Call for Papers

Contemporary societies structurally and persistently offer fewer opportunities for economic and social advancement to groups like women, LGTBIQ+ people, ethnic minorities, refugees and recent immigrants, people afflicted by intergenerational poverty and lower socio-economic status, and other-abled individuals. Members of these groups, to varying degrees, experience a greater distance to funders, power brokers, mentors, and role models, thus finding it more difficult to achieve self-advancement and to appropriately resource their life projects (OECD, 2023). Entrepreneurship is often heralded as an emancipatory vehicle for these groups, with optimistic voices highlighting its generative, creative, and liberating qualities (Bakker & McMullen, 2023).
 
However, entrepreneurship also has a darker, often exclusionary side. Entrepreneurship enthusiasts often gloss over issues like perennial assaults on entrepreneurial agency, lasting effects of disadvantaged starting positions, and the persistent biases and stereotypes with which even successful entrepreneurs from disadvantaged groups continue to be confronted (Conti et al., 2022). Moreover, entrepreneurship as a social process can also set in motion exclusionary forces in its own right, such as the creation of new status hierarchies with deleterious effects for those at the bottom, entrepreneurs becoming ‘wedged’ between the social world from which they came and the social circles they seek to join, and the emergence of incompatible role expectations (Hall et al., 2012). So how can entrepreneurship be transformed into a truly inclusive force, and how can its associated exclusionary dynamics be contained?
 
The purpose of this sub-theme is to bring together scholars with an interest in inclusive entrepreneurship, such as necessity entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, refugee entrepreneurship, immigrant entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and other-abled entrepreneurship (e.g., Evans, 1989; Lawrence et al., 2023; O’Donnell et al., 2023; Rocha & van Praag, 2020; Verheul et al., 2015), to examine three lines of inquiry.
 
First, in line with the Colloquium theme, we foreground the role human capital factors like creativity play in helping inclusive entrepreneurs leverage creative problem-solving to survive, subsist and hopefully thrive (Ward, 2004). It is often argued that their ingenuity is born out of scarcity, whether due to poverty, resource limitations, or social exclusion. This leads to questions such as:

• What novel solutions do these entrepreneurs devise?

• How do they turn resource constraints into fruitful sources for building new ventures?

• Do creativity and related faculties have a different meaning for necessity entrepreneurs than for opportunity entrepreneurs?

• And how can entrepreneurs nurture their creative potential under conditions of relative depravation?

 
Second, we focus attention on the role of social-structural factors in navigating the inclusionary and exclusionary dynamics surrounding entrepreneurship. Marginalized groups often face explicitly social constraints when seeking to leverage their creativity and other faculties to thrive as entrepreneurs (Guzman & Kacperczyk, 2019).

• With rising inequality, what are pathways to harness creative capacity and entrepreneurship more generally for the greater social good rather than advantage for a few?

• How do inequality, discrimination, and lack of opportunity structures impact creativity for inclusive ends?

• And in which ways are creativity and entrepreneurship used to address the challenges faced by structurally marginalized communities?

 
Third, we will open up conversations regarding policy implications. Policy makers must shed their naivete and unfounded optimism about entrepreneurship. Evidence suggests that entrepreneurship often works better as a tool for macro-economic development than as a tool for social participation and inclusion (Shepherd, 2019). Despite this, neo-liberal discourse is often prone to promoting entrepreneurship as an ideological alternative to the political responsibility of caring for societies’ most disenfranchised members, even in light of mounting evidence that entrepreneurship cannot categorically live up to this lofty expectation.

• So, what is the right mix of policies promoting entrepreneurship and offering other livelihood opportunities?

• Which interventions ‘work’ to make entrepreneurship more inclusive?

• How can entrepreneurs be lifted out of the informal sector and directed towards honest and decent work conditions?

 
In this sub-theme, in the spirit of inclusivity, we want to encourage exchange between scholars from different specializations within the broader management field (e.g., entrepreneurship, organization theory, innovation studies, organizational sociology) using a variety of methodological approaches (e.g., ethnographies, experiments, surveys, intervention studies, micro-census approaches) and theoretical frameworks (e.g., social identity theory, feminist theory, endemic and grounded theories). We are open to both empirical and conceptual contributions.
 

References

• Bakker, R. M., & McMullen, J. S. (2023). Inclusive entrepreneurship: A call for a shared theoretical conversation about unconventional entrepreneurs. Journal of Business Venturing, 38(1).

• Conti, R., Kacperczyk, O., & Valentini, G. (2022). Institutional protection of minority employees and entrepreneurship: Evidence from the LGBT Employment Non‐Discrimination Acts. Strategic Management Journal, 43(4), 758-791.
• Evans, M. D. R. (1989). Immigrant entrepreneurship: Effects of ethnic market size and isolated labor pool. American Sociological Review, 54(6), 950-962.
• Guzman, J., & Kacperczyk, O. (2019). Gender gap in entrepreneurship. Research Policy, 48(7), 1666-1680.
• Hall, J., Matos, S., Sheehan, L., & Silvestre, B. (2012). Entrepreneurship and innovation at the base of the pyramid: a recipe for inclusive growth or social exclusion? Journal of Management Studies, 49(4), 785-812.
• Lawrence, T. B., Schlindwein, E., Jalan, R., & Heaphy, E. D. (2023). Organizational body work: Efforts to shape human bodies in organizations. Academy of Management Annals, 17(1), 37-73.
• Rocha, V., & Van Praag, M. (2020). Mind the gap: The role of gender in entrepreneurial career choice and social influence by founders. Strategic Management Journal, 41(5), 841-866.
• O’Donnell, P., Leger, M., O’Gorman, C., & Clinton, E. (2023). Necessity Entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Annals (forthcoming).
• OECD/European Commission (2023), The Missing Entrepreneurs 2023: Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment, OECD Publishing, Paris.
• Shepherd, D. A. (2019). Researching the dark side, downside, and destructive side of entrepreneurship: It is the compassionate thing to do!. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(3), 217-220.
• Verheul, I., Block, J., Burmeister-Lamp, K., Thurik, R., Tiemeier, H., & Turturea, R. (2015). ADHD-like behavior and entrepreneurial intentions. Small Business Economics, 45, 85-101.
• Ward, T. B. (2004). Cognition, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 19(2), 173-188.
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