Call for papers:

Special Issue on “The Role of Networks in Entrepreneurial Performance”

Papers may be of any type – empirical studies, conceptual papers, reviews, or research and teaching notes

Deadline for final submissions is Saturday, 1^st Sept 2012. Papers will be published in 2013.

Networks have long been recognized as being important for SMEs, whether as sources of new product development (Lipparini & Sobrero, 1994) or as a means of accessing customers and distribution channels (Lee, Park, Yoon, & Park, 2010) for new products and services. Jack, Drakopoulou, Dodd & Anderson (2008) argue that networks are essential to the entrepreneurial process in that they ‘provide a framework for processes aiming at organizing resources according to opportunities’. Yet we still know little about how entrepreneurial firms discriminate between and use networks, and which aspects of a chosen network lead to superior (or alternatively poorer) performance.  SMEs and micro-sized firms cannot, normally, access all the resources they need in-house and because of their small size they often have to source these externally. These resources include both physical goods and intangible resources such as knowledge. There are skills and capabilities involved in both learning about these resources and obtaining them at an advantage, for example gaining privileged access to low prices or favourable distribution channels, or to knowledge that others cannot obtain (Ruzzier, Hisrich, & Antoncic, 2006).

We know that social capital is an important factor in the building and maintaining of helpful business relationships in some parts of the world (for example, guanxi in China, Wasta in Arab countries, or the network of businesses that supply Benetton in Italy or Inditex in Spain) (Li and Liu, 2010). Yet as Anderson & Jack (2002) suggest, “the nature, role and application of social capital in an entrepreneurial context have not been extensively explored”. Are these networks a source of growth for firms within them, or blockages to innovation? How do foreign entrepreneurs access such networks? Tightly-knit relationships can constrain innovation by restricting access to new knowledge but at the same time can enable it through constructing an efficient channel for new ideas to be processed. An important question is whether there are specific sectors in which the benefits of strong relationships outweigh any disadvantages; and vice versa. Furthermore, what are the etiquettes (Anderson & Jack, 2002) of social capital formation, particularly in global industries?

Successful network participants are likely to have specific attributes that enable them to form trusting (affective or cognitive) relationships (see, for example, Tong, 2006). These attributes are likely to differ around the world. They are also likely to vary according to the motives for forming a relationship, whether it is a risky relationship in which the outcomes are uncertain, as in the development of radical new products, or a joint venture where the alliances are unbalanced in terms of the bases of power held by the partners, or a relationship where the outcomes are more predictable (Smith and Lohrke, 2008). We also still know little about how entrepreneurial partners engage with networks whose participants have very different characteristics to their own.

There are other rather surprising gaps in knowledge. For example, little attention has been paid to the network development and networking activities of female and ethnic entrepreneurs, and even less to whether they participate in certain sectors, and to what effect, for example in agri-businesses or technology-based SMEs. Typically female entrepreneurs have different approaches to network participation compared with males (Baker, Aldrich, & Nina, 1997). We speculate that the role of females are likely to be different in different industries, and different geographical locations, and perhaps also in different roles (Klyver, 2011). This is important because recent research (for example, Hampton, Coope and McGowan, 2009) suggests that women are a significant yet untapped source of entrepreneurial potential. A better understanding of issues surrounding the activities of female entrepreneurs would also help identify ways in which others might be encouraged to engage in new venturing. Other personal attributes likely to be relevant in the forming of network relationships and which are currently not well understood, include class (Anderson and Miller, 2003), and educational level (Ibarra, 1993).

From this brief overview of the literature we can identify a number of potentially fruitful questions for investigation, including (but not limited to):

·         The role of absorptive capacity in SMEs’ ability to access and utilise externally-held resources

·         Global entrepreneurship in the smart digital age

·         Networks and family businesses

·         Capabilities, competences and tools that might be needed for small firms to use networks effectively

·         The role of social capital in entrepreneurial success

·          The process and effect/s of SMEs’ networks in the new product development process

·         The influence of network participation in design outcomes

·         Attributes of effective boundary-spanners

·         The extent to which government agencies may create effective entrepreneurial networks

·          Collaborative work and the role of networks in co-creation

·         Networking as opportunity brokering

Indicative references

Anderson, A., & Jack, S. (2002). The articulation of social capital in entrepreneurial networks: A glue or a lubricant? Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 14(3), 193-21

Anderson, A., & Miller, C. (2003). Class matters: Human and social capital in the entrepreneurial process. Journal of Socio-Economics, 32(1), 17-36.

