Special Issues in Asia Pacific Journal of Management
Institutions and Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
Submission Deadline: November 1, 2017
SI Conference Date: June 20-21, 2018
SI Conference Venue: Nankai University, Tianjin, China
Estimated Date of Publication: March 2019
Guest Editors:
Sunny Li Sun, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Weilei (Stone) Shi, City University of New York (CUNY) - Baruch College;
Yuli Zhang, Nankai University;
David Ahlstrom, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Consulting Editor:
Mike W. Peng, University of Texas at Dallas
Introduction
Emerging economies have become a major engine of global economic growth (if measured
by purchasing-power parity, the GDP of emerging economies overtook the GDP of developed
economies as of 2013). Their institutional environments are quite different from that of
developed countries. In particular, the formal institutional environment is underdeveloped—
creating unevenly development (Ahlstrom & Bruton, 2010; Peng, 2003; Peng, Sun,
Pinkham, & Chen, 2009) — suggesting a lack of institutional complementarity (Hall &
Gingerich, 2009; Shi, Sun, & Peng, 2012) or institutional fragility (Shi, Sun, Yan, & Zhu,
2017). Its existence calls for a revision of existing theories of entrepreneurship and
accounts for emergent phenomena (Bjørnskov & Foss, 2016; Kim, Wennberg, & Croidieu,
2016; Meyer & Peng, 2016). Since an emerging economy perspective focuses on the
challenge and opportunity of entrepreneurship activities in these institutionally less
developed regions, it contributes a unique value proposition to the study of
entrepreneurship research. We ask: how do the institutions in emerging economies change
the entrepreneurial mechanisms and entrepreneurial behaviors? How does the entrepreneur
reshape the institutions?
Our goals are to develop an integrative body of emerging economies related knowledge for
entrepreneurship research, encourage scholars to conduct relevant research and to inform
practice.
Given the multidisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship research, we invite manuscripts that
are rooted in various areas including, but not limited to strategy, international business,
economics, organizational behavior, sociology, psychology, finance, to name a few. We
welcome humanism-related research, such as compassion, sustainability, and inclusive
growth (Mair, Martí, & Ventresca, 2012; Tsui, 2013).
Our call for research embraces theoretical and methodological pluralism. We welcome a
cross-disciplinary approach and diversified methods (qualitative or quantitative), including
comparative history analysis (Sarma & Sun, 2016; Vaara & Lamberg, 2016), case study, or
multilevel designs (Kim et al., 2016) to enrich our understanding of the entrepreneurial
concept, process, practice, and context.
Topics
The following research questions are examples of promising research directions for
entrepreneurship scholars. Our call for research embraces theoretical and methodological
pluralism.
1. Given many emerging economies are under institutional transition, what is the role of
government policy in facilitating or constraining entrepreneurial activity? What is good/bad
entrepreneurial capitalism(Ahlstrom, 2010; Baumol, Litan, & Schramm, 2007)? Take China
for example, private entrepreneurs are driving the growth of China’s GDP and innovation.
However, financing options are limited for them and the cost of financing is particularly high
(Ding, Sun, & Au, 2014). Therefore, how government can create a favorable environment
(or ecosystem) to advance this sector is increasingly becoming an important priority in
designing policies.
2. How are entrepreneurs developing a unique strategy to cope with institutional void or
fragility (Shi et al., 2017)? What kind of business model could accommodate the lack of
institution or informal institution? For example, Shanda (China’s Internet entrepreneurship
firm) has avoided the software piracy problem by developing highly popular multiplayer
online role-playing games (Bhattacharya & Michael, 2008). While emerging markets
experience a significant level of pro-market reform, the nature of these reforms differs
widely in terms of scope and speed (Banalieva, Eddleston, & Zellweger, 2015; Sun, Peng,
Lee, & Tan, 2015). Even within a single emerging economy, the rhythm of different reforms
may differ or converge—creating institutional fragility (Shi et al., 2017). How do these
reform characteristics affect entrepreneurial firms in terms of resource accumulation and
capability development?
3. The institutional environment in emerging economies also shapes entrepreneurial
practice. Do they develop a unique set of cognitive trait and decision-making modes to cope
with this uncertainty? How are the new concepts in entrepreneurship like effectuation,
bricolage, design thinking, and narrative thinking (Garud & Giuliani, 2013; Sarasvathy,
2001), or new practice of incubator, accelerator, and “lean start-up” applied in this kind of
environment? How do family, angel investor, venture capitalist take different risk and
develop different financing/governance structure to support new venture growth (Ding et
al., 2014)? Do these economies build different entrepreneurial ecosystem (Autio & Thomas,
2014)? Are these constructs and measurements still reliable and valid in the emerging
economies?
4. Growth and internationalization represent important challenges for entrepreneurial firms
(Oviatt & McDougall, 2005). Some of the key issues involve how entrepreneurial firms pace
themselves, how they synchronize their activity cycles with those of their partners,
customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders (Sun & Im, 2015). Since different institutional
environment differ in their treatment of time, it will be interesting to study how the pace,
rhythm, sequence (Shi & Prescott, 2012), or opportunity co-creation (Sun & Im, 2015) of
entrepreneurial activities in emerging economies are different from those from developed
nations? How is the hybrid entrepreneurial organization form, such as non-profit
organization (Mair et al., 2012), created or supported in this environment? What kind of
challenge will be faced by social entrepreneurs?
5. The institutional environment in emerging economies may even create the behavioral
paradox for entrepreneur, as the examples of innovation or imitation in value design, coping
with government or coping with market, resource re-allocation or resource acquisition in
venture growth, etc. Do they follow the similar cognitive framework to their peers in
Western when exploring the opportunity? As the complexity, plurality, and competitiveness
of environments grow, how do entrepreneurs simultaneously deal with multiple competing
demands (for example, the expectation from government and market) and technology
innovation? Furthermore, does the strategy to deal with behavioral paradox represent the
unique cognitive resources/constraints in emerging economies? For example, India
entrepreneur may tries “jugaad” or frugal innovation to overcome the resource constraints;
other entrepreneurs may explore the new opportunity from the advanced mobile technology
to rebuild the local fragile bank industry. How could entrepreneur leverage the locality and
contingency?
Submission Process
November 1, 2017 - Manuscripts must be submitted during the window between September
1, 2017, and November 1, 2017, at the APJM manuscript submission site
https://www.editorialmanager.com/apjm/default.aspx. Please follow the author guideline
when submit the manuscript
(http://www.springer.com/business+%26+management/journal/10490 ).
Some papers could be desk rejected if the guest editor believes them do not meet the
theme of the special issue. Other submissions will go through APJM’s double-blind review
process and follow the standard norms and processes.
February 1, 2018 - Author are notified of first round review decision.
June 20-21, 2018 – APJM SI Entrepreneurship Conference in Nankai University, Tianjian,
China. Authors of each paper are encouraged to present at the conference. But conference
participation is not a guarantee or a condition for publication.
July 1, 2018 –first revisions due.
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