Academy of Management Review Special Topic Forum

Dreaming, Discovering, and Creating: The Visions and Costs of Entrepreneuring

Due Date: October 1, 2006

Guest Editors:
David J. Ketchen, Jr., Auburn University
Violina Rindova, University of Texas at Austin
Daved Barry, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Background

"Entrepreneuring" – a process that involves dreaming, discovering, and creating – has a long and interesting pedigree. In the 13th century, Marco Polo’s dreaming, discovering, and creating led to a rich exchange of goods and concepts (including paper currency) between Europe and Asia. Christopher Columbus’ efforts in the 15th century began a chain of events that reshaped geopolitical structures. In the modern era, the dreams, discoveries, and creations of Sam Walton (Wal-Mart), Sakichi Toyoda (Toyota), Anita Roddick (Bodyshop), Yves Saint Laurent, Mary Kay Ash (Mary Kay), Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA), and David McTaggart (Greenpeace), and many others have changed the way billions of people work and live.

Media and academic attention tends to center on the titans of industry, but many more smaller-scale dreamers and tinkerers create new enterprises, new social movements, and new markets. Examples like those of former migrant workers Pablo and Juanita Ceja who created the very successful Ceja Vineyards in the Napa Valley region of California suggest that entrepreneuring is all around us. Indeed, for every Sam Walton or Mary Kay Ash, there are hundreds of Pablo and Juanita Cejas.

Overall, entrepreneuring is a process that interconnects the dreams, discoveries, and creations of entrepreneurs, employees, investors, and customers. It can produce benefits for those who succeed in this risky game. Yet, critics point out that some of the ventures listed above are implicated in human and environmental tolls including employee exploitation, deforestation, and even genocide.

The goals of this special topic forum are to (a) encourage scholars to examine the process of entrepreneuring through novel theoretical lenses, including critical approaches to the topic, and (b) build conceptual foundations and frameworks that will facilitate empirical inquiry from diverse perspectives. To achieve these goals, we invite manuscripts that draw on perspectives from organizational behavior and theory, strategic management, psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, and political science, among others. Imaginative and thought-provoking perspectives from other social sciences, the humanities, and the physical sciences are also welcome. Prior to submission, authors should ensure that their papers address clearly defined problems and contribute to theoretical development on the topic of entrepreneuring (rather than focusing on traditional approaches to entrepreneurship).

Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

• Of what do entrepreneurs dream – value maximization, creative expression, empowerment, autonomy, or enhancing life on the planet?
  
  
• What can we learn about entrepreneuring from the arts and the sciences? Are artists and scientists entrepreneurs? What are the similarities and differences between the processes of scientific discovery, artistic creation, and entrepreneuring? How does entrepreneuring affect the commercialization of discoveries and artistic creations? Is entrepreneuring an art, and how can aesthetic means of inquiry contribute to the understanding of entrepreneuring?
  
  
• What is the relationship between entrepreneuring and innovating? When does innovating support entrepreneuring, and when does it undermine it?
  
  
• Are there tensions or conflicts between the dreams, discoveries, and creations of entrepreneurs and the interests of society? How can such tensions or conflicts be effectively managed? What roles do concepts such as integrity and trust play in entrepreneuring?
  
  
• What are the personal and societal costs of entrepreneuring? To what extent does entrepreneurship have a “dark side?” How might entrepreneuring cultures be destructive and/or exploitative with respect to human and natural resources?
  
  
• Are entrepreneurs the new "heroes" of society and what does this imply for theories of entrepreneurship? From the perspective of critical theory, for example, how does entrepreneurial celebrity affect the distribution of value created by a new firm?
  
  
• To what extent is entrepreneuring a collective versus an individual process? What are the factors that enable or constrain collective co-creation?

We are also open to interesting and imaginative ideas that do not fit neatly within any of the above topics, but that do fit within the spirit and intent of this call for papers.

To handle such a broad range of topics, we have assembled a diverse set of editors for the Forum: David J. Ketchen, Jr. (Auburn University, ketchda@auburn.edu), Violina Rindova (University of Texas at Austin, violina.rindova@mccombs.utexas.edu), and Daved Barry (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, dbarry@fe.unl.pt).

Submissions

To be considered for publication in this Special Topic Forum, manuscripts must be received by October 1, 2006. (Please do not submit papers for this Special Topic Forum prior to September 1, 2006.) Manuscripts should be submitted through the Manuscript Central submission system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amr/). From there, you can follow the Web site directions to submit your manuscript for this special topic forum issue. Details concerning AMR's procedures and evaluation criteria are available online and are printed in all issues of the journal in a section titled Information for Contributors. Instructions for manuscript preparation are provided in the Style Guide for Authors, printed online and in each January issue of the journal. Authors must consult both documents and follow them when submitting manuscripts.