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Dear colleagues,

Below the call for paper of the Special Issue of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal "ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN OF ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURES". If you are interested in this opportunity, please write to sejorgdesign@polimi.it and have a look at the call for papers on the SEJ Web page (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1932-443X)

Best Regards

Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, Diane Burton, Massimo G. Colombo, Noam Wasserman

ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN OF ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURES

Submission Period: May 1, 2017 – July 1, 2017

Guest Editors

M. Diane Burton, Cornell University

Massimo G. Colombo, Politecnico di Milano

Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, Politecnico di Milano

Noam Wasserman, University of Southern California

Background and Special Issue Purpose

This special issue offers a forum for researchers who are interested in the strategic importance of organizational design in entrepreneurial ventures. We hope to gather the best examples of empirical research and theoretical development and showcase novel empirical strategies and new data sources. We are particularly interested in work that develops new conceptual frameworks or integrates findings and theories across multiple domains and perspectives.

Much of what is known about the internal organization of firms is based on the study of large established organizations. Comparatively little research effort has been devoted to understanding the internal organization of entrepreneurial ventures. Moreover, only a handful of studies have gone to the core of the constitutive elements of the internal organization in these firms, such as the emergence of hierarchy (Colombo and Grilli, 2013), functional specialization (Beckman and Burton, 2008), formalization (Sine et al., 2006), and the adoption of managerial practices (Baron, Burton and Hannan, 1999; Colombo et al., 2013). To date most scholars have mainly relied on a lifecycle evolutionary model whereby the successful firms evolve into traditional bureaucratic firms through a process of professionalization (Greiner 1972; Charan et al., 1980; Hellman and Puri, 2002). Yet there is evidence of interesting variety among new ventures and important deviations from a standard evolutionary path (Baron and Hannan, 2002) and opportunities for founders to make key choices that have consequences for a venture's future success (Wasserman, 2012).

The past decade has seen tremendous advances in data collection and availability (e.g. the Kauffman Firm Survey, the World Management Survey, and the national matched employer-employee databases). While gathering data on the internal workings of organizations continues to be time and resource intensive (c.f. Bloom et al., 2014), the time is ripe to collate what has been learned and set the agenda for future research.

Possible Research Questions

Some broad research questions that might be addressed by contributions in the special issue might include:

·       What are the internal and external contingencies that explain the diverse organizational arrangements seen in new ventures?

·       How does the internal organization of entrepreneurial ventures interact with governance, ownership, industry, and geography?

·       How important are "genetic" characteristics of firms? What are the peculiarities in the organization of family firms, academic start-ups, born-global firms, or entrepreneurial ventures with open business models?

·       Does the entrepreneurial ventures' internal organization affect economic and innovative performance?

Deadlines, Submission and Review Process

Submissions to this special issue should be prepared in accordance with SEJ's submission process described at http://sej.strategicmanagement.net. The submission window is from May 1, 2017 to July 1, 2017. Please make sure to indicate that your submission is for the special issue on Organizational Design of Entrepreneurial Ventures.

Publication of this special issue is planned for late 2019 or early 2020.

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Cristina Rossi Lamastra, PhD

Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano School of Management

Director of the Executive Master in Business and Administration,  MIP

Phone: 0039 0223993972

Fax: 0039 0323992710

Mobile: 0039 3387159654

Skype: crossi73

Web page: http://www.dig.polimi.it/index.php?id=308&tx_wfqbe_pi1[id]=52

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