combatant women
residing in the Monterredondo ETCR in the Cauca depart-
ment, 50 km away from the third-largest city of Colombia,
Cali. The women’s initiative focused on dolls that portray
a political, social, and cultural message to preserve the col-
lective memory of the conflict and reconciliation and mes-
sages against discrimination against ethnic minorities and
sexual violence toward women (United Nations, 2018).
The project was initially pitched to academic and govern-
ment institutions at the workshop “Seedbeds of Peace.” It
was classified by the United Nations Verification Mission
in Colombia as a fast-impact project after its official
founding in 2018.
The project leader was Francis Restrepo, a local artisan
and social leader who came to help in the reincorporation
process in the ETCR. She shared the business idea with a
group of ex-combatant women she met at the workshop
and encouraged them to make dolls with her sewing
machine. Since they were tired of waiting for government
funding, they took on Francis’ challenge. Francis taught
them how to sew. Since they had no materials, they started
using their camouflaged T-shirts to make some parts of the
dolls. Later, an ETCR leader contributed about 80 USD to
help purchase supplies. By early 2020, there were 14
women employed: eight ex-combatants and six victims of
the armed conflict with FARC (Forero, 2019). These ex-
combatant women said the project signified their libera-
tion through self-improvement and the desire not to return
to arms. They felt proud and gained new skills, which
increased their economic opportunities.
The company produced four types of dolls representing
different Colombian communities: (1) the Afro-Colombian
characterizing Colombia’s Pacific Coastal region, the
country’s poorest, most neglected region; (2) the Nasa doll
embodying the country’s indigenous tribes; (3) the peasant
doll representing rural women; finally, (4) the Miranda
doll, made of old guerrilla uniforms, representing ex-com-
batants. Using old ex-combatant uniforms, they hoped to
give them the new meaning of what was once used for war
can now bring joy and peace to children (Diario del Cauca,
2020). In addition, each doll carries an actual seed as an
accessory in her basket. The seed symbolizes protection of
the environment and their territory, a direct response to
multinationals that they believed had stolen the knowledge
of traditional medicine and corrupted it by creating trans-
genic seeds.
The company started by producing as little as six dolls
a week but increased production when single orders
reached 120 dolls. In December 2018, they procured four
machines and materials worth around 14,000 USD through
international cooperation to help the company increase
capacity and meet their growing demand. The company
soon started getting significant media attention with radio,
TV, and print interviews (Peña, 2019).
Unfortunately, sales were low due to challenges in com-
mercialization. The women received training in sales and
Gallo et al. 69
promotion by entities affiliated with the reintegration pro-
cess, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for
Peace (OACP), the United Nations (UN), the Agency for
Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN), and the
Municipality of Miranda. They were invited to craft fairs
in major cities and to give talks at universities. Attendees
learned firsthand the laborious handcrafted manufacturing
process, the conditions in which they were made, and the
symbolism and stories of each doll (UN, 2018).
Unfortunately, these commercialization efforts were not
enough to sustain them through the economic impact of
the COVID 19 pandemic. The women could no longer pro-
mote their products face-to-face, a key tactic, and sales
declined. The venture went out of business in late 2020.
Regardless of the business failure, the company sym-
bolized ex-combatant women’s empowerment and high-
lighted how ex-combatant and peasant women could
become entrepreneurs in harsh conditions. One ex-com-
batant now believes her role as an empowered woman is to
continue strengthening her community and showing the
world that women and stigmatized people can make their
dreams come true. Another ex-combatant who decided to
stay in the ETCR hopes to continue the struggle for a better
life despite her adversities and difficulties. Her experience
with the dolls has given her the skills and confidence to be
employable or start a new company. Through their dolls,
this all-women company representing the country’s diverse
women carried a message of peace and reconciliation,
female empowerment, and women’s role in peacebuilding
and equitable economic development.
Confecciones La Montaña
Confecciones La Montaña is an apparel company based in
the ETCR La Plancha in the municipality of Anorí
(Northeast of Medellín, the capital of Antioquia). It focuses
on outdoor activewear with a core group of 25 ex-combat-
