Discussion: View Thread

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice would like to announce a Call for Papers for the January 2016 special issue on Careers, Organizations and Entrepreneurship.  Please see below.

Best regards,

ETP Editorial Office

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call for Papers

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

January 2016 Special Issue

Careers, Organizations and Entrepreneurship

Guest Editors:

M. Diane Burton (Cornell University)

Jesper B. Sørensen (Stanford University)

Stanislav D. Dobrev (University of Utah)

Deadline:  October 1, 2014

Introduction

Movements between entrepreneurship and paid employment – including both transitions to entrepreneurship and re-entry into paid employment – are remarkably common, yet have only recently begun to attract scholarly attention.  Ferber and Waldfogel (1998) estimate that fully a quarter of young men and a fifth of young women in the United States have experienced a spell of entrepreneurial activity by their mid-thirties.  Far more have contemplated launching a new venture (Reynolds and Curtin 2008).  Most of these entrepreneurs launch their new ventures after having worked for established firms (Sørensen and Fassiotto 2011).  And while between 15 and 30% of entrepreneurs are serial founders who follow one venture with another (Hyytinen and Ilmakunnas 2007), the majority of entrepreneurs, by definition, have a different kind of career transition.  It seems likely that if and when entrepreneurial ventures fail, many entrepreneurs will transition back into paid employment.   These patterns of movement suggest that entrepreneurial activity is usefully studied using a perspective that explicitly conceptualizes the relationship between entrepreneurial dynamics and career processes and outcomes. 

While there has been important work done on entrepreneurial careers emphasizing how individual differences in preferences (e.g. Douglas and Shepherd 2002) or personalities (see Zhao et al 2010) affect the propensity towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial success, to date most of this work has treated entrepreneurship as a final career destination and ignored the potential for movement back into wage employment or to unemployment.  Most of the existing research also emphasizes stable individual traits such as gender, family background, and personality, as opposed to characteristics that change over time such as family and organizational context.  Thus, there is a compelling need to better understand entrepreneurship in the context of a career trajectory and to take into account life course and temporal differences across individuals.

We seek to complement earlier approaches to entrepreneurial careers that were grounded in psychological approaches to career theory (e.g.  1994 Special Issue of ETP edited by Jerome Katz and Edgar Schein) that emphasize stable individual traits with structural approaches that emphasize organizational context and change.

For this special issue we seek theoretical and empirical work that advances our understanding of the multiple ways in which career experiences shape entrepreneurial activity, and the ways in which entrepreneurial activity shapes career experiences. 

Examples of relevant topics include but are not limited to:

·         The role of work experiences on the rate and nature of entrepreneurial entry

·         The impact of employer characteristics and policies on new venture formation and outcomes

·         The dynamics of spin-offs and spin-outs

·         The career trajectories and outcomes of founders

·         The impact of entrepreneurial failure on subsequent outcomes in paid employment

Submissions should be prepared in accordance with ET&P's guidelines and submitted via Manuscript Central ( http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etp ) between September 1 and October 1, 2014.  When submitting, be sure to indicate the submission is for the special issue on Careers, Organizations and Entrepreneurship in the appropriate box.

Questions regarding the special issue may be addressed to:  Diane Burton (burton@cornell.edu)

References

Douglas, Evan J. and Dean A. Shepherd (2002) "Self-Employment as a Career Choice: Attitudes, Entrepreneurial Intentions, and Utility Maximization."  Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice. 26 (3): 81-90.

Ferber, Marianne and Jane Waldfogel. 1998. "The Long-Term Consequences of Non- Standard Work." Monthly Labor Review 121 (5): 3-12.

Hyytinen, Ari and Pekka Ilmakunnas 2007. "What distinguishes a serial entrepreneur?" Industrial and Corporate Change. 16 (5): 793-821.

Reynolds, Paul D., and Richard T. Curtin. 2008. "Business Creation in the United States: Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II Initial Assessment." Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship 4: 155-307.

Sørensen, Jesper B. and Magali A. Fassiotto. 2011. "Organizations as Fonts of Entrepreneurship." Organization Science 22 (5): 1322-1331.

Zhao, H., Seibert, S. E., & Lumpkin, G. T. (2010). The Relationship of Personality to Entrepreneurial Intentions and Performance: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal Of Management 36(2): 381-404.

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice would like to announce a Call for Papers for the January 2017 special issue on Opportunities and Challenges in Crowdfunding Research.  Please see below.

