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 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.

Call for papers. Special issue on: Special Issue on Sustainability, Ethics, and Entrepreneurship

Journal of Management Studies
Special Issue on Sustainability, Ethics, and Entrepreneurship
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2015

Guest Editors:

• • Gideon Markman, Colorado State University, USA (gideon.markman@colostate.edu)
• • Dev Jennings, University of Alberta, Canada (devereaux.jennings@ualberta.ca)
• • Tom Lumpkin, Syracuse University, USA (lumpkin@syr.edu)
• • Johanna Mair, Hertie School of Governance, Germany (mair@hertie-school.org)
• • Mike Russo, University of Oregon, USA (mrusso@uoregon.edu)

Background

Environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and ethical decision-making are critical in many business activities and ignoring these principles is detrimental for the enterprising effort of every firm—cause-based startups, for-profit ventures, family businesses, and public firms. For example, firms often combine inputs through incrementally sequential, and well-synchronized procedures. This means that even small unethical choices in early value-chain activities can trigger devastating cascading effects that bring an otherwise smooth-running operation to a grinding halt, while undermining the reputation of a single firm, or worse, ravaging entire industries (e.g., tobacco industry). Of course, for startups and small family firms, the same poor choices might bring business disbandment. At the other end of the spectrum, social entrepreneurs and the sustainability movement are increasingly fashioning—and perhaps even leveraging on—businesses that are based on superior sustainability standards, strong social considerations, and deep ethical principles. These businesses are attractive to a significant, and growing, slice of consumers because the vales of such companies resonate with their own. Although it is clear that these are tectonic shifts that alter economic systems and social structures (e.g., social media and the Arab Spring), scholarly research and theory development on this tripartite topic are clearly lagging.
The areas of sustainability, society, ethics, and entrepreneurship motivates scholarship from diverse disciplines—e.g., management, finance, accounting, marketing, operations, supply chain, political science, sociology, psychology, and economics, to name a few. Each discipline makes significant contributions to this topical area. Also, most scholars recognize that cross-disciplinary research can be highly revelatory, but surprisingly, the number of truly cross-disciplinary studies, including in special issues, suggests the more can and should be done to intensity cross-boundary research. We think that—given the complexity and overlap of and interrelations between sustainability, society, business ethics, and entrepreneurship—it is even more important to feature manuscripts that are dedicated to exemplary cross-disciplinary studies on this multilateral topic.
The special issues (SI) calls for scholarship that is less concerned about disciplinary boundaries and more inspired to advance knowledge that sheds light on big questions related to these topical areas. We call for "edgy" scholarly work from thought leaders who dare to think "outside the sandbox" of traditional research. And we’re particularly interested in radical, controversial, novel, useful, and non-obvious scholarship that challenges research dogmas and is highly revelatory—even if not fully grounded in well-studied or well-validated theory. Of course, manuscript can't be merely descriptive or phenomenally driven, so a strong theoretical contribution is still a must.

Why the SI Needed and What Scholarship Would Fit the SI

The SI is need for several reasons, but three deserve greater attention:
First, not every scholar, manager, or company agrees on the connection between sustainability, ethics, and entrepreneurship. Recent research on the “green to be seen” perspective suggests that consumers are willing to pay extra for sustainable offerings, but only if there are overt status incentives or reputational outcomes that associated with such purchases (Griskevicius, Tybur, & Van den Bergh, 2010). Similarly, firms—large and small—are struggling with the concept of transparency; would the benefits of touting ethical practices be outweighed by the risk that comes from revealing product provenance (e.g., the mêlée of U.S. food companies on whether to label genetically modified products)? We call for conflicting perspectives on the areas of sustainability, ethics, and entrepreneurship, particularly if they offer fertile and provocative new areas of scholarly research.
Second, many manuscripts that survive the typical review process are often not too novel; their expansion of theory quite limited, and their empirical insights are usually narrow. This is not a criticism of the review process or published manuscripts. Far from it; this process is rigorous, which yields highly disciplined scholarship that collectively builds an important and trustworthy body of knowledge. Moreover, we will use the same rigorous review process as well. The difference, however, is that, as noted, we explicitly seek manuscripts that offer new, even radical theoretical perspectives; those that significantly expand existing theory; and/or those that bring breakthrough empirical insights by triangulating the domains of sustainability, ethics, and entrepreneurship.
Third, we also noticed submissions tend to homogenize; they usually follow similar empirical methodologies, converge around a dominant conceptual lens, and predictably, tackle similar research questions. This SI favors cross-disciplinary research and scholarly work that clearly shed light on both big conceptual questions and significantly practical problems that are related to these topical areas. We are especially interested in manuscripts that challenge research dogmas; scholarship that opens up new research frontiers or offers new insights that significantly enrich discussion and discourse, as well as research that addresses timely, and revelatory topics. Thus, we welcome a variety of theoretical, empirical, and cross-disciplinary approaches.
A suggestive but not exhaustive list of questions and topics includes:

• · How does strategy differ when firms are not constituted as vehicles of private wealth accumulation but are owned by communities of members or government?
• · How can research in other domains and disciplines—supply chain, accounting, governance, marketing, public policy, finance, and/or sociology—expand theory in the areas of sustainability, society, ethics, and entrepreneurship?
• · What is social value, what are the most useful measures of social impact, and how do social value and economic value interact and shape each other? How do social entrepreneurs and cause-based ventures impact for-profit entrepreneurs and established firms?
• · How is theory shaped by the dual movement of social entrepreneurship and sustainability?
• · What are most useful conceptual models and empirical analysis of the antecedents, consequences, and contingencies associated with the processes of sustainable, socially responsible, and ethical entrepreneurship? 
• Can social entrepreneurship combat poverty, and if so, who is winning and why?
• · What innovations do social and sustainable ventures bring to for-profit enterprises?
• · What can business models that employ Fair Trade, microfinance, crowd-funding, and/or green entrepreneurship teach management about social change, political impact, business ethics, and sustainability?
• · What are the antecedents and outcomes of new forms of governance of ventures, such as B Corps and “For Benefit” corporations? What are the implications for theory?
• · How bright is the line between non-profit organizations and ventures with missions that go beyond profit maximization?
• · How do entrepreneurs address the inevitable psychological, organizational, and strategic tensions between sustainability, ethical challenges, and profitability?

SUBMISSION PROCESS AND DEADLINE

Papers will be reviewed following the JMS double-blind review process. Papers should be submitted by the January 15th, 2015 deadline by e-mail to Gideon Markman (gideon.markman@colostate.edu). Papers should be prepared using the JMS Guidelines (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/JMS_Prep_of_Manuscripts.pdf). The editors welcome informal enquiries related to proposed topics.

Special Issue Workshop: To help authors advance their manuscripts, a Special Issue Workshop will be held in May 2015 in Denver, Colorado. Authors of R&R manuscripts will be invited to present and discuss their papers during the workshop, but presentation at the workshop does not guarantee acceptance of the paper for publication in JMS. Attending the workshop is not a precondition for acceptance into the Special Issue.



Contact Emails:

• Gideon Markman, Colorado State University, USA (gideon.markman@colostate.edu)
• Dev Jennings, University of Alberta, Canada (devereaux.jennings@ualberta.ca)
• Tom Lumpkin, Syracuse University, USA (lumpkin@syr.edu)
• Johanna Mair, Hertie School of Governance, Germany (mair@hertie-school.org)
• Mike Russo, University of Oregon, USA (mrusso@uoregon.edu)

www.journalofmanagementstudies.com
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