ants with experience producing uniforms and gear for
FARC (Redacción Digital BLU Radio, 2019). Like other
cooperative projects, La Montaña started out of need:
because of delays in government assistance, the livelihood
of the ETCR members and their families was at stake, so
the tailors decided to start the business with sewing
machines they took out of their jungle encampments. The
business’s original participants were 10 FARC members
with their nuclear families (Monsalve Gaviria, 2019).
These particular ex-combatants had acquired tailoring
skills because they had suffered war injuries and could not
engage in active combat for Front 36 of FARC (Valencia
González, 2019). Despite their injuries, they still wished to
contribute to the cause and were put to work retailoring
uniforms and other clothing so that FARC members could
operate in rough terrain such as mountain forests. Their
work has been so successful that La Montaña has started to
sell its wares internationally (Carranza Jiménez, 2019). La
Montaña is a clear example of a successful translation of
skills honed during the war into economically productive
skills for peace.
Cooperative leader and former Front 36 leader Andrés
Zuluaga, better known for his alias Martín Batalla, explains
that issues with the implementation of the peace accords
have left the ETCR underfinanced, which has meant that
demand for La Montaña products has highly exceeded
their production capacity. Thus, he continues, since the
government did not keep its promise to roll out funding for
economic projects for FARC, La Montaña (and the coop-
erative in general) has had to finance itself and slowly
grow its capacity (Redacción Digital BLU Radio, 2019).
Members of La Montaña have been proactive in seek-
ing training and public relations. With the support of the
National Learning Service (Servicio Nacional de
Aprendizaje, SENA) and the international community,
members have honed their sewing and tailoring skills. In
addition, they have successfully solicited resources from
the international community, including the French
Embassy, which provided sewing machines and raw
materials to continue with capacity expansion (Valencia
González, 2019).
The business and its operating tailor shop have become
integral to the local municipality: inhabitants of nearby
rural areas travel to the ETCR to procure their apparel or
get quick tailoring fixes (Pareja, 2018), which has given
La Montaña a steadier income and enabled better relations
with the community. Regarding the latter, Guillermo León
Chansé, a leader of the ETCR, argues that cooperatives
and their projects are concrete alternatives for the recovery
of the social fabric in the communities (Gutiérrez, 2019).
As such, offering tailoring services in addition to the prod-
ucts they sell has turned out to be a helpful tool to create
goodwill for the ex-combatants trying to reintegrate in a
zone where they were very active militarily.
Indeed, many of the inhabitants of Anorí suffered at the
hands of FARC during the conflict, but now thanks to La
Montaña and other projects they are turning over a new
leaf. La Montaña has become not only a valued business in
the region but also an employer: it employs women from
the nearby communities (Semana Rural, 2019) and even
some returning members of the community that had been
displaced during the conflict (Pareja, 2018), which is a
clear sign of successful reintegration and reconciliation.
As Chansé argues, they serve as an example so that
these people see themselves as active, rather than passive,
subjects of peace (Gutiérrez, 2019). La Montaña has suc-
cessfully embedded itself in the community and has
become a referent of peace and reconciliation: business
meetings and informal gatherings between former combat-
ants and the community regularly occur in the tailor shop.
Moreover, community members that house the ETCR
argue that their community has changed for the better since
the arrival of the ex-combatants: infrastructure has been
70 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
developed and some essential services like health care are
now being provided (Pareja, 2018).
Café Paramillo
Café Paramillo is an ex-combatant entrepreneurial initia-
tive located in Santa Lucía (Antioquia), about 200 km from
the departmental capital of Medellin. It is named after a
nearby national park, invoking regional and territorial
pride. The brand sources coffee beans from small third-
party producers and plants and harvests beans with the
help of locals, ex-combatants, and victims of the conflict.
Café Paramillo operates under the auspices of a regional
cooperative, Cooperativa Multiactiva de Emprendedores
del Campo Colombiano (CMECC). The beans are shade-
grown under native trees or subsistence crops vital to the
region’s sustainability. This practice ensures the commu-
nity’s nutritional needs are met while also contributing to
the coffee beans’ quality (ARN, 2019).
