Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies

Description

Most actors along agricultural and food value chains, as well as their surrounding stakeholders (e.g., non-governmental organizations or NGOs, policy-makers, civil society, communities) in emerging economies – broadly speaking, Asia, Sub-Saharan African, Middle East and Latin America and Eastern Europe - are currently exposed to processes of rapid change, unprecedented opportunities and turbulent environments. Grand challenges that they need to address involve climatic changes, socio-political instability, crime and corruption, food insecurity, obesity and malnutrition, and chronic poverty, among others (George et al. 2016).

To address these rapid changes and complex societal challenges, these actors are called to continuously reevaluate their use of resources, and innovate to adapt and survive (Ferraro et al. 2015). Furthermore, they have to find a fragile equilibrium between commercial and social interests and need to respond to changing and conflicting stakeholder demands (Seelos and Mair 2007; Halme et al. 2012). In the face of these challenges, scholars have so far struggled to connect the literature on entrepreneurship, innovation, business strategy, supply chain management and related disciplines with international development theory and practice in a coherent and societally relevant theoretical framework (Dorado and Ventresca 2013).

This track session calls for empirical and conceptual papers that focus on how value chain actors and/or their stakeholders organize to face the aforementioned challenges, and endeavor to make a theoretical or methodological contribution in this domain.

Specifically, we encourage authors to submit research papers seeking to advance theory in the domains of entrepreneurship, innovation, value chains, and network management at the bottom-of-the-pyramid. Among others, papers in this track may address the following questions:

• How do entrepreneurs and their stakeholders build or use networks,
  make strategic decisions and implement them in turbulent and uncertain
  environments?
• How do multiple levels (e.g. family, communities, formal
  organizations, markets, institutions, society at large) influence
  entrepreneurial decisions and practices?
• How do innovative business models, stemming from the emergence and
  application of new technological or social innovations (e.g., access to
  information, energy, finance) trigger or constrain entrepreneurial
  practice?
• How do existing organizations and institutions enhance or impede the
  entrepreneurial environment in their respective industries? How can
  agents remain entrepreneurial despite challenging organizational and
  institutional environments?
• How do entrepreneurs learn, i.e. develop their market orientation,
  innovativeness, entrepreneurial competencies and capabilities across
  individual, team, and organizational levels?

References

Dorado, S., & Ventresca, M. J. (2013). Crescive entrepreneurship in complex social problems: Institutional conditions for entrepreneurial engagement. Journal of Business Venturing, 28(1), 69-82.

Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited. Organization Studies, 36(3), 363-390.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880.

Halme, M., Lindeman, S., & Linna, P. (2012). Innovation for inclusive business: Intrapreneurial bricolage in multinational corporations. Journal of Management Studies 49(4) 743-784.

Seelos, C., & Mair, J. (2007). Profitable business models and market creation in the context of deep poverty: A strategic view. Academy of Management
Perspectives 21(4), 49-63.

To ensure consideration for this WICaNeM track session, please submit your abstract through the submission system by 1 March 2018. Go to the WiCaNeM Abstract Submission form to submit your abstract. Authors must submit a 1,000 words (one Word page) extended abstract in English. Each abstract must contain the following: Cover Page; Problem Statement; Objectives; Procedures/methodologies/approaches; Results; Conclusions; References and Authors’ preferences for presentation as a paper or poster. Submissions will undergo a double blind peer review. Conditional to acceptance, authors will be invited to submit a full paper by 30 April 2018. The best scientific papers, associated with paper presentations, will be invited to participate to the Best Paper Award competition and may be selected for publication in the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review (IFAMR). For further questions and remarks, please feel free to contact the track coordinators Domenico Dentoni (Domenico.Dentoni@wur.nl), Rob Lubberink (Rob.Lubberink@wur.nl) and Larissa Shnayder (Larissa.Shnayder@wur.nl).