Call for Papers

Entrepreneurship has become a key topic in both scholarly discussion and society at large. While the focus of discussion and ambition has often been on start-ups, in reality entrepreneurship often occurs from within existing organizations or in close association (Sørensen & Fassiotto, 2011). Understanding how established organizations influence entrepreneurial activity, encompassing the formation of new ventures and transitions from an organizational role to venture founder, is therefore the focus of growing scholarly interest (Burton et al., 2016; Hoang & Gimeno, 2010; Dobrev & Barnett, 2005).
 
The interaction between existing organizations and entrepreneurial activity touches upon a variety of themes. First, many entrepreneurs begin as employees in an organization, raising the question regarding the impact of entrepreneurship on the organization and also how organizations manage founding activity in more or less constructive ways (Campbell et al., 2012). Second, more recently many organizations have formally embraced entrepreneurial methods to stimulate innovation. They have built accelerators, innovation labs and other entities that use approaches akin to independent entrepreneurship to spur intraorganizational innovation (Cohen et al., 2019). Third, established organizations interact with start-up organizations with varying degrees of intensity, from arms-length collaborations to full-scale integration into the organizational mainstream. Fourth, different kinds of private and public organizations are establishing entities for addressing social issues by means of new ventures, often around a particular social impact theme (Tracey & Stott, 2016).
 
Possible topics for submission include:

• How the structure of workplaces and social relations that channel resources, rewards, and opportunities can shed light on the role of organizations as contexts that facilitate or stymie entrepreneurial activity (Kacperczyk, 2012).

• Why and how different patterns emerge in the transition from an organizational role to the role of founder and venture team member - including hybrid roles that combine elements of both.

• How organizational influences on entrepreneurship vary across social, political, and institutional domains. For example, government and other public sector organizations are encourage entrepreneurial ‘spin outs’ as a way of promoting creative approaches to public service delivery. How does this differ from commercial entrepreneurship?

• Incubators, accelerators and labs are often promoted as a panacea for new venture creation (Tracey et al., 2018). But we know relatively little about how these organizations form, the experiences of entrepreneurs who belong to them, or their effectiveness in supporting entrepreneurship.

• The creation of new ventures from inside established organizations raises critical questions with respect to culture, identity and identification (Lounsbury et al., 2019). For example, how does the parent organization influence the goals, norms and values of the new venture? How do new ventures position themselves strategically in relation to the parent organizations? And how do entrepreneurs manage identification tensions when transitioning from an established organization to a new venture?

• How start-up propositions are integrated (or not) into the organizational mainstream, given that new ventures often pose challenges to parent or sponsor organizations as their propositions may clash with established managerial cognitions and operating routines.

• The institutional pressures experienced by new ventures when created from inside established organizations, and how these differ from new ventures created independently.

 
We welcome diverse theoretical perspectives, including papers that draw on organizational theory, strategy, sociology, social psychology, and economics. We are open to a range of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and are particularly interested in studies that incorporate novel data, mixed methods, and span multiple levels of analysis to enrich the empirical base of research in this area.
 
 

References

• Burton, M.D., Sørensen, J.B., Dobrev, S.D. (2016): “A Careers Perspective on Entrepreneurship.” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40 (2), 237–247.
• Campbell, B.A., Ganco, M., Franco, A.M., & Agarwal, R. (2012): “Who leaves, where to, and why worry? Employee mobility, entrepreneurship and effects on source firm performance.” Strategic Management Journal, 33 (1), 65–87.
• Cohen, S.L., Bingham, C.B., & Hallen, B.L. (2018): “The Role of Accelerator Designs in Mitigating Bounded Rationality in New Ventures.” Administrative Science Quarterly, first published online on July 23, 2018, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839218782131
• Dobrev, S.D., & Barnett, W.P. (2005): “Organizational roles and transition to entrepreneurship.” Academy of Management Journal, 48 (3), 433–449.
• Hoang, H., Gimeno, J. (2010): “Becoming a founder: How founder role identity affects entrepreneurial transitions and persistence in founding.” Journal of Business Venturing, 25 (1), 41–53.
• Kacperczyk, A.J. (2012): “Opportunity structures in established firms: Entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship in mutual funds.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 57 (3), 484–521.
• Lounsbury, M., Cornelissen, J., Granqvist, N., & Grodal, S. (2019): “Culture, innovation and entrepreneurship.” Innovation, Organization & Entrepreneurship, 21 (1), 1–12.
• Sørensen, J.B., & Fassiotto, M.A. (2011): “Organizations as fonts of entrepreneurship.” Organization Science, 22 (5), 1322–1331.
• Tracey, P., & Stott, N. (2017): “Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of organizing and innovating.” Innovation: Organization & Management, 19 (1), 51–60.
• Tracey, P., Dalpiaz, E., & Phillips, N. (2018): “Fish out of water: translation, legitimation and new venture creation.” Academy of Management Journal, 61 (5), 1627–1666.
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