Baker, T., Aldrich, H., & Nina, I. (1997). Invisible entrepreneurs: The neglect of women business owners by mass media and scholarly journals in the USA. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 9(3), 221-238.

Bradley S., Wiklund, J., & Shepherd D.  (2011). Swinging a double-edged sword: The effect of slack on entrepreneurial management and growth. Journal of Business Venturing, 26(5), 537-554

Smith, D., & Lohrke, F. (2008). Entrepreneurial network development: Trusting in the process, Journal of Business Research, 61(4), 315-322.

Hampton, A., Coope, S., & McGowan, P. (2009). Female entrepreneurial networks and networking activity in technology-based ventures: An exploratory study. International Small Business Journal, 27(2), 193-214.

Ibarra, H. (1993). Personal networks of women and minorities in management: A conceptual framework. The Academy of Management Review, 18(1), 56-87.

Klyver, K. (2011). Gender differences in entrepreneurial networks: Adding an alter perspective, Gender in Management: An International Journal, 26(5), 332-350.

Lee, S-J., Park, G-M., Yoon, B-Y., & Park, J-W. (2010). Open innovation in SMEs- An intermediated network model. Research Policy, 39(2), 290-300.

Lipparini, A., & Sobrero, M. (1994). The glue and the pieces: Entrepreneurship and innovation in small-firm networks, Journal of Business Venturing, 9(2), 125-140.

Jack, S., Drakopoulou, A., Dodd, S., & Anderson, A. (2008). Change and the development of entrepreneurial networks over time: A processual perspective. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 20(2), 125-15.

Ruzzier, M., Hisrich, R., & Antoncic, B. (2006). SME internationalization research: Past, present, and future. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(4), 476-497.

Tong, C-S. (2006). The opportunity recognition framework of Hong Kong SMEs. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, <http://repository.lib.polyu.edu.hk/jspui/handle/10397/1058>.

Special Issue Editors

Please send papers to any one of the following Co-Editors of this Special Issue:

Professor Jai Beom Kim  (caifave@gmail.com)

Dr. Wilson Ng (WilsonIng@aol.com)

Professor Alison Rieple (ali.rieple@gmail.com)

Submission and informal enquiries

Please direct informal inquiries to Prof. Alison Rieple

Full papers should be submitted as e-mail attachments, preferably in MS Word, at the latest by 1^st September 2012.  Papers should normally be between 5000 and 8000 words in length, excluding references and any Appendices and Figures.

Please ensure that you follow the IEMJ house style outlined at: http://www.springer.com/business+%26+management/entrepreneurship/journal/11365

NB.  Papers should not be submitted through the Springer online system but sent direct to one of the Special Issue Editors.

• Shane, S. (2012). “Reflections on the 2010 AMR Decade Award: Delivering on the Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research.” Academy of Management Review, 37 (1): 10-20.
• Venkataraman, S., Sarasvathy, S. D., et al. (2012). “Reflections on the 2010 AMR Decade Award: Whither the Promise? Moving Forward with Entrepreneurship as a Science of the Artificial.” Academy of Management Review, 37 (1): 21-33.

Note that the second article also has Sarasvathy on board, so I imagine that some insights from the philosophy of pragmatism might have also seeped into that one.

Hat tip to the Organizations and Markets blog, where Peter Lewin provides a summary of Shane’s argument. I find it interesting how much the concept of entrepreneurship in the discussion is underpinned by the acceptance of the self-world model and the assumption that therefore the main problem of entrepreneurship is also how the individual entrepreneur accesses and interprets the world. It is precisely on this issue that alternative ontologies (such as actor-network theory or object-oriented ontology) could give rise to some interesting contributions in the field of entrepreneurship.

P.S. In fact the NO-THING PERSONAL? Workshop next week at the LSE will be also looking at the role of the individual, but through the object-orientated lens of ANT-ish economic sociology and anthropology: “What has the detour via things helped us discover about men and women, about individual subjects, about persons?”

