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*** Apologies for cross posting ***

Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to the upcoming WORKSHOP ON OUTLIERS 2017 taking place in Bolzano, Italy on December 1st and 2nd, 2017.

We would appreciate if you would distribute this CfP to colleagues in your network who may also be interested in this topic.

Kind regards,

Christian Linder

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Building on the success of the SMS Extension Conference 2016 on

"Outliers: How Small Differences Move the World",

we would like to invite you to the upcoming

WORKSHOP ON OUTLIERS 2017

at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano (Italy)

December 1^st and 2^nd, 2017

Organizers:

Christian Lechner, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

Elisa Villani, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

Alessandro Narduzzo, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

Christian Linder, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy & ESCP Europe, UK

Overview

The goal of the 2017 workshop is to investigate these actors in entrepreneurship and strategic management, who are an exception to the rule: the so called-outliers. Outliers are interesting subjects for these fields because they constitute new, often efficient solutions outside the norm. Outliers are a source of high creativity, find new ways of addressing problems and develop an idiosyncratic approach to a common problem. While outliers appear to capture over-proportional power in different social settings, literature on tipping points as well as change management seem to suggest that small differences lead to over-proportional different outcomes. 

When strategy is about understanding why some firms perform (much) better than others, then strategy research should dedicate more attention to studying these outliers than the variances close to the mean. The consequence especially for research on entrepreneurial strategy seems to be that researchers need to reflect on different quantitative methods and focus on different phenomena in order to study outliers. 

Similarly, if we assume that small differences can lead to over-proportional effects, the differences between firms in using resources and competences might be minimal. Or to put it differently: successful and less successful firms might have many factors in common and only differ (slightly) in some factors. The difference might actually be located in distinct combinations of the same factors available to all firms. Emerging research on configurational approaches also support the idea that small changes in configuration account for immense differences. Configurational approaches assume that there are different factor combinations that can lead to the same result.

The objective of the '2017 Workshop on Outliers' is to bring together scholars who are interested in and may report on research or research opportunities of uncommon success and investigate the question of how to deal with them from a methodological point of view.

Questions of interest include but are not restricted to the following:

·         What are possible theoretical approaches to the outliers phenomenon in entrepreneurship and strategic management?

·         How can we explain small changes or differences that lead to over-proportional different outcomes?

·         What are the methodological implications and future research agenda concerning the study of outliers by addressing questions related to power law distributions?

·         Do outliers challenge the basic assumptions in entrepreneurship and strategic management theory?

·         What are the implications of periphery as a place for creativity for entrepreneurship and strategic management theory?

·         What are the limitations of commonly used methods to understand outliers in entrepreneurship and strategic management? 

Abstract Submission Deadline: September 20^th, 2017

We invite you to submit a one-page abstract excluding references by no later than September 20^th, 2017 via email to Christian Linder (christian.linder@unibz.it). Contributions will be expected to provide new theoretical and/or empirical studies that will connect the emerging field of outliers with entrepreneurship, innovation, or strategy.   

Questions and informal enquiries should be directed to: Brigitte Thurner (brigitte.thurner@unibz.it)