The venture is fully vertically integrated: planting, har-
vesting, drying, processing and roasting the beans for sale
in 1-kg bags for retail customers. At a University speakers’
panel, an ex-combatant of Café Paramillo emphasized that
the venture is committed to paying farmers a fair price for
their beans and that their operations promote reconcilia-
tion because the community is engaged in the venture. He
also indicated that financial support promised by the
national government had yet to materialize, so their growth
has been self-funded. Finally, the firm’s biggest challenge
was access to domestic markets and here, the representa-
tive made a direct plea in a packed auditorium to private
enterprise to provide market access or marketing resources.
Café Paramillo is mainly sold locally in Ituango but
hopes to grow markets in other territories and even venture
internationally. However, distribution and marketing have
proven challenging. One form of assistance came from the
national government. To increase the demand of ex-com-
batant products, the Agency for Reincorporation and
Normalization (ARN), Colombia Compra Eficiente and the
Unit for the Comprehensive Care and Reparation of Victims
managed to modify the guidelines for government purchas-
ing. Now, both victims of the conflict and ex-combatants in
the process of reincorporation are guaranteed a percentage
of the state’s purchasing of goods and services. Indeed,
20% of public purchases made at the national level, not
only of coffee but also of other products, should consist of
people in reincorporation (Sputnik Mundo, 2020). Because
of these changes, the bidding process included Café
Paramillo and other coffee brands from associations or
organizations that involve ex-combatants in reincorpora-
tion and or victims of the former armed conflict.
A second marketing opportunity arose from a unique
collaboration with a firm outside the traditional coffee
value chain. Café Paramillo was one of three ex-combatant
coffee brands featured by the digital magazine Arcadia at
the 2019 Festival of Books and Culture in Medellin (ARN,
2019). Arcadia hosted a tent at the festival with the title
“the coffee of the morning (future),” playing off the fact
that “morning” and “tomorrow” are the same word in
Spanish. The tent had space for over 150 attendees who
were invited to sample the three coffee brands while
engaging in a spirited salon focused on the future of art,
culture, and the peace process’s progress. Representatives
of Café Paramillo were on-site with a booth selling from
their retail inventory.
Finally, Café Paramillo’s marketing efforts have bene-
fited from ex-combatants’ entrepreneurial efforts outside the
ETCRs. The cooperative “Knitting Peace” (Cotepaz) con-
sists of 104 members in the Aburrá Valley where Medellin is
located (Ruiz, 2019). Cotepaz sells products produced in the
ETCRs. In the 2019 Christmas shopping season, Cotepaz
had tremendous success with gift baskets featuring Café
Paramillo. It was so successful that they exhausted their
supply. These gift baskets were delivered to customers’
doorsteps, who were mostly young working professionals
living in luxury apartment complexes (Ruiz, 2019).
These three opportunities provided Café Paramillo with
access to new markets and further brand awareness expan-
sion throughout the country. However, the firm did not
capitalize on its opportunities. In conversations with repre-
sentatives selling the product at various educational and
promotional events, there was a lack of effort to establish
long-term brand loyalty. The company did not provide
information on means to further engage with the brand.
Likewise, despite their ecological and fair-trade practices,
they did not know about third-party certifications that
could help them break into more international markets and
higher price points.
Café Paramillo’s short-term focus on sales and lack of
marketing sophistication may be a direct consequence of
their harsh environment. As it turns out Santa Lucia was
located in the middle of strategic trade routes for illegal
activities and the residents were constantly at risk of vio-
lence between competing bands of smugglers, so much so
that 12 ex-combatants were assassinated (Lopera, 2020).
Santa Lucia became the first ETCR that had to be officially
re-located to Mutatá by the national government (Lopera,
2020). In addition, the COVID 19 pandemic significantly
impacted the operation of the small shops and village pla-
zas where Café Paramillo was sold. Therefore, operations
were put on hold for much of 2020, only recommencing in
the Fall. Although Café Paramillo will continue from
Mutatá, their partners are still in Santa Lucía, which means
that their security situation may bring more issues to the
venture.
Results
The preceding case studies allowed us to identify helpful
practices for companies operating in (post)conflict zones.
Gallo et al. 71

