Grand Challenges (GCs), which include escalating public health crises, mounting food insecurity, and the growing threat of climate change, are global in nature and becoming increasingly complex and urgent. While no region is free of these challenges, developing countries are disproportionately affected, experiencing more severe and uneven consequences. This heightened vulnerability is attributed not only to limited resources but also to persistent institutional fragilities, fragmented responses, and historical disadvantages. In this context, the dissertation examines through an institutional lens how a wide range of stakeholders, including local and international businesses, governments, and civil society organisations, can collaborate to address GCs.

Employing sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as the contextual lens, and building on the institutional perspective, the dissertation comprises three peer-reviewed studies that collectively examine the interplay between institutional reform, stakeholder collaboration, and business resilience. The first study investigates how national development plans and multi-actor engagement address poverty. The second explores how businesses navigate institutional fragility and adapt to evolving socio-economic conditions. The third integrates a literature review and empirical analysis to assess environmental governance, with a focus on renewable energy adoption, and its impact on CO\u2082 emissions. Together, these studies advance the discourse on institutional renewal, and the strategic role of business in tackling GCs.

This dissertation advances institutional theory by enhancing the understanding of agency and context-specific logics, emphasising the reciprocal relationship between interventions and their environment. The research illustrates the transformative potential of agency-driven approaches across macro, meso, and micro levels, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial actors. In fragile contexts, entrepreneurship emerges as a crucial mechanism to navigate institutional voids. Special attention is devoted to women entrepreneurs, whose resilience is often constrained by socio-cultural norms, yet who play a vital role in addressing governance deficits and fostering institutional renewal across SSA. The dissertation introduces a novel paradigm: purpose-driven enterprises, embedded in local contexts, as strategic agents of inclusive and systemic change. This paradigm is articulated through agency-oriented frameworks that integrate entrepreneurial engagement with the design and implementation of responses to GCs.