The case that is made in these pages is that the role of the government, in the most successful economies, has gone way beyond creating the right infrastructure and setting the rules. It is a leading agent in achieving the type of innovative breakthroughs that allow companies, and economies, to grow, not just by creating the ‘conditions’ that enable innovation.

Rather the state can proactively create strategy around a new high growth area before the potential is understood by the business community (from the internet to nanotechnology), funding the most uncertain phase of the research that the private sector is too risk-averse to engage with, seeking and commissioning further developments, and often even overseeing the commercialisation process. In this sense it has played an important entrepreneurial role.

From Lucy to Language to a Culture of Enterprise and Innovation

 This exhibition is inspired partly by the BBC’s popular History of the World in a Hundred Objects. We take a selected series of objects from the times of human origins up to the modern age, and explore their themes – stone technology, fire, cave art, and complex worlds – and add to these seminars on key aspects of enterprise and innovation. The exhibits show how objects are at the very core of what it is to be human, and integral to the networks of relationships we call communities, societies, organizations and enterprises. Rarely are social networks simply that – they are more truly sociotechnical. They are enabled and held together by invented and engineered artefacts. Every artefact, invention or artwork, or corporate brand logo embodies an opportunity to learn about culture at the level of nation, region, or even an individual enterprise.

We particularly welcome in depth empirical studies of marketization processes in new areas and of major changes in existing markets. These settings provide excellent opportunities for reflection regarding the ordering devices, objects, models, representations, and tools that are set up and employed to propagate certain market forms over others, as well as the morality and values that underpin those instruments. In short, this workshop will revolve around the major questions of:

• What are the limits of market models and their realization?
• What practices are involved in (dis)ordering markets?
• What kinds of economic orders (markets or others) result from these efforts?
• What are the ‘civilizing’ effects of these orders, on markets, market actors and societies at large?
• What relationships exist between values realized in markets (for instance via the price mechanism) and the values underlying the marketization effort?
• What moral orders are used to justify marketization efforts?

Organising committee: Susi Geiger, University College Dublin, Debbie Harrison, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo Hans Kjellberg, Stockholm School of Economics  and Alexandre Mallard, Ecole des Mines ParisTech

“Private business was not favourably looked upon in Cuba just a year ago. An entrepreneur was even viewed as a criminal, a delinquent,” says Father Yosvani Carvajal, director of the centre. “Today businessmen are viewed as contributing to society and the economy, but with what tools? We are going to provide those tools … how to start and run a business, marketing and the like.”

Cuba opens doors to MBA studies – FT

Here the complete call:

Dear Friends and Colleagues Critters,
We are kindly inviting you to participate in our Panel Symposium at this year’s AoM in San Antonio. This panel symposium aims to challenge existing theories and approaches to urban development available in the mainstream entrepreneurship field through critical perspectives. By highlighting different reasons, aims and practices based on which diverse individuals, groups and communities engage in entrepreneuring activities for the purpose of urban development, we challenge the underlying economic assumptions guiding entrepreneurship theory and research. To this effect, our symposium aims to promote discussion around entrepreneurship as social change by focusing on its sociocultural, political, and economic drivers. The panel participants will focus specifically on issues such as food safety and urban activism, immigrant and transnational links in urban development, indigenous entrepreneurship in urban contexts, individual choice in social change for urban development, and questions around who reaps the benefits of urban development. Our goal is to foster conversation around these topics as well as discuss how critical perspectives can be utilized to redirect theorizing and research in the entrepreneurship field.
See below for a  session guideline with the different issues to be discussed. 
Cheers,
Arturo E. Osorio & Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Program Session #: 1581 | Submission: 16493 | Sponsor(s): (ENT)
Scheduled: Tuesday, Aug 16 2011 3:00PM - 4:30PM at San Antonio Convention Center in Room 007 C
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT and Urban Development
Organizer: Banu Ozkazanc-Pan; U. of Massachusetts, Boston 
Organizer: Arturo E Osorio; Rutgers U., Newark 
Panelist: Daniel Hjorth; Copenhagen Business School 
Panelist: Christopher Wheat; Rutgers U., Newark 
Panelist: Deirdre Tedmanson; U. of South Australia 
Panelist: Caroline Essers; Nijmegen U.
SESSION OUTLINE
1) General Introduction
2) First set of panelists: Different communities, entrepreneurship, and urban development
a) Deirdre Tedmanson: Indigenous Non-economic driven entrepreneurship development
b) Banu Özkazanç-Pan: Exploration of the intersections of globalization, immigration, and entrepreneuring to demonstrate transnational connections and urban development
c) Christopher Wheat: Accrual of benefits from urban spaces: opportunities for outsiders or locals
3) Second set of panelists: Urban entrepreneurship: Different aims and outcomes
a) Daniel Hjorth: Connecting entrepreneurship with the social in the context of urban development to achieve social transformation
b) Arturo E. Osorio: The role of natural science scientists as urban entrepreneurs solving day-to-day urban problems
4) Q&A
5) Conclusions
Search Terms: Critical perspective, Urban development, Social change

