Separating the dancer from the dance? Contextualising public entrepreneurship in the Greek local government in times of fiscal austerity

In current times of fiscal stringency, public entrepreneurship is important in local government, having been challenged by complexity in seeking to creatively achieve more with less and coping with dynamic financial and societal demands. While interest in public entrepreneurship research has grown, the contextual complexities under which public entrepreneurs are enacted have rarely been explored within local government. This paper sets out to explore public entrepreneurship emergence in Greek local government, having been subject to radical fiscal austerity policy reforms since 2010. A case study involving a Greek local government organisation brings original and unique insights on the contextual complexities that enact a form of systemic entrepreneurship, drawing on a multi-level perspective of public entrepreneurs across top, middle and front-line levels of management, which allows for generating richness and better understanding.