Best regards,

ETP Editorial Office

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call for Papers

Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice

Special Issue on:

Opportunities and Challenges in Crowdfunding Research

Crowdfunding is a novel form of capital acquisition that allows entrepreneurs to bypass financial institutions and solicit investments directly from the public. A growing interest in crowdfunding is shared by practitioners, policymakers, the media, and scholars alike. Indeed, in 2012 there were over 1.1 million crowdfunding campaigns launched on over 800 platforms, raising a total of $2.7 billion in investment.[1] The scope of crowdfunding and new laws facilitating equity transactions through crowdfunding are generating intense media discussion of this financing method's merits and its problems.

Crowdfunding's emergence is creating opportunities for scholarly research. As a new and powerful tool for entrepreneurs, crowdfunding can help push the boundaries of existing theory and thereby help develop new theory. Many of the entrepreneurship field's research questions that involve startup success and failure, venture capital, angel investors, IPOs and related topics can and should be reexamined in the crowdfunding context to help extend and build theory.

Research on crowdfunding has the opportunity to inform important practical issues, such as uncovering the prevalence of crowdfunding fraud and identifying how to prevent this fraud. Crowdfunding also offers interesting policy implications. For example, by bridging financial gaps for aspiring entrepreneurs with solid ideas but little capital to support efforts to act on them, crowdfunding may lead to greater participation in entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially within geographic areas whose financial markets are not fully developed. 

Despite the opportunities created by crowdfunding research, there are also challenges associated with conducting research in this area. For instance, detailed information about crowdfunding investors is difficult to acquire on many crowdfunding platforms. Further, some of the mechanisms undergirding crowdfunding success may take place off-line, making it difficult for researchers to measure them. Scholarship is needed that provides innovative solutions to deal with the challenges associated with crowdfunding research.

The purpose of this special issue is to attract research on crowdfunding that extends, develops, and/or tests theory in ways that will have important academic outcomes as well as vital practical and policy implications. Appropriate topics for the special issue include, but are not limited to: 

1.      To what extent does the emergence of crowdfunding encourage the refinement and extension of theories currently applied in entrepreneurial resource acquisition areas such as the venture capital, angel investor, and IPO contexts?

2.      Do crowdfunding campaigns in certain industries or environments lead to better funding outcomes than others?

3.      Some entrepreneurs offer crowdfunding investors equity while others offer non-traditional compensation such as products and services. How do entrepreneurs select a form of compensation to offer? How does the type of compensation influence individuals' decisions to invest in a crowdfunding campaign?

4.      Entrepreneurs generally broadcast crowdfunding appeals to potential investors using an online narrative. These narratives use a variety of media (e.g., text, video, audio) to encourage investment. How might theories of communication, information processing, and sensemaking explain how the content presented and media used interact to influence crowdfunding outcomes? Are some approaches more successful than others under different circumstances?

5.      Recently, crowdfunding has been used to create microloans in developing countries. In what ways does this microlending differ from crowdfunding efforts by entrepreneurs in developed countries? How does this distinction influence investor decision-making?

6.      How do characteristics of the individual launching the crowdfunding campaign, such as physical attractiveness or displayed narcissism, influence crowdfunding outcomes?

7.      Crowdfunding frequently involves "amateur" investors whose main reasons for investing are not economic. What does theory on altruism, egoism, and prosocial behavior predict about whether non-economic factors such as the desire to help others drive the decision to invest in crowdfunding campaigns? Do these factors differ across countries and cultures?

8.      How might social network theory be extended to explain the roles an entrepreneur's social and professional connections play in the success of his or her crowdfunding campaign? What role does a potential investor's networks play in his or her decision to invest in a crowdfunding campaign?

9.      Many entrepreneurs that seek crowdfunding make commitments regarding the outcomes they will produce if funded. Some entrepreneurs follow through on their promises while others do not. To what extent do characteristics of the entrepreneur, campaign, and investment profile help predict the likelihood that commitments will be upheld?

10.  The business press has suggested that significant follow-up work is required after establishing a crowdfunding investment profile (e.g., investor events, social networking, attending trade shows, posting updates). What post-listing activities are most influential in increasing donations to a crowdfunding campaign?

11.  How can theory from fields other than entrepreneurship/management such as marketing, psychology, sociology, MIS, and finance help us understand entrepreneurial crowdfunding?

We invite both conceptual and empirical papers that advance crowdfunding research. All papers will undergo the standard double-blind review process. Our purpose is to collect a "critical-mass" of crowdfunding research with the potential to meaningfully advance work in an area that is of emerging important to the entrepreneurship domain.