Worms forced to reproduce asexually succumbed to a nasty bacterial infection and died.

The researchers say the results are the most convincing evidence to date for a key theory in evolutionary biology.

The theory holds that sex evolved because it lets organisms reshuffle their genes into new combinations to stay a step ahead of parasites.

Reproducing asexually – where organisms clone themselves – makes much more sense; there is no need for an organism to search and seduce a mate, fight off competitors, or risk contracting a sexually transmitted disease. (…)

And yet sex exists; the vast majority of animals and plants reproduce this way.

The link to entrepreneurship and actor-network theory–our main interests on this blog–lies in evolutionary theory. Schumpeter drew on biological evolutionary theory for his definition of entrepreneurship as the creation of new combinations. Latour also described himself as a Darwinian philosopher at the February 2008 Harman Review event. In The Science of Passionate Interests, Latour and Lépinay cite Tarde’s critique of Darwin’s evolutionary theory:

His mistake [...] seems to me to have been in relying far more on the struggle for existence, a biological form of opposition, than on cross-breeding and hybridization, biological forms of adaptation and harmony. [...] And [...] a fertile hybridization, as an exception, is far neater than a hereditary accumulation of small advantageous variations, through competition and selection, to explain the formation of new types of life. (p. 36)

Later on Latour and Lépinay provide another Tarde citation:

And, certainly, it is good that Darwin’s genius pushed this paradox to its limit, for, at present, it is still established that natural selection, that excellent agent of purifying elimination, does not create anything and posits that which it claims to explain–living renovations–in the form of individual variations, and that the secret of these creations of life are hidden from our eyes in the depths of the fertilized egg instead of consisting in the outer shock of organisms fighting each other… (p. 44)

It does sound like the above research findings about the sex life of worms justify Tarde’s insight. What does all this mean for entrepreneurship though?

Schumpeter makes a sharp distinction between entrepreneurship as innovation (the creation of new combinations), and the mere reproduction of existing business models. Using the biological metaphor, it seems entrepreneurs producing innovations are reproducing sexually, while managers who replicate existing business models are reproducing asexually. Who or what would be though the parasites that infect non-innovative firms?

The problem with making this sharp distinction between differentiating and reproducing firms, as I’ve suggested in earlier posts, is that it ignores the fact that for the innovation to survive it actually needs adopters, those that ‘merely’ replicate the innovation (which is of course unlikely to be just a mere adoption and is probably more like an adaptation of the innovation). Although one could argue that adopters of an innovation are part of the overall wave or network of innovation, and therefore they are also guests at the sex party. Who are then those unfortunate asexually reproducing firms then, and what sort of parasites are causing their demise? How to identify both?

Maybe this is not as difficult as it sounds. Even from a pop culture point of view, entrepreneurial ventures and entrepreneurs are celebrated as sexy (Just think of Richard Branson’s Virgin, a company name that is almost an ironic reference to the sexy nature of entrepreneurship). Working for a start-up is risky and dangerous but also exciting and sexy, as opposed to working for a boring firm that is engaged in the repetition of formulas. Still, don’t we need boring firms and asexual reproducers as well to maintain and sustain the stability of the economic environment, which then creates the conditions for sexy entrepreneurship?