1st Order Concepts 2nd Order Themes Aggregate Dimensions

Government, NGOs, intentaonal Funding

donaons, self funded (autonomy seeking )

Capabilies
Learning new skills, skill transfer
(autonomy seeking)

Vicms, excombatants, civilians,

Defining Relaonships
underpriviledged actors, government, Actor Distance
(authoring)
NGOs, firms

Leaders, men, women, transgender, Leadership/Ownership

mixed, excombatant, cooperave, non- Structure
cooperave (authoring)

Socialist (FARC legacy) or not, brand

Markeng
identy, ex-combatant support, peace
(making declaraons)
support, neutral, change iniaves

Number of employees, units per month

Entrepreneurial Stage
Firm Size
produced

Distance to town center, nearest large

Geographic Locaon
market

Agriculture, manufacturing, brewing,

Industry
texles, toys

Excombatants, vicms, non-vicms,

Founders violent past
mixed

Vercally integrated, specialized,

Corporate Strategy
internaonal diversificaon, survival

Figure 1.  Coding process based on Gioia et al., 2013.

As described before, we analyzed the cases to identify
first-order concepts relevant to entrepreneurial ventures
and then used the emancipatory entrepreneuring lens to
determine which were related to each of its three dimen-
sions (autonomy seeking, authoring, and making declara-
tions) when refining the elements into second-order
concepts. Several of the second-order themes from our
analysis could be directly linked to one of the three dimen-
sions. Finally, we aggregated the second-order concepts
into two categories, actor distance and entrepreneurial
stage, which capture the various processes and practices of
our four ex-combatant ventures. Figure 1 illustrates the
coding process.
We also identified relationships between actor distance
and entrepreneurial stage and the three dimensions of the
emancipatory lens. Seeking autonomy clearly maps onto
the early stages of entrepreneurship, as Rindova et al.
(2009) explain, whereas authoring and making declara-
tions include activities that occur during both early and
late-stage entrepreneurship. Likewise, the three dimen-
sions of the theoretical lens refer to breaking with, build-
ing, or strengthening stakeholder relationships; therefore,
actor distance can be a useful category for characterizing
activities across these dimensions.
By combining the lens of emancipatory entrepreneur-
ing and the two aggregate dimensions that emerged from
our analysis, we present a framework for organizing the
variety of relationship engagement practices these firms
pursued to help their businesses build peace. Indeed, how
these ventures manage and build relations has allowed
72 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
them to be peacebuilding entrepreneurs, that is, they are
inclusive and value-creating (Joseph & Van Buren, 2021).
Below, we summarize the two key categories we identified
in our coding process and present our actor engagement
matrix.
Actor distance
Geography played a central role in Colombia’s civil war
and the subsequent peace process. Safety and violence var-
ied greatly throughout the country, with the most remote
and hard-to-reach regions falling under a reign of lawless-
ness or guerilla control. The peace process provided for the
ETCR structure, and these settlements were situated in
remote rural locations. Therefore, the distance between the
ex-combatant entrepreneurs and any stakeholder they
wished to partner with is a significant variable that impacts
the type and strength of relationships that are possible.
The importance of actor distance is perhaps most evi-
dent in creating engagement with distributors and/or cus-
tomers. La Roja was able to find local customers for their
beer simply through word of mouth, with local restau-
rants and bars in the Tolima region regularly seeking out
a new supply of the nascent beer brand. However, break-
ing into Bogota’s larger and distant market required a
stronger network tie. The ex-combatants had strong ties
to the communist party, and it was through this pre-exist-
ing relationship that they were able to supply the party’s
anniversary celebration. Therefore, making declarations
related to their peacebuilding agenda and social princi-
ples allowed them to extend their market distribution
across longer distances.
We also see distance playing a role in the engagement
of employees and suppliers. Café Paramillo sought rela-
tionships with local farmers as bean suppliers and locals
(both ex-combatants and victims) as employees in their
fledgling venture. Therefore, proximity and shared auton-
omy-seeking motivations have allowed these ex-combat-
ants to forge relationships with individuals with vastly
different ideologies and even with possible traumas related
to the civil war. The authoring decision to hire locally is
facilitated by the autonomy-seeking goals that motivated
the venture in the first place. This exemplifies how the
emancipatory entrepreneurship dimensions are linked and
emancipate ex-combatants from their stigma while also
healing the communities they embed (Fajardo et al., 2019;
Chandra, 2017). However, relationships across greater dis-
tances seem to require some familial or intimate ties. In La
Roja’s case, it is the close friendship between Broderick
and Hurtado that is essential to introducing Broderick to
the members of the ETCR and allows him to bring the
entrepreneurial idea to start a brewery and become a
founding member of the venture.
These examples identify this key association between
actor distance and the reliance on existing similarities
versus the ability to forge connections over sociopolitical
differences by relying on physical proximity. When these
ex-combatants moved to the ETCR locations, they were
able to become members of the local community. Despite
the stigma of their combatant past, the familiarity and
shared living experience created similar autonomy-seek-
ing goals that allowed them to forge working relationships
with the locals (landowners, farmers and workers, military
guards, and businesses). However, relationships forged
across geographical distance seemed to require some pre-
existing connection or shared interest (signaled by making
declarations) that allowed a business relationship to form.
Entrepreneurial stage
The implementation of the peace accords between FARC
and the Colombian government started at the close of
2016. And most of these firms are under 2 years old at the
time of this writing, having been founded in and around
2019. However, even in these young firms, we can discern
different stages of entrepreneurship, namely start-up ver-
