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CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Social Capital and Entrepreneurship: Catalyst or Retardant?
Editors
Eric Gedajlovic, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Benson Honig, McMaster University, Canada
Curt Moore, Texas Christian University
G. Tyge Payne, Texas Tech University
Mike Wright, Nottingham University Business School, U.K.
Social capital represents the value that is embedded in relationships among people and networks. As such, social capital is applicable to numerous phenomena of interest to entrepreneurship scholars and spans multiple levels of analysis. While interest in social capital has increased dramatically over the last decade, our understanding of how social capital relates to entrepreneurship remains incomplete.
Two primary perspectives have been utilized in extant literature. The bonding perspective views social capital's value to business enterprise as emanating from instrumental action facilitated by social connections that is driven by the goodwill existing among social actors. From this perspective, social capital results in increased information availability and solidarity among actors in the network collective. In this respect, social capital can function as a catalyst for entrepreneurship through the creation of thick webs of information that can lead to the discovery of novel opportunities and by also providing entrepreneurs with ready access to the human, financial and technological resources necessary for their pursuit. However, social capital may also act as a retardant for entrepreneurship as certain network relationships can lead to both myopia inducing shared values and restrictive obligations which limit the range of opportunities that may be effectively pursued. In contrast to the bonding perspective, bridging views suggest that social capital results from the external connections of a focal actor leading to non-redundant resources and ultimately to positive entrepreneurial outcomes. However, such configurations of social relationships may also result in negative outcomes for both individuals and collectives.
We believe that there are significant opportunities for improving our understanding of how social capital relates to various processes and outcomes that are either catalysts to, or which retard entrepreneurship. Consequently, we are soliciting empirical and theoretical work addressing such ambiguous, complex and possibly contradictory relationships between various form of social capital and entrepreneurship. We especially encourage papers which break new ground by "unpacking" or making fine grained distinctions between forms of social capital and those that search for and identify previously unexplored mediating and moderating effects linking these forms to various expressions of entrepreneurship. We similarly, encourage studies adopting multi-level perspectives such as those examining the independent and joint (cross-level) relationships embedded in individuals, teams, organizations, and communities.
We believe that the "catalyst or retardant" frame for this special issue provides an opportunity to bring together the research of scholars from a diverse range of disciplinary traditions (e.g. economics, sociology, psychology, history, law, political science, anthropology) as well as those focusing on differing units of analysis (e.g. individual, group, firm, network, community). As a consequence, we expect (and hope) that contributors will leverage their own perspectives and training in order to formulate and address novel research questions and hypotheses. As such, the following list of potential research questions is merely illustrative of the broad range of studies that could fit in the special issue of ET&P.
- How do different types of organizations such as family businesses, venture capital funded start ups, corporate ventures and government linked enterprises differ in their abilities to develop, sustain and utilize various forms of social capital?
- Do the various forms of social capital lead to an enlarged or diminished set of entrepreneurial activities that are discovered and acted upon?
- How does social capital influence the processes through which entrepreneurial activities are evaluated and acted upon? How do various forms of social capital influence how entrepreneurs sort and rank opportunities? Under what conditions does social capital improve/diminish an entrepreneur's ability to discern between ultimately successful/unsuccessful opportunities?
- How do the various forms of social capital influence the learning, knowledge retention and capability development of individuals, teams, firms and communities? Does social capital lead to longer or shorter decision making time horizons?
- How do the various forms of social capital influence the amounts and types of resources available to entrepreneurs?
- For start-ups, what types of social capital are derived from various groups such as venture capitalists, underwriters, and investment bankers, and how does it evolve? Which matters the most for survival and firm performance?
- How do social capital relationships adapt over time? What factors retard this adaptation?
- Do individual entrepreneurs' network ties and social capital differ from team entrepreneurs? How and why?
- How do network relationships and social capital at different levels of analysis (i.e., individual entrepreneur, firm, and industry) relate to entrepreneurial behaviors and outcomes? How do multilevel approaches inform our understanding of social capital in entrepreneurship studies?
- How can methods developed in other fields (e.g., finance, psychology, sociology, geography, anthropology) enhance entrepreneurship and family business social capital research?
- How do the various forms of social capital possessed by individuals, groups, teams, organizations and communities influence each other? What are the potential sources of synergy and destructive conflict between these forms and levels of social capital? What is their effect on entrepreneurial activity? How can these tensions be better managed?
- How does the role of social capital vary according to context (institutional, ownership stage of venture, etc.)?
- How transferable are the various forms of social capital to social contexts different from the setting in which they were developed? Do they facilitate or inhibit cross-national trade?
- Do the various forms of social capital alleviate or exacerbate social inequities regarding ethnicity, gender, and religion? What is the effect of such processes on entrepreneurial activity?
- How do the various forms of social capital influence "social-entrepreneurship," which involves the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities for the creation of social rather than economic wealth?
We invite empirical, conceptual, and methodological papers covering a range of approaches. Two types of papers can be potentially published: (a) Feature Articles and (b) Research Notes. Feature articles are full-length manuscripts typical of ET&P contributions. Research notes are narrower in scope than a feature article. Research notes should make an important contribution regardless of length, but the contribution is more focused in scope, perhaps addressing a more specific issue/topic as opposed to broader issues. Research notes should be approximately 25 double-spaced pages in length (inclusive of tables and references). For all submissions, a paper's length relative to its contribution will be an important metric for assessment.
Submissions should be prepared in accordance with ET&P's style guide and submitted to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etp by June 3, 2011 (be sure to indicate that it is for the special issue, Social Capital and Entrepreneurship). After the initial round of reviews, the authors of short-listed papers will be invited to a special issue conference at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada to be held during early 2012. At this conference, authors will receive developmental feedback from the co-editors and invited discussants.