(In any case, I do hope all this talk about sex is not going to result in an orgy of spammers.)

2ND WORKSHOP ON IN-DEPTH STUDIES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Brussels, 8-9 December 2011

In this second workshop of qualitative studies on in-depth studies on entrepreneurship we welcome papers that deal with entrepreneurship and small-business management and use qualitative research methodology. Especially papers with some methodological appraisal and use of innovative research approaches are in focus.

Over the past 15-20 years business economics research has experienced a rise in approaches labeled qualitative. This is the case at least in the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe. Many of these studies share similar challenges and opportunities: the position of the researcher in the research process, the special features of data gathering and, even more importantly, the analysis and interpretations of the data in the search for new understanding and contributions to the field. Positioning oneself as a researcher in the study, sometimes being part of field one studies himself/herself, as well as various ethical considerations are everyday life questions are faced by researchers during the process of research.

The production of knowledge and scientific “facts” has lately gained growing attention in scientific discussions and also in the study of enterprising and small business. From one point of angle, studying business and enterprises this even more apt to this pondering, because enterprises cannot be perceived directly, experienced as such, but only through theory and conceptualizations. The many lenses of seeing organizations are evident and have a profound impact on how we approach them, how we form the study design and not at least, which kind of study results we gain.

The whole field of organizations study is therefore highly determined by earlier knowledge, metaphors and concepts. Moreover, the position of the researcher in the study process is focused, and the whole process where the studies get done are seen in the vain of complex interactional relations where the subject of the research in fact gets done, and is not there ‘as such’. These tendencies open up room for researchers, who use qualitative approach, especially in-depth studies and cases as an empirical basis of their investigations.

Because qualitative studies do not usually start from a strict theory or model, reflexivity on the researcher’s part is required from the very beginning. The qualitative approach has sometimes been criticized for not being able to add to the knowledge in the studied field and ending up with isolated bits of knowledge and pieces of understanding. Formost it is easy to reply to these doubts. For instance we can say that the aim of this research usually is to outline contextual knowledge and overrid the requirements of generalizations, and that the subjectivity of the researcher is not a threat but a necessary starting point for a good social science based analysis. However, self-reflection is needed also in using qualitative research methodology and some of the critics should be taken seriously. For instance, without any methodological knowledge the researcher might be attracted to use qualitative research and do its data analysis in naïve ways. Questioning one’s own knowledge creation basics is part of good research.

In many US journals of management the majority of work is done using the quantitative approach, but more and more take in also qualitative good research papers. As well there is a growing number of journals that are based on qualitative research. Moreover, the polarity of quantitative and qualitative does not exist in a pure form but many ways is a simplification. This has always been the tradition in business case studies, which use several kinds of data and its analysis, qualitative as well as quantitative. The main aim is to understand the ‘case’ however it is restricted, and it is not just the use or non-use of numbers that differentiates research. The whole research process is important, starting from covering data collection, and ending to analysis and interpretation using also earlier theory.

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite papers in the broad field of in-depth studies on entrepreneurship and small-business management. Themes include:

• Findings of studies on entrepreneurship and small—business management using qualitative research methodology
• Innovative approaches in qualitative research
• In-depth studies and mixed methods
• How to gain good theory out of qualitative in-depth studies? The challenge of theory building
• Position of the researcher in the research process
• Reflexivity and the production of the research subject
• Subjectivity, rich data and analysis
• The research community and the legitimization process of the study
• Companies as partners: challenge and ethical questions
• Using in-depth interviews
• Diversity aspects: gender, ethnicity, age, culture as a basis of diversity
• Female managers as leaders in small business
• Cultures of companies as a in-depth study object
• Triangulation and other sources for reliability
• Study process: Thoughts on data collection, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions

To present a paper authors should submit a 2 page abstract that will be refereed by October 1 , 2011

Author notification will be sent before 15 October, 2011

Deadline for full papers is 18 November, 2011

CHAIRPERSONS

• Iiris AALTIO, Jyväskylä University and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland
• Elisabeth SUNDIN, Linköping University, Sweden
• Tarja RÖMER-PAAKKANEN, Jyväskylä University, Finland

More information on how to submit is here.