sus growth. Across these two stages, we did observe differ-
ences in relationship engagement. It could signify that the
ventures have different needs at various development
stages that require differing relationships. Or the types of
relationships that are conceivable may depend on the
firm’s developmental stage.
Two of our case study firms required significant outside
actor engagement through their start-up phase. Both La
Roja and Muñecas needed outsiders to generate the busi-
ness idea and capability training. In the case of Muñecas,
the ex-combatant women got the idea of sewing dolls and
their first sewing machine from a local social leader. While
this woman was not an ex-combatant, she was dedicated to
social justice and equality. In Colombia’s current political
climate, rural social leaders are some of the country’s most
vulnerable and targeted individuals, with many social
leaders assassinated in the last couple of years: 300 in
2019 and 450 in 2020 (ACLED, 2021). It is this identity as
a social leader that makes her almost as equally marginal-
ized as the ex-combatants. These early-stage relationships
are not merely transactional; they are profound ties across
which resources, capabilities, and ideas are shared. And in
the case of Muñecas, the ex-combatant women were able
to build such a strong tie with an outsider because of their
shared marginalization and commitment to female empow-
erment. In this example, we see that venture activities
related to autonomy seeking and authoring promoted
inclusiveness and value creation for both the entrepreneurs
and the community more broadly.
When firms looked to grow their businesses at a later
stage of entrepreneurial development (growth), we
observed different relationship activities. La Montaña pro-
vides an excellent example of the different engagement
practices with actors during a firm’s growth stage.
Gallo et al. 73
The outdoor gear company had successfully launched its
venture utilizing its existing capabilities and physical
assets. But, as demand for their products grew, they
required capital to build their production capacity. Almost
all the cases mention the challenges in collecting the
Colombian government’s promised capital investments
and traditional banking options were not readily available.
La Montaña was able to reach out internationally and
secure capital from the French embassy through donated
sewing machines and equipment. Obviously, the French
embassy is not a standard stakeholder in the Colombian
textile industry. The firm could capitalize on its identity as
an ex-combatant venture, integral to the Colombian peace
process, to attract outside actors with a vested interest in
promoting peace. Therefore, once they have established
the viability of their business model, these ventures can
reach out and forge regional, national, and even interna-
tional relationships with NGOs, sovereign wealth funds,
and foreign government entities seeking to promote devel-
opment and peace. In terms of emancipation, the growth
phase of entrepreneurship is where we witness activities of
authoring and making declarations that amplify the auton-
omy seeking established during firm start-up.
Moreover, in line with making declarations, these types
of relationships can also exist for marketing purposes.
Café Paramillo’s partnership with a digital magazine to co-
host a salon discussion at the arts and culture festival is
another example. The Café Paramillo story and contribu-
tion to the peace process was enough of a hook to attract a
partnership with a digital magazine. Whereas media may
be seen as a traditional stakeholder in the sense of coffee
companies buying ad space, this relationship was utterly
unique. The two firms co-sponsored the event, but Café
Paramillo merely had to provide their coffee. This collabo-
ration boosted the firm’s visibility and allowed for a decla-
ration of their peacebuilding and social equity ambitions to
a new audience.
Firms have different needs and levels of attractiveness
to potential stakeholders at each entrepreneurial stage
(start-up and growth). Therefore, the exact type and form
of relationship these entrepreneurs can build will vary
depending on their stage of entrepreneurial development.
We illustrate a variety of actor relationships for these
entrepreneurial firms at these two distinct development
stages.
Matrix of actor engagement
Some examples from our four cases address both dimen-
sions we have identified. For example, La Roja’s engage-
ment with Broderick is with a distant actor during the
venture’s start-up phase. Given this reality, we found that
using the dimensions of actor distance and entrepreneur-
ial stage as the matrix axes provided a valuable means to
organize our findings. The resulting matrix, Figure 2, iden-
tifies four distinct contexts of actor engagement:
Figure 2.  Matrix of actor engagement.
I. Local Start-Up—relationships with geographically
close actors during the idea generation, founding,
and initial start-up phase.
II. Local Growth—relationships with geographically
close actors during the growth phase of the
venture.
III. Distant Start-Up—relationships with geographi-
cally distant actors during the idea generation,
founding, and initial start-up phase.
IV. Distant Growth—relationships with geographi-
cally distant actors during the growth phase of the
venture.
The four categories in this matrix identify distinct con-
texts in which firms may utilize different relationship tac-
tics. These categories are not mutually exclusive, as any
given firm can pursue actor engagement in each category
at different times. The matrix structure helps precisely
frame the types of engagement options available in other
contexts. Our analysis identified five distinct relationship
arrangement practices that fit along with this matrix, as
shown in Table 1.
Café Paramillo’s reliance on local suppliers and engag-
ing both ex-combatants and victims demonstrates a type of
radical inclusiveness relationship that can occur in the
Local Start-Up context. Likewise, the example of Hurtado
and Broderick’s childhood friendship is the type of extant
intimacy necessary in the Distant Start-Up context. La
Montaña provides examples of relationship arrangements
for both of our remaining growth categories: their partner-
ship with the French embassy demonstrates the classic
institutional arrangement that is possible in the Distant
Growth context, whereas their efforts to provide tailoring
services and community meeting space to their local
74 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)

