Étiquette : nascent entrepreneurs

Call for Papers – Special Issue of La Revue de l’entrepreneuriat

 Nascent (student) entrepreneur: from intention(s) to action

 Guest Editors:

 Norris Krueger, Boise School of Advanced Studies, USA

Jean-Pierre Boissin, University of Grenoble Alpes, France

Adnane Maalaoui, IPAG Business School, France

Erno Tornikoski, University of Exeter Business School, UK

Jean Michel Sahut, IDRAC Business School, France

Has there ever been greater interest in business creation? From policymakers to business communities, up to the general public person, business creation is increasingly at the top of mind. For example, business creation occupies an increasingly important place in the educational ecosystem, in particular in the higher education sector. Universities and Business Schools provide students with numerous and varied entrepreneurship courses and other promotion actions. This movement is accompanied by a greater investment in business creation supporting structures like incubators and accelerators. In France, student entrepreneurship is considered of as a national priority, particularly through the Student Plan for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship (PÉPITE) supported by French government. Its mission is to encourage students willing to create their own business within higher education institutions by granting them the National Student Entrepreneur Status (SNEE). The plan aims to facilitate and encourage the experience of business start-ups and takeovers among students and young graduates.

Despite all this, entrepreneurship in modern economies is actually shrinking; entrepreneurial density has been in a long-term decline since the late 1970’s in most Western countries, even the USA. Business dynamism shows a similar decline.

Interest and intent are rising but action is not? This call for papers (CFP) directly addresses this conundrum with a particular focus on the potential role of entrepreneurial education and training. We invite scholars and educators to help us understand how intent becomes action and how educators and policymakers can address that.

Student entrepreneurship is receiving increasing attention in the world of practitioners and research (Marchand and Hermens, 2015). The use of psycho-cognitive models in particular enables the exploration of student entrepreneurial experience’s determinants, bringing a significant change in their thinking patterns (Maalaoui et al., 2018a). Research and entrepreneurial pedagogy are closely linked (Maalaoui et al., 2018b), one feeding another in an iterative process. For this reason, teachers and researchers have examined the issue of students’ entrepreneurial intentions (Boissin et al., 2009, Boissin et al., 2017).

Intention models are predictive (Krueger, 2003). They aim at understanding individual but also collective (Shepherd and Krueger, 2002) attitudes towards business creation. Researches on entrepreneurial intentions are numerous (Krueger and Carsrud, 1993; Krueger et al., 2000; Krueger, 2017, Nabi et al., 2017; Maalaoui and Germon, 2017). They are mainly based on Ajzen’ s theory of planned behaviour (1991) along with Shapero and Sokol’s entrepreneurial event theory (1982).

While these models have proven to be extremely robust in capturing students’ representations that underpin their intention to create business, recent works call for a deeper understanding of its implementation into actual behaviour (Fayolle and Linan, 2014). Recent works have addressed the now famous intention-action gap, through notions such as implementation intention (Krueger, 2017, Van Gelderen et al., 2018), motivation (Carsrud ​​and Brännback, 2011) or commitment (Adam and Fayolle, 2015). In a forthcoming article published in International Small Business Journal (ISBJ) (Tornikoski and Maalaoui, 2019), Icek Ajzen argues that “intentions and behaviours are based on a cognitive and affective foundation that consists of three sets of beliefs readily accessible in memory at the time of the behaviour […] the ability to act on an intention depends on the degree of control over performance of the behavior.  Behavioral control can be increased by providing people with the required resources and by removing barriers”. However, so far, little empirical research integrates such constructs to extend the original model of intention.

Starting a business is a long and complex process, involving multiple activities (Carter et al., 1996, Gartner 1985, Reynolds and White, 1997) and a considerable amount of effort and time. It requires the entrepreneur to be fully engaged and focused on pursuing his or her goals. For a student at the end of his or her studies or a recent graduate, entrepreneurial experience can constitute a first brick in the construction of a professional career, but also a learning process, in continuity with the academic training they have received. Therefore, it is crucial to understand what leads these student-entrepreneurs to persevere in their efforts and to actually create their business. Studying how this subpopulation of nascent entrepreneurs translate their entrepreneurial intention into concrete action can thus help us better understand the entrepreneurial process.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the gap between intention and action among students. The idea is to understand the students’ propensity to undertake and the singularity of these behaviours. We would like, in particular, to shed a new light on the models of cognitive psychology that would explain their enactment. The field of investigation of this file thus covers the study of student entrepreneurship in all its dimensions, but also the psychological and cognitive determinants of the latter.

