Guest Editors:Jon Carr, North Carolina State University
Andrew Corbett, Babson College
Crystal Hoyt, University of Richmond
Franz Kellermanns, of North Carolina at Charlotte
Brad Kirkman, North Carolina State University
Jeff Pollack, North Carolina State University
JMS Editor: Corinne Post, Lehigh University
Background to Special Issue
Although recent work has explored the topic of strategic leadership in entrepreneurial contexts at a more macro level (e.g., Special Issue in Journal of Management Studies; Simsek, Jansen, Minichilli, & Escriba-Esteve, 2015), there is a fundamental shortcoming that remains unaddressed with regards to leadership research within entrepreneurship. Research scholars have continued to treat the context of entrepreneurship as a special situation where mainstream leadership research can be applied. For example, findings have examined how CEOs behavior affects managers in an entrepreneurship context (Kang, Solomon, & Choi, 2015).
However, we contend that mainstream leadership research and approaches may not be ideally suited to studying what happens in the very early stages of nascent entrepreneurship, or what happens as the venture grows. For example, in the very early stages of the opportunity identification process, there are often no formal followers, yet the resource needs of the venture may require the engagement and leadership of informal partners to address opportunity-related requirements. Likewise, traditional views on leadership are not well-suited to exploring how an idea transforms into an opportunity. Overall, extant work falls short of being able to inform theory and practice about how an individual or team engages in leadership behaviors that take a venture from the opportunity identification stage, through the opportunity exploration and
subsequent exploitation (e.g., launch) stages.
Scholars have worked to highlight the areas where leadership research and entrepreneurship research potentially intersect (e.g., vision, influence, leading in changing contexts, planning) as well as how the domains are similar and different (e.g., Cogliser & Brigham, 2004; Vecchio, 2003). Yet, the common thread in this line of thinking is that leadership research is a mature field, and can thus inform the newer domain of entrepreneurship in some novel way. We contend that it is time for the field of entrepreneurship to put forward new theories of leadership at the individual and team level, both empirically supported as well as conceptually-focused, which can redefine leadership research (and entrepreneurship research) in the 21st Century.
Accordingly, the purpose of this special issue is to bring together the best minds across various fields to address the issue of what specifically constitutes the individual and team-related challenges, processes, and opportunities related to leading the entrepreneurial venture. We hope to attract exemplary empirical research—both quantitative and qualitative—that showcases unique empirical strategies and novel data sources. We are also very interested in research that develops provocative theoretical contributions and/or integrates findings and theories across multiple disciplines and perspectives. Overall, we hope this special issue in Journal of Management Studies will advance the field, both in terms of management theory as well as in practice. Some possible broad research questions that might be addressed by contributions in this special issue include:
• What does it mean to lead a nascent venture in which there are no followers? How can one person, or a team, leverage the newness and smallness of the emerging venture to attract its earliest followers (e.g., customers, employees, suppliers, financiers)? What does leadership look like for emerging ventures where entrepreneurs have primarily external stakeholders and where no actual followers exist yet?
• How does an individual need to adapt, over time, to lead a venture during the opportunity identification, opportunity exploration, and opportunity exploitation stages of the entrepreneurial life Can case studies, or other methods, provide insight into successful individuals (or teams) who have done this compared to those who have failed?
• Why might an individual who is the founder be advantageous to have as a leader of a new venture? Why might an individual who is the founder not be an ideal candidate to run the venture once it is launched (Chen & Thompson, 2015; Pollock, Fund, & Baker, 2009)? Might different individuals play important leadership roles at different points along the entrepreneurial process?
• How do the prosocial motivations of the founder in the venture and the procedural fairness of the founding individual or team influence followership (e.g., employees, customers, suppliers, financiers)? How might the lack of existing schemas for new ventures contribute to a leader’s ethical decision making?
• What’s the role of risk-taking and confidence (actual and perceived) in leadership in entrepreneurial contexts? How do risk-taking and confidence differ among leaders in entrepreneurial ventures across different nations and cultures?
• How might judgments of an entrepreneurial leader’s warmth and competence, two core dimensions in judging leaders, differ among and matter for various followers from financiers to employees? Do these dimensions hold across cultures and nations for the followers of leaders in entrepreneurial ventures?
• What does leadership look like in ventures started by an individual entrepreneur versus those started by entrepreneurial communities? How might a compelling vision of the venture inspire leadership and followership?
• How might identity-based expectations (for example, gender, nationality, and race) and
displays influence the confidence that various stakeholders have in the entrepreneurial leaders’ ability to be successful?
• How, and under what conditions, do leaders’ communication and management of their affective states impact the entrepreneurial process in terms of leadership?
Submission Process and Deadlines
• Manuscripts will be reviewed according to the JMS double-blind review process.
• Submissions should be prepared using the JMS Manuscript Preparation Guidelines (see: http://www.socadms.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/JMSManuscript-Preparation-Guidelines.pdf)
• The deadline for submission is 1st June 2018.
• Manuscripts should be submitted by e-mail to business.jms@durham.ac.uk
• For informal related to the Special Issue, proposed topics potential fit, and/or the conferences below, please contact the guest editors at jmsleadingent@gmail.com.