Table 1.  Five practices for exchange relationship arrangements.

Arrangement type Definition

Extant intimacy Existing familial ties or old friendships are the foundation of trust and empathy that allow an
entrepreneur to build relationships with a traditional actor in the economy.
Peer sympathies Entrepreneur’s empathy and understanding for other underprivileged and marginalized actors allows
the creation of strong relationships despite other differences.
Radical inclusiveness Entrepreneurs seek relationships with a wide variety of local community members. The promise of
socioeconomic returns seems to overcome pre-existing biases and animosities in these interactions.
Goodwill building Entrepreneurs engage in projects outside their core business to serve their local communities and
build trust that can lead to positive exchange relationships with community members.
Classic institutional Relationships with traditional institutions (both NGOs, governments, and international organizations).

community exemplifies the goodwill building engagement
utilized in the Local Growth context. We also identified
peer sympathies relationships in Muñecas’ partnership
with a local social leader and Café Paramillo’s coffee dis-
tribution through a retail cooperative of ex-combatants in
Medellin, Colombia. Interestingly, these two examples fall
in different contexts: Local Start-Up and Distant Growth.
This could suggest that peer sympathies is a practice that is
useful in multiple contexts. It is also possible that we are
overstating the relationship between Café Paramillo and
that retail cooperative: the cooperative did quickly replace
Café Paramillo coffee with another brand when they ran
out. This suggests a lack of coordination and commitment
one would expect from a strong relationship.
international agencies and the government, they also allow
for managing stakeholders and keeping other actors
accountable in the peace process.
However, the nature of the other targets made it chal-
lenging to demonstrate how a single firm’s activities could
be successfully attributed to the full metric. Indeed, some
specific targets of SDG 16, such as equal access to justice,
combat organized crime, legal identity for all, and strength-
ening the participation of developing countries, are consid-
ered to be the sole responsibility of governments.
Nevertheless, further mapping of firm activities to this
SDG in future research could be possible by focusing on
the three principles of SDG16 (inclusion, institutions, and
justice).