Proposals to contribute to this special issue may include the following topics:

– Gap between intention and action for student entrepreneurs;

– The translation of entrepreneurial intention into entrepreneurial behaviour, including the role played by constructs like intention implementation, motivation or commitment;

– Impact of education and support structures on students’ entrepreneurial transition;

– Nature and specificity of the entrepreneurial commitment of student-entrepreneurs

This non-exhaustive list can be enriched with contributions addressing the topic through other disciplines.

The articles must comply with the requirements of the Entrepreneurship Journal. The publication of the thematic issue “Student Entrepreneurship: from intention to action” is planned for the 3rd quarter of 2020. The article proposals are to be sent to: Jean-Pierre Boissin: jean-pierre.boissin@grenoble-iae.fr  and Adnane Maalaoui: a.maalaoui@ipag.fr

Calendar:

• Submission deadline : November 1st, 2019
• Acceptance notifications (1^st Round) : February 2, 2020
• Transmission of amended proposals (2^nd Round) : 30 March 2020
• Feedback to authors (2^nd Round) : May 30, 2020
• Reception of the final version of articles: July 2, 2020

References :

Ajzen I. (1991), “The theory of planned behavior”, Organizational and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211.

Boissin, J. P., Chollet, B., & Emin, S. (2009). Les déterminants de l’intention de créer une entreprise chez les étudiants: un test empirique. M@ n@ gement, 12(1), 28-51.

Boissin, J. P., Favre-Bonté, V., & Falcy, S. F. (2018). Diverse Impacts Of The Determinants Of Entrepreneurial Intention. Revue de l’Entrepreneuriat.

Branchet, B., Boissin, J. P., & Hikkerova, L. (2017). Modeling entrepreneurship intentions: an essay of typology. Management International, 21(2), 109.

Krueger, N. F. (2003). The cognitive psychology of entrepreneurship. In Handbook of entrepreneurship research(pp. 105-140). Springer, Boston, MA.

Krueger, N. F. (2017). Entrepreneurial intentions are dead: Long live entrepreneurial intentions. In Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Mind (pp. 13-34). Springer, Cham.

Krueger Jr, N. F., Reilly, M. D., & Carsrud, A. L. (2000). Competing models of entrepreneurial intentions. Journal of business venturing, 15(5-6), 411-432.

Krueger, N. F., & Carsrud, A. L. (1993). Entrepreneurial intentions: applying the theory of planned behaviour. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 5(4), 315-330.

Tornikoski, E. , Maalaoui, A. (2019). Critical Reflections. Exploring the Theory of Planned Behavior

An Interview with Icek Ajzen and Implications for Entrepreneurship Research, International Small Business Journal, Forthcoming (Available online).

Maalaoui, A., Perez, C., Bertrand, G., & Razgallah, M. (2018). 2″ Cruel intention” or” entrepreneurial intention”: what did you expect?. A Research Agenda for Entrepreneurial Cognition and Intention, 7.

Maâlaoui, A., & Germon, R. (2017). Entrepreneurial Intention through the Cognitive Psychology Approach: Past, Present and Future Research. Revue de l’Entrepreneuriat, 17(2), 17-26.

Nabi, G., Liñán, F., Fayolle, A., Krueger, N., & Walmsley, A. (2017). The impact of entrepreneurship education in higher education: A systematic review and research agenda. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 16(2), 277-299.

Shapero, A., & Sokol, L. (1982). The social dimensions of entrepreneurship.

Shepherd, D. A., & Krueger, N. F. (2002). An intentions–based model of entrepreneurial teams’ social cognition. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 27(2), 167-185.

Van Gelderen, M., Kautonen, T., Wincent, J., & Biniari, M. (2018). Implementation intentions in the entrepreneurial process: concept, empirical findings, and research agenda. Small Business Economics, 51(4), 923-941.