EABIS has recently welcomed an opportunity offered by strategic partner EFMD to further promote emerging research activity conducted within its network around the subject of Responsible Entrepreneurship. We were very pleased to lend our support to a special issue of “EntreNews”, EFMD’s respected entrepreneurship newsletter, edited by leading expert David Grayson, Chair of the UK Small Business Consortium and a long-standing collaborator in EABIS projects.

Promoting Responsible Entrepreneurship
This special issue of “EntreNews” is devoted to the subject of responsible practice in the entrepreneurial sector. One of the featured highlights is an extensive interview with Maire Rute, Director of Competitiveness for SMEs (EU Commission DG Enterprise). In her comments she places the importance of responsible entrepreneurship for competitive growth in micro-, meso- and macro-level economic contexts, arguing for its potential fit with business support services and articulating the reasoning behind a new grant scheme to promote Corporate Responsibility in small businesses.

Guest Editor David Grayson, Chairman of the UK Small Business Consortium, a director of Business in the Community, and a long-standing contributor to EABIS projects and activities, expressed his pleasure at EFMD’s choice of subject for the special issue. “Corporate Responsibility specialists in business schools do need to work with their colleagues in entrepreneurship and those studying small businesses. If we stimulate a group of isolated responsible SME specialists, we will miss a trick”, he said. “The fact that we are trying, but still struggling, to engage strategy, marketing, OB professors on Corporate Responsibility overall means there may be some ‘lessons learned’, which we would want to avoid this time round. I hope this special edition of 'EntreNews' will help this process.”

EABIS and an Emerging Research Agenda on SMEs in Support of EU Policy
In an article based on the outcomes of the collaborative Knowledge & Learning Network event, which has engaged business practitioners and academic teams throughout the network as well as key figures in the European Commission, Executive Director Peter Lacy identified a list of future research areas. Underlining EABIS’ commitment to lead new initiatives in this domain as part of its portfolio of projects around responsible business practice and theory, he said: “We are planning to develop a comprehensive overview on the current state of knowledge on Corporate Responsibility and SMEs, collaborating closely with thought leaders from a number of organisations in our network. By pinpointing knowledge gaps, priorities and opportunities, EABIS can help to define the research agenda on this vital subject in support of the European Commission’s goals for job creation and economic growth under the 2000 Lisbon Agenda.”

This point was underlined by David Grayson, who added: “EABIS needs to locate the work on responsible and sustainable small business firmly in the context of entrepreneurship and other mainstream business fields. Entrepreneurship is being more and more mainstreamed in business schools after a long battle. It is important that Corporate Responsibility considerations are firmly located in this context and do not become another academic satellite.”

Progress to Date
Thus far Durham Business School and SDA Bocconi in Milan have been at the forefront of the EABIS initiatives around this theme. At a December 2005 gathering held at Durham, sponsored by EABIS’ European Knowledge & Learning Network grants scheme which is actively supported by founding corporate partners IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Shell and Unilever, it was almost universally agreed by participants that there is a pressing need for more and better knowledge around responsible entrepreneurship. One direct result of this was a decision to dedicate one of the 2006 Colloquium specialist tracks to a deeper exploration of Responsible Entrepreneurship.

EABIS Academic Member Copenhagen Business School will take this knowledge development process one step further with an important conference on October 26 that will examine the integration of Corporate Responsibility into Small Business Practice (click here for more details). Also in the autumn, EABIS will jointly sponsor with Durham a special issue of the ‘Journal for Business Ethics’ on this subject, the publication being co-edited by Geoff Moore from Durham and Laura Spence from Brunel Business School in London.

Free Access to the “EntreNews” Special Issue
We are grateful to EFMD for making this publication freely available to all EABIS members. You can now download the PDF version by clicking here.

The Academic Board Elections will take place on Tuesday, September 12 during the General Assembly. Some key information linked to this topic:

• Due to so many members being away on holiday in August, and the problem of communication during the summer, we have decided to adapt this year’s election process to ensure the highest possible level of member engagement and input.  To that end, instead of conducting an initial online election, we will now hold all rounds of voting for Board, Management Committee and Academic Chair seats during the General Assembly. Further information on this process will follow in the lead-up to the Colloquium;
• As there are still a few places available in the candidate pool for Academic Board seats, we are also extending the window for applications. Members now have until 18:00 CET on Tuesday, September 5 to register their candidacy.  Please contact Simon Pickard for the various job descriptions and guidelines. The profiles and statements of existing candidates can be viewed by visiting the EABIS Main community at the Members Intranet (or contact volodja.vorobey@eabis.org)
• Interested new applicants should fill in the application template and send it with a bio or CV directly to Simon Pickard's address (simon.pickard@eabis.org).

The Graduate Management Admission Council^® seeks research proposal submissions to the Management Education Research Institute (MERInstitute) Grants Program. Last year, MERInstitute provided more than $330,000 to researchers. We fund high-quality research that will have major impact on thought leaders of graduate management education as well as high usefulness to practitioners. Grants up to US$100,000 each are available. Topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Admission and Selection
• Careers
• Curriculum
• Defining and Evaluating Success

Data from the extensive large-scale data sets gathered through GMAC^® surveys of prospective graduate management students, current students, alumni, and employers are available for licensing.