Mapping firm activities to SDG 16 targets Discussion and limitations

Finally, we found that these firms contribute more to SDG
16 than merely preventing recidivism. They engage in
firm-level activities that allow peacebuilding entrepre-
neurship, that is, inclusive and value-creating practices
(Joseph & Van Buren, 2021), such as inclusive hiring,
community engagement, and partnerships to transform the
institutional landscape. We mapped the firms’ activities to
the 12 national monitoring targets established for SDG 16
(United Nations, 2020). However, as shown in Table 2, it
was challenging to match specific firm activities to these
targets; we only found four matches.
The mere fact that these ventures employ and support
ex-combatants returning to civilian life means they are no
longer engaged in violent activities. Therefore, all of our
cases have been helpful in preventing recidivism and
reducing violence (target 16.1), as well as preventing crim-
inal activities, illegal economies, and arms flows (target
16.4). Regarding target 16.2, we find that Muñecas explic-
itly tackles the issue of protecting children and empower-
ing girls and women, since their product, aimed at children,
helps to raise awareness and promote gender equality from
an early age. Finally, regarding target 16.6, ex-combatants
have developed a new institutional environment for coop-
eration and accountability for themselves through their
cooperatives, and, since these manage relations with
This study offers three contributions. First, our analysis
yielded five relationship arrangement practices that we
could categorize along two critical dimensions (actor dis-
tance and entrepreneurial stage). The matrix of actor
engagement that we have built based on our four case stud-
ies not only provides two additional dimensions to further
develop the lens of entrepreneuring as emancipation, but
also five possible practices for exchange relationship
arrangements that have allowed ex-combatant entrepre-
neurs to start or grow their businesses while contributing
to peacebuilding and therefore SDG16. Therefore, some
practices that enable ex-combatants to start or grow their
ventures in difficult or extreme contexts ultimately help
foster peace. Indeed, simply creating a business in a (post)
conflict zone does not necessarily lead to peace, as Ganson
(2017) argues. Still, instead, it is the engagement practices
that we have found that positively mediate the relationship
between entrepreneurship and peace.
Second, the matrix of relationship arrangements allows
for furthering emancipatory entrepreneuring. We follow
Chandra’s (2017) work and integrate our findings with the
lens of emancipatory entrepreneuring (Rindova et al.,
2009) to provide more formal constructs to study and fur-
ther develop this theory. These relationships and dimen-
sions we identified can be used to further understand the
Gallo et al. 75
Table 2.  SDG 16 monitoring targets in excombatant entrepreneur cases.
SDG 16 Targets
16.1 Reduce violence everywhere
16.2 Protect children from abuse, exploitation, trafficking and violence
16.3 Promote the rule of law and ensure equal access to justice
16.4 Combat organized crime and illicit financial and arms flows
16.5 Substantially reduce corruption and bribery
16.6 Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions
16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive, and representative decision-making
16.8 Strengthen the participation in global governance
16.9 Provide universal legal identity
16.10 Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental
freedoms
16.a Strengthen national institutions to prevent violence and combat
terrorism and crime
16.b Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies
autonomy seeking, authoring, and making declarations
processes of emancipatory entrepreneuring. For instance,
future studies could use the matrix of actor engagement to
develop hypotheses in other contexts. In addition, these
practices can be used by entrepreneurs looking to build
essential relationships in support of their venture’s success
and, in doing so, contribute to SDG 16.
Finally, we have mapped firm-level activities of the
ventures to SDG16 targets. However, we could only map
activities onto four of the 12 targets. The challenge of
mapping firm-level activities to SDG16 targets is not the
lack of peacebuilding activities but rather the focus of the
SDG 16 targets. Although these targets are undoubtedly
essential in measuring SDG 16 across countries and time,
they are not appropriate for capturing individual firms’
SDG 16 activities. The lack of a formal measurement
instrument for an individual firm’s contribution to SDG 16
is a significant limitation to our study, and perhaps may
explain the dearth of management literature addressing
SDG 16 specifically. This limitation suggests that future
work could be done to build and validate a more formal
instrument for capturing firm engagement toward SDG 16.
Overall, our study shows that some entrepreneuring
practices allow for both starting and growing ventures
while at the same time contributing to SDG16. Specifically
for the Colombian case, these firms’ continued operation
contributes to peace and violence reduction, given that
recidivism can be prevented through economic develop-
ment (Collier et al., 2008). That is, while the ex-combat-
ants are actively engaged in managing their entrepreneurial
ventures and providing some economic gains to the found-
ing team and the ex-combatant employees, they are not
engaged in their prior hostile activities. Therefore, these
ex-combatants are building peace by devoting their time to
Examples in our cases
Avoid and prevent recidivism through inclusiveness
Promote girls’ and women’s empowerment
N/A
Reduction in organized crime due to reintegration,
community engagement, and the creation of new jobs.
N/A
