Call for Papers - Social Entrepreneurship Call for Papers Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Social Entrepreneurship Guest editors:
Alex Nicholls, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Oxford Greg Dees, CASE, Duke University
Sara Carter, University of Strathclyde While social entrepreneurship (SE) is not a new phenomenon, it is an emerging area for scholarly enquiry. The extant literature has mainly focused on questions of definition, description and enumeration. As the scholarly foundations of SE are still under construction, this special issue offers a timely opportunity to evaluate the academic potential of the subject. In order to move the debate beyond definitions, the editors particularly welcome two types of manuscripts: those that advance theoretical discourses and new empirical studies that go beyond case examples. With respect to theory building, social entrepreneurship has been largely located within business and management studies, specifically as a subset of commercial entrepreneurship. Most research has explored the role and nature of the individual social entrepreneur, as well as the implications of applying conventional business disciplines (marketing, strategy, operations management etc) to SE as a new unit of analysis. This special issue aims to broaden the disciplinary base of SE into new areas (economics, sociology, anthropology, public policy, political economy), as well as test the assumption that SE may be conceived as social action seen through the lens of entrepreneurship (perhaps it is, in fact, best conceived as entrepreneurship seen through the lens of the social?). A key ambition for this special issue is to examine whether SE could develop into a new, multi-disciplinary field of scholarship or remain simply a novel unit of analysis for existing disciplines. With respect to empirical work, SE has been researched almost exclusively via the case study method. This has helped identify a group of foundational examples (Grameen Bank, Fair Trade, BRAC, Benetech etc), but their use has tended to be descriptive rather than analytical, neither have these cases supported theory building beyond individual and contingent examples. The editors welcome examples of empirical methodologies that go beyond the single organization as the unit of analysis. Large-scale surveys and longitudinal research would be particularly valuable, as would data that is international in scope. Where to set the boundaries of SE remains contested, but for this special issue there is a preference for a broad perspective that encompasses organizational, network or individual action that demonstrates elements of sociality, innovation, and market orientation. With respect to discrete topic areas of significance to SE, a number can be identified: • Social innovation and dissemination • Finance and resource strategies • Governance and accountability • Impact measurement and performance • Political relations and the nature of social change • Cross-sectoral partnerships and hybrids • Exits, failure and the 'dark side' of SE These topics are not prescriptive and the editors are open to other research consistent with the above discussion. Submissions are to be prepared in a form consistent with the ET&P style guide and should be submitted via the ET&P website, at Manuscript Central, being sure to complete the "special issue box," by December 31st 2008. Publication is scheduled for the July 2010 issue. Please contact Alex Nicholls (alex.nicholls@sbs.ox.ac.uk) if you have any questions about the special issue. |