The Guest Editors for this special issue are Jeremy Short, University of Oklahoma (Jeremy.short@ou.edu); Dave Ketchen, Auburn University (ketchda@auburn.edu); R. Duane Ireland, Texas A&M University (direland@mays.tamu.edu); Thomas Allison, Washington State University (thomas.allison@wsu.edu); and Aaron McKenny, University of Central Florida (amckenny@gmail.com).

The submission window for the special issue is from January 1 to January 31, 2016. Manuscripts should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etp. Instructions and support are available on the Manuscript Central site and a user account and password can be obtained on the first visit. Please see the journal website for the most current submission guidelines (http://www.baylor.edu/business/etp/index.php?id=97991).

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice would like to announce a Call for Papers.  Please see below.

Best regards,

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice:

"SECTOR STUDIES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: TOWARD A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC DETERMINANTS, PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PHENOMENA"

Special Issue Guest Editors:

Alfredo De Massis, Lancaster University Management School

a.demassis@lancaster.ac.uk

Josip Kotlar, Lancaster University Management School

j.kotlar@lancaster.ac.uk

Franz Kellermanns, University of North Carolina

kellermanns@uncc.edu

Mike Wright, Imperial College Business School

mike.wright@imperial.ac.uk

The primary concern of entrepreneurship is the existence, discovery, and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Entrepreneurial opportunities come in a variety of forms, including new technologies, information asymmetries and environmental shifts, all of which tend to be industry-specific. The industrial sector is a key variable in any organization's business environment. Organizations and individuals interact in numerous ways with peers and competitors, customers, regulators and other stakeholders who altogether are perceived as an industry. Such industries can differ significantly in terms of their political, economic, socio-cultural and technological conditions. In turn, these differences are likely to shape the determinants, processes and outcomes of entrepreneurship. Moreover, entrepreneurial opportunities are strongly intertwined with the goals, beliefs, intuition, heuristics, and accurate and inaccurate information that derive from individuals' experience within an industry.

Unfortunately, however, there are not consistent and adequate conceptualizations of industrial environments for the development of theoretical models and the design of empirical work in the area of entrepreneurship. Moreover, researchers tend to consider industry variables only to the extent that they sensitize their theories to possible situational or temporal constraints or boundary conditions, typically focusing on simple "top-down process" of how industry variables affect lower-level variables and relationships. Despite the potential influence of industrial sectors on entrepreneurship, and despite industry variables have long dominated individual- and organization-level variables in studies of opportunity creation, discovery and exploitation, the underlying mechanisms through which the industrial sector shapes entrepreneurial phenomena and the "bottom-up" processes through which individuals, organizations and industries interact in creating, discovering and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities remain largely undertheorized and little understood.

This Special Issue calls on entrepreneurship scholars to narrow their focus and concentrate their efforts on observing and explaining entrepreneurial phenomena within particular, specified industrial contexts, developing new theories of entrepreneurship from unconventional settings, and creating generous opportunities for future research aimed at extending these theories and searching for cross-context patterns and regularities. The Special Issue aims to present cutting edge research consisting in sector studies that explore both empirical and theoretical perspectives on industry-specific entrepreneurship, i.e. on the sectorial implications on determinants, processes and outcomes of entrepreneurial phenomena. We encourage submission of empirical, conceptual, and literature review papers that can provide a unique perspective using diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. Authors are also encouraged to propose different and novel approaches that are particularly suited to capture the peculiarities of entrepreneurship within specific industrial sectors.

Examples of relevant topics include but are not limited to:

·         The impact of different industrial sectors on the dynamics and processes associated with the creation, discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities

·         How the industrial sector influences individual and corporate entrepreneurship

·         The industrial underpinnings for different forms of entrepreneurial organizations (e.g., start-ups, joint ventures, spin-offs and spin-outs, family enterprises)

·         The role of industry-specific factors in shaping entrepreneurial phenomena

·         Industry specific boundary conditions to established theory

·         Tension between creation and discovery in different industries

·         Context specificity of entrepreneurial behavior and outcomes

·         Industry specific challenges for entrepreneurship (e.g., distinctive challenges to entrepreneurship in emerging industries and established sectors; the role of formal and informal knowledge and intellectual property protection; the role of industry-specific human and social capital)

·         The sectorial implications on the determinants of entrepreneurial phenomena

·         The sectorial implications on the outcomes of entrepreneurial phenomena

·         How and when changes in industrial sectors affect the temporal evolution of entrepreneurial phenomena

Submissions should be prepared in accordance with ET&P's guidelines and submitted via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etp) between April 1-30, 2016. When submitting, be sure to indicate the submission is for the special issue on Sectors Studies in Entrepreneurship in the appropriate box.

Questions regarding the special issue may be addressed to any of the guest editors at their email addresses provided above.