Problem: The ongoing development of environmental pollution and destruction as well as an economy based on continues growth and resource consumption is threatening nature and human beings. This threatening development implies new entrepreneurial opportunities and calls for problem solvers that bring change. Some business managers have answered this call by restructuring their businesses in a more social and sustainable way. It is therefore of importance for practitioners, scholars and policymakers to understand under which motivational preconditions this social business renewal is taking place.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the motivation patterns behind business managers’ decisions to strategically renew their existing business into a social business and what this means for specific business practices. Doing this, I hope to contribute to a future discussion on how these business transformations can later be used to formulate policy incentives.

Method: Ten narrative inspired semi-structured interviews within the agriculture sector were conducted. The raised interview data collection was backed up by a documentary study of available, respondent-related, internet data. Throughout the analysis, the collected data was related to the frame of reference leading to new findings.

Findings and Contribution: The assessment of existing theory related to the topic has shown a gap between the fields of corporate social entrepreneurship and strategic business renewal. This gap has been named “social business renewal”. The empirical findings suggested a further distinction between motivation patterns and motivation enablers leading to action. Seven specific business practices were derived from the empirical data, as supporting the process of social business renewal. Finally this study combined the existing Life Course Model with the motivational patterns and enablers to gain a holistic view of influences on the creation of motivations. This holistic model was further related to policymakers’ possibilities of creating social business renewal incentives. Thereby this study contributes to the understanding of social business renewal developments and lays the foundation for further research.