FARC cooperatives as new institutions that oversee new
ventures, promote reintegration, and manage relations
with governmental and international institutions.
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
creating enterprises and adding value to the communities
in which they are embedded. In other words, ex-combatant
entrepreneuring is crucial for achieving SDG 16 in the
Colombian case.
However, it is also possible to flip the perspectives on
these tactics and provide guidance to traditional firms
seeking to engage with local communities. Understanding
these five tactics and the particular contexts in which they
are most useful is valuable information for any firm wish-
ing to contribute to peacebuilding in disruptive contexts
(Hällgren et al., 2018). Comprehending the entrepreneur-
ial stage and distance of the actors they are hoping to
engage can help identify a practice that our study has dem-
onstrated has been successful in that context. Of course, a
limitation of our study is that we have built our findings on
only four case studies. It is possible that a larger sample
would identify more practices and possibly even more
contexts. While this is true, and we hope that future studies
will include a greater sample size, it does not diminish our
findings’ usefulness.
Conclusion
This study focused on identifying how entrepreneurial
ventures could contribute to the advancement of SDG 16
through their everyday business practices. To that end, we
chose to study an extreme environment where peacebuild-
ing challenges were particularly salient and focus on the
actions of marginalized ex-combatant ventures. We inten-
tionally chose to study both, an extreme context and actors
seeking to free (emancipate) themselves from a woeful
status quo, to identify practices, activities, and tactics that
succeed in advancing the ventures while achieving posi-
tive societal outcomes. In other words, we study how
76 Business Research Quarterly 26(1)
entrepreneurship can indeed be peacebuilding (Joseph &
Van Buren, 2021). We framed our study using the lens of
emancipatory entrepreneurship, which acknowledges that
these ex-combatant ventures seek to achieve outcomes
with societal benefits beyond profit-seeking (Rindova
et al., 2009). Next, we build on this theory from case stud-
ies (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) of FARC ex-combat-
ants struggling to develop businesses in the reintegration
spaces—ETCRs—established in the wake of the 2016
Colombian peace accords.
Our four ex-combatant entrepreneurial ventures
encompassed various industries and regions of the coun-
try and studying their practices yielded some useful find-
ings that contribute to the SDG and entrepreneurship
literature. First, our analysis yielded a matrix of actor
engagement that captures various relationship-building
tactics across two key dimensions (actor distance and
entrepreneurial stage). We showed that these practices
enabled ex-combatants to build their ventures while at
the same time fostering peace in the post-conflict envi-
ronment of Colombia. Second, we argue that these prac-
tices are essential in the autonomy seeking, authoring,
and making declaration dimensions of emancipatory
entrepreneuring, therefore furthering the theoretical lens.
Finally, we were able to identify activities at each firm
that contributed directly to promoting inclusion or build-
ing institutions, two primary principles of the SDG 16
definition, although mapping these directly to the SDG16
targets proved difficult.
This framework provides valuable guidance to peace-
building entrepreneurs seeking to start or grow their busi-
nesses but can be equally suitable to traditional firms
seeking to partner with fringe stakeholders (Hart &
Sharma, 2004). The tactics outlined in our framework can
support any firm’s effort to address SDG 16 in challenging
business environments. Peacebuilding, particularly in war-
torn contexts, is some of the most challenging work that
any private firm could seek to engage in and requires com-
plex multi-stakeholder partnerships (Sachs et al., 2019).
The practices identified in this study allowed some of the
most feared and even hated members of Colombian soci-
ety to build businesses in some of the country’s poorest
and most remote regions. Therefore, imagine the impact if
resource-rich firms and multinationals would engage in
these practices to build exchange relationships in these
challenging environments and contribute to inclusion,
institutions, and justice for all.
Acknowledgements
We thank the editorial team of the special issue and the anony-
mous reviewers for their constructive comments. We also thank
the experts in corporate sustainability (Claudia Rivera), excom-
batant reintegration (Dalida Villa) and cooperatives (Maria Clara
Piedrahita), for sharing their knowledge and experience. Finally,
we thank Sistema B, B Lab, B Academics, Academia B, and the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
This research was supported by Sistema B, B Lab, B Academics,
Academia B, and the International Development Research Centre
(IDRC) with a grant awarded under their program “The Role of
Business in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the
Global South”.
ORCID iDs
Peter Jack Gallo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1462-1815
Andres Velez-Calle https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0166-2025
Note
1. Sachs et al. (2019) argue that SDG 16 is an enabler of six
transformations that can tackle societal grand challenges.
These transformations are (1) education to promote growth
and socioeconomic and gender equality, (2) health invest-
ment, (3) infrastructure development, (4) agriculture,
environment and natural resources management, (5) urban
development, and (6) technological development.
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