Sustainable development has emerged as a controversial yet influential concept for management.  Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a significant co­nduit for sustainable products and processes, and some even hold it up as a panacea for many social and environmental concerns. Yet, there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the nature of this role and its’ unfolding. This special issue will bring together various elements of entrepreneurial research with the aim of further illuminating this vital societal role.

This special issue call is seeking high quality conceptual and empirical submissions that explore the opportunities, threats and unique characteristics that exist in this emerging sustainable development-entrepreneurship inter-relationship. A broad and far ranging explorations that will extend the understanding of how entrepreneurs can address a variety of energy, environmental, and social concerns is encouraged. Relevant topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Are there elements of Opportunity Discover unique to the evolution of Sustainable Development?
• What are the implications of additional complexity challenges due to social, environmental and economic parameters on the bounded and transrationality of entrepreneurs?
• What are the differences between incumbents and new entrants regarding emerging sustainable development concerns?
• Can the establishment of sustainable development concerns and policies provide, or hinder, new entrepreneurial or innovative activities?
• How can entrepreneurs align with or seek to shape complex social and environmental dynamics?
• How can governmental, legal and financial systems impact sustainability opportunities?

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2008

Please follow the Journal of Business Venturing submission guidelines available at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505723/description#description and send your submission to:

Dr. Jeremy Hall
Faculty of Business Administration
Simon Fraser University
Email: jeremy_hall@sfu.ca

­­Rationale

In 1984, R. Edward Freeman published "Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach". While the term ‘stakeholder’ was then hardly used, it became one of the central concepts in the business ethics revival since the 1990s and quickly gained currency in mainstream management discourse. Today it is practically a household term used by many different types of actors in a very diverse set of fields. Although many reasons might be attributed to its popularity, Freeman’s definition from 1984 is by far the most often referred to.

In 2007, Freeman, Harrison and Wicks published "Managing for Stakeholders" as a practitioner’s version of the revised 1984 book and in 2009 they will publish the academic revision of Strategic Management. To celebrate this 25th anniversary of Freeman’s classic work, Philosophy of Management invites scholars and practitioners to reflect upon avenues and perspectives on management that this work has opened and/or closed.

Scope

The special issue aims to assemble papers that offer philosophical scrutiny of stakeholder thinking and that relate this to Freeman’s conception. The integration of empirical findings into the papers is particularly encouraged as is the need to emphasize the philosophical and sense-making boundaries of the stakeholder concept.

Ideally the special issue will contain reflections on the praxis of stakeholder thinking from various kinds of organizations.

R. Edward Freeman will contribute to the special issue with a ‘reply to his critics’. Papers are called for offering fresh philosophical treatment with reference to Freeman’s stakeholder concept of areas such as the following:

• Problematic ontological or epistemological assumptions in stakeholder thinking
• Freeman’s stakeholder revolution and its current contra-revolution
• Feminist perspectives in/on stakeholder thinking
• How stakeholder analysis can still leave you stakeholder-blind
• How the reception of stakeholder thinking in development studies or development ethics enriches stakeholder thinking in management
• The production of stakeholders
• Innovative stakeholder concepts and their added value
• Problematic aspects for representational stakeholders
• Comparing different categorization-models of stakeholders
• Continental philosophy and stakeholder thinking

Contributions

Contributors are asked to send paper proposals with abstracts. In case the proposal is provisionally accepted, the contributor will be asked to submit a full paper draft for peer-review.
Proposed contributions will be welcome in the form of papers between 3,000-7,000 words.

Timetable

Proposals with abstracts    Due by Friday 24 October 2008

Provisional acceptances    Notified by Friday 21 November 2008

Drafts for refereeing        Due by Friday 20 February 2009

Referee reports         Friday 24 April 2009

Final drafts            Due by Friday 26 June 2009

Publication            September 2009

Please send proposals, papers and abstracts and any enquiries to Dr. Wim Vandekerckhove at wim.vandekerckhove@gmail.com.
Submissions should be sent by email attachment (Word or RTF format). Please provide a separate brief resume of the author(s) and full address for correspondence including phone, fax and email.

Full author guidelines for paper layout and referencing can be found at: http://www.managementphilosophers.com/Getting%20Published.htm

Philosophy of Management

Now in its seventh year, Philosophy of Management is the established forum for philosophically informed thinking about management in theory and practice. It seeks to define and develop the field of philosophy of management. The Journal is read by thinkers, scholars, teachers, consultants and practitioners in 20 countries. It is for philosophers working in all traditions, for management thinkers concerned with the philosophical foundations and validity of their subject and practising managers seeking to engage with the philosophical issues raised by what they believe and do.

Guest Editor: Dr. Wim Vandekerckhove

Wim Vandekerckhove is assistant professor of practical ethics at Ghent University, Center for Ethics & Value Inquiry. His research concerns moral argumentation of whistle blowing protection, the organization of counter-trafficking policies, sense-making in socially responsible investment practices, and cosmopolitanism in business. Among his recent publications are Whistleblowing and Organizational Social Responsibility (published with Ashgate), “A Puzzle in SRI: the Investor and the Judge” and “A Speech-Act Model for Talking to Management” (both forthcoming in Journal of Business Ethics).

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With the Call for Cases 2009 oikos and Ashoka join forces to promote the creation of high quality teaching cases on Corporate Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship (sponsored by Ashoka). The competition welcomes entries from all parts of the world. Submitted case studies should be suitable for use in management education and should be related to managerial issues faced by organisations and individuals.

• Sponsored by the oikos Foundation, the Corporate Sustainability cases should illustrate sustainability-related strategies and change processes in established medium and large organisations. 
• Social Entrepreneurship cases; sponsored by Ashoka; should illustrate entrepreneurial initiatives that use business principles to address social and environmental challenges.

Deadline for submission is November 30, 2008. For more information about the award committees and to download the call and the submission form, please visit http://www.oikos-international.org/en/projects/cwc.html.

Leaders in organizations and governments must make responsible strategic and policy decisions that satisfy two important objectives: 

1. to facilitate and sustain high organizational performance, and 
   
2. to manage organizational and national resources so that organizations and societies can benefit from them in the future.
   

The IJSSM serves as an interface among business leaders, policy makers, economists, and management scholars. The IJSSM seeks contributions with global relevance concerned with organizational and economic sustainability. Readership includes professionals, academics, researchers and policy makers. The IJSSM publishes original and review papers, technical reports, case studies, book reviews, and research notes. Both qualitative and empirical submissions are invited.
 
The IJSSM publishes papers on topics including but not limited to:

• Crisis management from perspectives of society, government, and the organization
  
• Economic theory and strategic industrial resource development
• Economic theory and strategic ecology
• Ethical and social responsibility considerations in sustainable management practice 
• Resource management from a public policy perspective 
• Role of information management in sustainable development 
• Strategic management from the perspective of sustainability of performance
• Sustainability of competitive advantage from organizational and other perspectives
  

For additional information, please contact the editor, Dr. John A. Parnell, at john.parnell@uncp.edu or access the journal on-line at www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijssm.