Call for papers. New advantage and liability sources in entrepreneurial firms:

Group & Organization Management 

Call for Papers for a Special Issue

NEW ADVANTAGE AND LIABILITY SOURCES IN ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRMS: ASSESSING PROGRESS AND EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES

Submission Period: June 30, 2015-August 31, 2015

Guest Editors:

Hans Landström, Lund University Franz Lohrke, Samford University

Background and Special Issue Purpose

2015 marks the 50th anniversary and 2016 the 30th anniversary, respectively, of Stinchcombe’s (1965) landmark work on liabilities of newness and Auster and Aldrich’s (1986) seminal work on liabilities of smallness. Do new ventures (NVs) still face the same daunting survival odds scholars first asserted a half century ago or are they innovative, flexible organizations that attract customers, suppliers, and investors? Are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) unable to compete effectively with or can they respond to changing competitive environments better than their larger counterparts? Extant research provides ample evidence that both these contrasting views may be valid.

On the one hand, scholars have found a positive relationship between firm newness and failure, often referred to as ‘liabilities of newness.’ These findings support the long-standing hypothesis that factors related to newness, such as low organizational legitimacy with external stakeholders, may contribute to high NV financial distress and failure rates (DeVaughn & Leary, 2010). Similarly, scholars have noted that SMEs face size disadvantages (i.e., ‘liabilities of smallness’), including inabilities to capture economies of scale, develop a strong brand name, attract top managerial talent, or gain bargaining power with key stakeholders (Strotmann, 2007).

On the other hand, other theoretical and empirical studies have suggested that NVs and SMEs may actually enjoy important strategic advantages. For example, NVs may enjoy ‘assets of newness’ resulting from high strategic flexibility and attractiveness to early adopters (Choi & Shepherd, 2005). In addition, SMEs may be able to avoid organizational inertia and respond more quickly than large enterprises can to competitive threats in dynamic environments (Chen & Hambrick, 1995).

These latter perspectives may be enhanced by recent innovations and other trends that could boost NV and SME advantages and/or partially mitigate their disadvantages. For example, NVs and SMEs can now build a brand name and find critical human resources talent via social media, access essential software via cloud computing, prototype products with 3D printing, outsource production to overcome capacity constraints, run geographically dispersed operations with virtual teams, and raise capital for new business ideas through crowdfunding. In addition, national and local governments have often tried to support entrepreneurship by passing favorable legislation and establishing incubation facilities. These innovations and policies have lowered industry entry barriers as well as enhanced the ability of NVs and SMEs to compete on a more equal footing with their more established and larger counterparts.

Although research has provided insights into some innovations and trends affecting liabilities of newness and smallness, studies of other topics remain extremely limited. For example, although a large body of work exists examining the value of incubation facilities, only a handful of studies, to date, have examined advantages entrepreneurs can gain from employing social media, 3D printing, virtual teams, and crowdfunding to help overcome their firms’ respective liabilities.

Accordingly, this special issue seeks to examine if and how critical issues related to liabilities of newness and liabilities of smallness have changed, given recent technological innovations and other trends. We believe that a special issue devoted to these topics is especially timely, not only because this research can inform current management theory, policy, and practice but also because it has now been five and three decades, respectively, since the publication of Stinchcombe’s (1965) and Auster and Aldrich’s (1986) seminal works. These anniversaries provide an ideal time to reflect on findings, to date, and examine future research avenues.

Possible Research Questions

For this special issue, we are looking for submissions that provide important conceptual and empirical insights about liabilities of newness or smallness that would be of interest to a wide range of organizational scholars. Appropriate topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Entrepreneurship and innovation: Do NVs and SMEs implement organizational changes required by the advent of new technologies more easily than their older and larger counterparts? How are NVs structurally “imprinted” by their founding during times when new technologies develop? Does adopting new technologies enhance NV or SME innovation? What role does absorptive capacity in these firms have on their ultimate success with innovations? 
• Strategic management: What specific strategies can firms use to overcome liabilities of newness and smallness? How and when can NVs exploit ‘assets of newness’ to develop competitive advantages? How will recent innovations affect the overall entrepreneurship process of opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation? 
• Public policy: How can government policies help mitigate liabilities of newness and smallness? What role do institutions such as business incubator and university technology transfer programs have in reducing these liabilities? How could lower entry barriers resulting from these technologies and trends impact industry structure and, in turn, NV and SME performance? 
• Technology and innovation: What impact will new technologies and trends have on NV and SME access to critical resources such as capital and human resources talent? Can these firms use technologies developed externally to build a sustainable competitive advantage? 
• Social entrepreneurship: Do key success factors for employing new technologies differ between public organizations and private firms? Do non-profits and socially missioned for-profit firms have any advantages or disadvantages relative to traditional for-profit firms in using new technologies like crowdfunding?
• International management and entrepreneurship: How will these innovations impact the process of creating and managing new international ventures? Can small companies employ innovations such as virtual teams to expand their operational scope internationally? 
• Behavioral issues: Are NVs and SMEs with higher entrepreneurial orientation more likely to adopt and successfully exploit new technologies? What linguistic cues and other actions can entrepreneurs use to enhance the probability of successful crowdfunding campaigns? 
• Ethical and legal issues: What ethical issues arise for entrepreneurs when employing technological advances such as 3D printing, social media, and crowdfunding? What impact will these technologies have on the value of patents and copyrights? 

Deadlines, Submission, and Review Process

Submissions should be prepared in accordance with Group & Organization Management guidelines. The submission window will be open between June 30 and August 31, 2015. For additional guidelines, please see ‘Manuscript Submission” at http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal200823/ manuscriptSubmission.

Further Information

For questions regarding the content of this special issue, please contact the guest editors:

• Hans Landström, Lund University, hans.landstrom@fek.lu.se  
• Franz Lohrke, Samford University, ftlohrke@samford.edu

References

• Auster, E. R. & Aldrich, H. (1986). Even dwarfs started small: Liabilities of age and size and their strategic implications. Research in Organizational Behavior, 8: 165-198. 
• Chen, M.-J. & Hambrick, D. C. (1995). Speed, stealth, and selective attack: How small firms differ from large firms in competitive behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 38: 453-482. 
• Choi, Y. R., & Shepherd, D. A. (2005). Stakeholder perceptions of age and other dimensions of newness. Journal of Management, 31, 573-596. 
• DeVaughn, M. L., & Leary, M. M. (2010). Antecedents of failure for newly chartered banks in the U.S. banking industry. Group & Organization Management, 35, 666-695. 
• Stinchcombe, A. (1965). Organizations and social structure. In J. G. March (ed.), Handbook of organizations, pp.142-193. Chicago: Rand McNally. 
• Strotmann, H. (2007). Entrepreneurial survival. Small Business Economics, 28, 84-101.

Call for conference papers: 8th Annual Conference of the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

8th Annual Conference of the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

http://www.aieconference.org

Co-organized by

• National Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Tsinghua University, China
• Technology and Management Centre for Development, Oxford University, UK
• Canada-China Institute for Business and Development, Ryerson University, Canada

Co-Chairs

• Dr. Steven Murphy, Dean, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University
• Dr. Jian Gao, Senior Associate Dean, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
• Dr. Xiaolan Fu, Director, Technology and Management Centre for Development, Oxford University

Call for Proposals:

Ryerson, Tsinghua and Oxford universities are pleased to announce that the 8th Annual Conference for the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (#AIE2015) will be held for the first time in beautiful Toronto, Canada from August 20-21, 2015. The AIE conference was first held in 2008 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, consistently ranked as one of China’s top institutions for higher learning and mentioned in Forbes as building China’s next generation of entrepreneurs. The conference has since taken place at the prestigious Oxford University in London, England. Oxford has promoted entrepreneurship and innovation through its Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship and the Technology and Management Centre for Development. A truly international conference, it has attracted more than 1,500 participants from more than 27 countries over the years. This time, conference participants will have the unique opportunity to experience Canada as an innovation nation. Toronto has a vibrant entrepreneurial sector, as exemplified by Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ), one of the top ranked incubators in the world. Zones under the umbrella of the DMZ include the Center for Urban Energy, Fashion Zone, Design Fabrication Zone, Transmedia Zone, and Social Ventures Zone. Coming in the future are Aerospace , Biomed and Sports Zones and others. The DMZ has internationalized its model to India and will be duplicated in other emerging economies. The multitude of industries represented by the zones and programs at Ryerson University is reflective of the bustling and buzzing city of Toronto, a highly economically diversified city on Lake Ontario. While surrounded by natural beauty, including the Toronto Islands, wine country just south of the city, and the Canadian Shield to the north, Toronto is also diverse and glamorous for its variety of people and events. Known as “Hollywood of the North”, especially because it hosts one of the most prestigious film events in the world, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), many movies are made here. Ryerson even has a Creative Industries program as reflective of our vibrant arts scene. There is no end to things to do in Toronto, even for those of us who live here! The AIE Conference provides a broad platform to convene scholars from around the world to present research and to stimulate discussions on critical research issues and new developments in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Conference Team:  Building An Inclusive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

The conference has an overarching theme that emphasizes the important role of entrepreneurship in a sustainable innovation ecosystem and the impact of diversity on entrepreneurial development and social innovation. It covers the following topics of interest but is not limited to:

• The role of entrepreneurship in the economic diversification and development process
• New business creation process, incubators, and accelerators
• The role of entrepreneurship in innovation and revitalization of corporations
• Cross-sector partnerships for increasing innovation
• The role of government and public policy in innovation
• The role and effects of education and training on innovation
• University based new ventures and student engagement
• Sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation with a focus on solving environmental issues
• Technology-based venturing and management of technological innovations
• Venture capital, angel investing, and entrepreneurial finance 
• Creation and management of family business
• Diversity within innovation and entrepreneurship (e.g., women, immigrants, aboriginal peoples, visible minorities, persons with disability and seniors)
• Social innovation and entrepreneurship
• Technological innovation to bridge rural-urban divides
• International entrepreneurship and “born global” strategies
• Entrepreneurship in and design of innovations for low income or emerging markets 

Important Dates

• May 15, 2015 Proposal Deadline - Extended from April 15, 2015
• June 30, 2015 Final Submissions (including papers, photos and profiles)
• August 20-21, 2015 AIE Conference

Submission

Applicants are invited to submit proposals in two of the following ways:

1) Individual proposals that consist of:

• Title
• Theme(s) addressed
• Full contact information
• An abstract of your paper consisting of no more than 500 words (2 pages) 
• An updated CV

2) Panel sessions of 3-5 participants that consist of:

• Proposed title of the panel session
• Theme(s) addressed
• A 500 word (2 pages) overview of the main theme(s) discussed in the panel and how each paper interconnects 
• Full contact information of each participant
• Updated CVs for all participants 

Please submit your proposal in electronic format (in one Word or PDF document) to

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aie2015 by April 15 (11:59pm EST). Proposals received after this time will not be considered. The conference encourages proposals from current and emerging scholars, those in public policy and industry partners. You will be notified electronically of your acceptance no later than May 15 2015

Presenters whose proposals are accepted for the conference will be invited to submit full papers of no more than 20-25 pages on the topic outlined in your abstract. The best paper selected by the conference committee will win the Best Paper Award co-sponsored by Emerald Publishing and will be considered for publication by the Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies. For more information on the conference please visit http://www.aieconference.org, and for general help and administrative matters please contact AIE Support at aie@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

Call for conference papers: 7th Annual Conference of the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

7th Annual Conference of the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
http://www.aieconference.org

Co-organised by

• National Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Tsinghua University
• Technology and management for Development Centre, University of Oxford

Call for papers:

The 7th Annual Conference for the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (AIE2014) will be held in Beijing，China，on 5th-7th September 2014. The National Entrepreneurship Research Center based in School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, will host the event on the Tsinghua campus. The AIE conference has been successfully held since 2008, and attracted more than 1,500 scholars from more than 27 countries. The AIE Conference provides a broad platform to convene scholars from around the world to present research and to stimulate discussions on critical research issues and new developments in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Topics 

The conference focuses on discussions mainly covering the following topics of interest but is not limited to:

• Innovative and entrepreneurial strategies for firms in global markets
• Industrial focus in innovation and entrepreneurship
• Management of technological innovations
• Patenting and licensing management
• Innovation and corporate venture
• New business creation process
• Technology-based venturing
• Venture capital and entrepreneurial finance
• Creation and management of family business
• Entrepreneurship environment and policy

Award and Publication

The conference committee will award one Best Paper Award co-sponsored by Emerald Publishing, the publisher of the Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies. This award will be made at the conference to a paper selected from among the full papers submitted to the conference. When submitting a full paper, please indicate whether you wish your paper to be considered for the Best Paper Award. Submission for the Best Paper Award will be treated as consent to publish the paper in the Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies.
Submission
Authors are invited to submit full papers and Professional Development workshops (PDW) proposals. Papers and proposals will be selected by the Conference Committee consisting of a panel of international scholars. The submitting authors will be notified of the Conference Committee’s decision by June 30, 2014. Please submit the paper and proposals in electronic format (PDF files only) to: http://www.aieconference.org/
For general help and administrative matters, please contact AIE Support at aie@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

 

Call for conference papers: Technology Transfer Society Conference 2014

Technology Transfer Society Conference 2014
Baltimore, Maryland (October 23 –October 25)
Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School


The Baltimore/DC area is a major biotechnology and information systems corridor in the U.S. The 2014 conference will feature participants from the NIH, FDA, USPTO, and public and private players in the technology transfer and commercialization ecosystem.

The theme for T2S’14 is Translational Science. Translation is the stage between bench discovery and proof-of-concept, in which a scientific discovery has to be developed into a working application before it can be a funding opportunity. It is an unavoidable stage in the innovation process because until the market sees what a discovery might mean for users, it cannot be valued and commercialized. The organizers and scientific committee of the T2S’14 are pleased to extend an invitation to submit competitively reviewed abstracts related to translational science. Of particular interest are submissions that focus on the identification of the translation phenomenon and on definitions of what constitutes successful translation. Abstracts that propose theoretical and empirical models to better understand the factors that affect translation, such as the organizational structures and processes, antecedents and macro-environmental contingencies, and policies and governance arrangements are of particular interest.

General interest topics are also welcomed in the areas of technology transfer, technology driven economic development, management of intellectual property, public-private partnerships, academic entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial process, corporate entrepreneurship, spins offs, spin-ins, and spin-outs, discovery science, alliances and networks, technology policy, entrepreneurial and public finance.

Abstracts (1-2 pages) should be submitted Cassandra Smith, Program Coordinator: T2SBaltimore@jhu.edu by March 15, 2014.

Deadline for Submission of Selected Full Papers for Workshop and Journal Review: May 15, 2014

Deadline for Early-Bird Registration: August 1, 2014

To ensure that you stay up-to-date on the latest T2S 2014 announcements, please ensure that you add Program Coordinator Cassandra Smith at T2SBaltimore@jhu.edu to your “safe senders” list.

Register
Marriott Reservation Page
T2S Society
Call for Papers
Contact

Best regards
Al Link, Phil Phan, Don Siegel
Technology Transfer Society

Call for papers: Ethics, technology and innovation

Overview

This event, and the related symposium to be published in the Journal of Business Ethics in the first half of 2015, intends to analyze the impact of ethics-related variables on the development of new products and services and on organizational innovation. For example, in recent years, customers’ privacy expectations have shaped how companies design and commercialize new products and services in communication, entertainment and many other sectors (see, e.g. Floridi, 2005; Pollach, 2005; Nissenbaum, 2009; Vaccaro and Madsen, 2009). By the same token, security and reliability expectations have dramatically affected how designers develop new products and services in the automotive sector (see, e.g. Thomke, 2003).

Organizations differ in how they deal with ethical issues. For example, the literature on technology ethics (see, e.g. Nissenbaum 2004 Gorman, 1998; Mitcham, C. 1995) presents interesting cases where designers have intentionally pursued an immoral objective, see e.g. a bridge designed with the aim of preventing bus transit from areas with a high concentration of Afro-Americans (which embed and convey social discrimination values) or hardware and software designed to control users’ activities, violating elementary privacy rights, etc. Thus, Internet technologies have not only driven a flatter world as many argue, but they have also led to the creation of ‘digital sweatshops’, i.e. overcrowded rooms where workers play online games, such as Lineage, for up to twelve hours a day in order to create virtual goods, such as characters, equipments or in-game currency, which can then be sold to other, obviously richer, players (Floridi, 2009, p. 14).

On the other side of the moral scale, it is possible to find exemplary cases of high ethical standards. The example that comes quickest to mind are the 100% biodegradable products: They address the function for which they were designed but they also convey the moral duty of environmental protection (see, e.g. Guiltinan, 2009; Fraj-Andrés et al., 2009).

These considerations highlight the need to further current understanding of the role played by ethics-related variables in new product / service development and more generally, in firms’ innovation efforts (see, e.g. Adolphson, 2004; Madsen, 2005). This symposium will address this need by focusing on three main broad themes.

First, the issue of social responsibility (SR) has attracted considerable attention from scholars and practitioners during the last two decades. However, there is a shortage of studies, in the literature on technology policy and ethics, concerning under what conditions, how and why companies address ethical and social responsibility issues in the development of new products / services. For example, we do not know how organizational processes of information collection and sharing, decision-making, project evaluation etc. are adapted (if they are at all) to include ethical considerations in response to, e.g. changing EU Eco-norms, or customers’ expectations and/or moral values shared at industry level.

A second main theme that this symposium will investigate concerns the impact of environmental ethics on new product development. In particular, contributions are expected to explore how environmental concerns affect new product and service development, how companies deal with different environmental legislations when they design new products and services, and the use of environmental sustainability as a source of competitive advantage.

The third and last theme will explore processes associated with social innovation in hybrid organizations (Montgomery et al., 2012; Santos, 2012; Vaccaro, 2012). In particular, the symposium’s editors will encourage papers that analyse how stakeholders’ expectations and perceptions affect process innovation and/or changes in the structure and strategy of organizations attempting to combine business and social objectives.

Theme 1: Ethics, Social Responsibility and Innovation

• 1. How customers’ ethical perceptions and expectations affect new product/service development.
• 2. How stakeholders’ ethical perceptions and expectations affect new product/service development.
• 3. How companies manage and resolve conflicting ethical perceptions and expectations of their stakeholders in multi-cultural or multi-national contexts.

Theme 2: Environmental Ethics and Innovation

• 1. How environmental issues affect new product and service development.
• 2. How companies deal with different environmental legislations in new product and service development.
• 3. Environmental sustainability as a source of competitive advantage.
• 4. Ethical issues in environmental sustainability: green-washing vs. real environmental improvement. 

Theme 3: Social Innovation and the Organization

• 1. How employees’ ethical expectations and perceptions affect innovation in organizational processes.
• 2. How stakeholders’ ethical expectations and perceptions affect innovation in organizational processes.
• 3. Innovation in organization structure: How to combine business and social objectives by leveraging stakeholder expectations.
• 4. The new emerging ethical issues affecting hybrid organizations.

Timetable and submission procedures: 

The conference is organized by ETH, Zurich, IESE Business School on January 7 and 8, 2014. The conference’s venue will be the ETH Campus in Zurich. The deadline for submission of the complete paper is December 1, 2013.

Papers have to be submitted to the attention of Ms. Rosario Magre Miro RMagre@iese.edu specifying in the subject of the e-mail “Submission to Innovation Conference”. (If you do not receive a confirmation of your submission within 24 hours, please re-submit your document). Acceptance for presentation at the conference will be sent to authors by December 8.

The best papers presented at the conference will be invited for submission to the symposium of the Journal of Business Ethics. This process will include a double-blind review process by 2-3 anonymous referees. The invitation for submission to the symposium does not guarantee publication of the article.

Papers that were not presented at the conference cannot be submitted for publication in the symposium. Please use the guidelines for authors of the Journal of Business Ethics (http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/applied+ethics/journal/10551 ) to format your paper.

Guests Editors' bio

Stefano Brusoni is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich). He coordinates the TIMGROUP - the new Chair of Technology and Innovation Management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics (D-MTEC). He is Associate Editor of Information, Economics and Policy and member of the Review Board of Organization Science. His publications have appeared in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Research Policy and Industrial and Corporate Change.

Antonino Vaccaro is Academic Director of the Center for Business in Society at IESE Business School where he also serves as a faculty member in the department of business ethics. He has served as guest editor for Ethics and Information Technology and for the Journal of Business Ethics in a special issue about Network Ethics and in the special issue of the EBEN AC 2011. His publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, Journal of Business Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology and IEEE-HICSS-Transactions, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, The Information Society, etc.

References

• Adolphson, D. 2004. A New Perspective on Ethics, Ecology, and Economics, Journal of Business Ethics 54(3), 201-213.
• Flanagan, N., Howe, D and Nissenbaum, H. 2008. Embodying Values in Technology: Theory and Practice. In Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert (eds.). Cambridge University Press.
• Floridi, L. 2005. The Philosophy of Presence: From Epistemic Failure to Successful Observability, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 14(6) 656-667.
• Floridi, L. 2009. Information Ethics: A very short introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
• Fraj-Andrés, E., Martinez-Salinas, E. and Matute-Vallejo, J. 2009. ‘A Multidimensional Approach to the Influence of Environmental Marketing and Orientation on the Firm’s Organizational Performance’, Journal of Business Ethics, 88(2), 263–286.
• Gorman, M. E. 1998. Transforming Nature: Ethics, Invention and Design. Springer.
• Guiltinan, J. 2009. Creative Destruction and Destructive Creations: Environmental Ethics and Planned Obsolescence, Journal of Business Ethics, 89, 19–28.
• Madsen, P. 2005. Responsible Design and the Management of Ethics, DMI Review 16(3): 37-41.
• Mitcham, C. 1995. Ethics Into Design. In Discovering Design, Eds. R. Buchanan and V. Margolis, 173-179. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Montgomery, A.W., Dacin, P. and Dacin, T. 2012. Collective Social Entrepreneurship: Collaboratively Shaping Social Good, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 375-388.
• Nissenbaum, H. 2004. Privacy as Contextual Integrity. Washington Law Review, 79(1): 119-158.
• Nissenbaum, N. 2009. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy and the Integrity of Social Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press).
• Pollach, I. 2005. A Typology of Communicative Strategies in Online Privacy Policies: Ethics, Power and Informed Consent, Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 221–235.
• Santos, F. 2012. A positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 335-351.
• Thomke, S. 2003. Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.
• Vaccaro, A. and P. Madsen, 2009. ‘Transparency: The new ICT-driven Ethics?’ Ethics and Information Technology, 11(2), 113-122.
• Vaccaro, A. 2012. To Pay or not to Pay? Dynamic Transparency and the Fight against the Mafia’s Extortionists, Journal of Business Ethics, 106(1), 23-35.