The deadline for submission of proposals for the Grants Program is October 13, 2006. Awardees will be notified by December 15, 2006. Visit http://www.gmac.com/MERInstitute for more information or contact Rachel Edgington at research@gmac.com

The International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility is pleased to announce its fourth annual symposium on Friday September 22nd 2006. Previous symposiums have been well-attended, attracted leading academics, researchers and practitioners, and have informed high quality debate on pressing CSR issues.

This year’s theme is Comparative CSR. This is a pressing issue for two obvious reasons: explanation and strategy. Given that much CSR reflects wider national business systems, it is important to understand what it is about particular systems that yield particular CSR issues and modes of action. From the point of view of strategy, organisations need to understand the nature of national CSR systems in order to design, practise, justify and articulate their own responsible practices.

Location: Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham UK.

Cost: Registration is £60 or £30 for students.

Programme: The programme will begin at 9:30 and close at 16:30. Lunch is included and the symposium will be followed by a short drinks reception.

Confirmed Papers:

Managing Human Rights within Shell: sharing experiences Helen Sullivan (Policy and External Relations advisor, Shell) and Esther Schouten (PhD candidate Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Explaining Comparative CSR Ruth Aguilera (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Dirk Matten (Royal Holloway College, University of London) and Cynthia A. Williams (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

CSR and Varieties of Capitalism Wendy Chapple and Jean-Pascal Gond (ICCSR)

Regulatory and Voluntary Approaches to Reporting Gender Workplace Issues: Australia, the UK and the USA Carol Adams (La Trobe University), Kate Grosser (ICCSR) and Jeremy Moon (ICCSR)

International Panel - Details to be confirmed

Registration: Symposium registration is now open, copies of the registration form are available from the ICCSR website (www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/iccsr or by contacting Karen.maltby@nottingham.ac.uktel: 0115 846 7854.

Submissions are welcome for the Global Development Network’s annual competition for the Most Innovative Development Project, which carries prizes in cash and travel of over US $70,000! The finalists will present their proposals at GDN’s Annual Global Development Conference in China in January 2007. Submissions are being accepted for an ongoing development project implemented in a developing or transition country. Criteria include the degree of innovation and the potential for broad application of the project in other countries
(CFP-1 Most Innovative Development Project
(CFP-2) Award for Outstanding Research on Development
(CFP-3) Medals for Research on Development

Deadline for submission:  August 21, 2006
For more information on the competition visit our website at www.gdnet.org.

In accordance with the EABIS statutes, we are pleased to inform you that the Annual General Assembly will take place at the Colloquium on 12th September on the SDA Bocconi Campus. Exact room details will be provided at a later date. On behalf of Viscount Davignon, EABIS’ Chair and Chair of the General Assembly for 2006, please find the draft agenda at the EABIS Intranet (here)

By extension, part of the General Assembly will involve a report from Executive Director Peter Lacy on EABIS' accounts for the past year.  PDF versions of these documents will be available to all members on the EABIS Intranet from Monday, August 7th and the relevant link communicated to the network.

Member Action:  For the GA, all EABIS partners, members and associate members are required to nominate one official representative who carries the institutional voting rights on all issues, including elections. Please notify Charis Desinioti (charis.desinioti@eabis.org) of who this will be for your institution.

If you have any additional items that you would like to add to the agenda, please send them to Peter Lacy (peter.lacy@eabis.org) and we will incorporate them.

One of EABIS’ first research projects, led by IESE Business School in Barcelona, on the impact of entrepreneurship and corporate innovation upon capacity building and economic development in developing markets – or the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ – continues to attract the deserved attention of the international academic community and other stakeholders.

With significant outputs already having emerged in the form of papers and articles (see below), Research Director Christian Seelos will present the key learnings of this project, which he co-led with Dr. Johanna Mair (also of IESE) at the Business as an Agent of World Benefit Global Forum in Cleveland, USA towards the end of October. This conference is without question a major event in the worldwide Corporate Responsibility calendar – jointly organised with the UN Global Compact, among this year’s keynote speakers will be Peter Senge, Nancy J. Adler, CK Pralahad and William Christopher. Unusually this opportunity will involve a public and a virtual presentation of the
project, ensuring 360 degree exposure and publicity. As such, we are delighted that one of the original 1-year initiatives funded by EABIS’ founding corporate partners, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Shell and IBM, will soon be profiled before such a relevant and influential audience.

Aside from the BAWB Conference, Christian and Johanna have already addressed other prominent audiences in the field, such as the European Group for Organisational Studies Colloquium in Bergen. Of equal note, they have also been invited to present the their research findings at the prestigious Academy of Management Annual Conference in Atlanta, USA, as part of the Institutional Entrepreneurship Track. Their articles have featured in various media and publications, including the European Business Forum and “Alleviating Global Poverty”, a Harvard Business School book.

EABIS would like to congratulate Christian and Johanna for having driven this project forward with such energy and success, which by extension contributes greatly to raising the profile of the EABIS network, its members and its pioneering projects supported by the Founding Partners and the European Commission.

Two articles that might interest academic community members  who are involved in issues of business in society have been announced recently:

1. Association of MBA have presented "Improving the Relevance of Management Research: Evidence-Based Management: Design Science or Both?" article in its latest newletter. "The practicing executive is more likely to read ‘airport’ books than even the most practically focused journals..."  Read the article here

2. Aspen Institute's Closer Looks at Business Education are back. The latest edition focuses on Corporate Governance and features an interview with Professor Michael Jensen. It examines how this issue is managed in global MBA education, describe some best practices, and offer teaching resources. Download the issue here.