“Developing Entrepreneurialism”
DETAILS
Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Developing Entrepreneurialism”
Journal: Journal of Business Venturing Insights
Publisher: Elsevier
CiteScore: 7.9
Submission deadline: 31 October 2026
Overview
This special issue interrogates entrepreneurialism as an ideology, not just as a set of business practices. It asks how entrepreneurial logic has developed historically and culturally, and how it shapes what “development” means—economically, socially, politically, and personally. Entrepreneurialism is treated as a distinct ideological formation that structures aspirations, legitimises certain futures, and marginalises alternatives, especially in resource‑poor or structurally unequal contexts.
The issue invites critical, historically and socially grounded work that clarifies entrepreneurialism’s conceptual contours and its role in framing development, progress, and transformation.
Core Themes
1. Conceptualising entrepreneurialism
How to define entrepreneurialism as an ideology that extends entrepreneurial logic into social life, shaping identities, agency, and institutional norms.
Distinguishing between entrepreneurship as activity and entrepreneurialism as discourse and ideology.
Clarifying how entrepreneurialism interacts with, but is not reducible to, neoliberalism.
2. Entrepreneurialism and development
How entrepreneurialism becomes a “gospel of development” that promises empowerment and redemption through entrepreneurship, yet often masks structural inequalities.
Links between entrepreneurialism and personal development, community development, national‑development agendas, and “entrepreneurship for all” discourses.
How entrepreneurialism legitimises some visions of progress while marginalising others (e.g., care‑based, collective, or post‑growth futures).
3. Historical and discursive development
How entrepreneurialism has evolved in relation to neoliberal reforms, Silicon Valley‑style myths, post‑colonial development agendas, and global policy discourses.
Work on invented traditions and “entrepreneurial ages”—mythic pasts, hero‑entrepreneurs, and supposed golden ages that justify contemporary entrepreneurial policies.
4. Power, politics, and inequality
How entrepreneurialism reconfigures power, governance, and inequality by shifting responsibility onto individuals and “resilient communities.”
Analyses of how gender, race, class, and geography shape who is recognised as an entrepreneur and whose projects are seen as “entrepreneurial.”
Critical studies of poverty‑driven entrepreneurialism, fragility, and “liability of poorness.”
5. Communities, infrastructures, and imagined collectives
Entrepreneurialism as an imagined community that builds symbolic bonds around shared narratives of disruption, hustle, and success.
How incubators, accelerators, policy programmes, universities, NGOs, and media act as infrastructures that reproduce entrepreneurialism.
6. Counter‑ideologies and alternatives
Engagement with post‑growth, ecological, feminist, post‑colonial, community‑based, and solidarity‑economy imaginaries that challenge entrepreneurial dominance.
Experiments with alternative visions of development that foreground care, equity, sufficiency, and relational well‑being rather than growth and marketisation.
Suggested Research Questions
Submissions may address (but are not limited to):
How has entrepreneurialism developed as an ideological formation in specific historical, institutional, or geographic contexts?
How does entrepreneurialism legitimise particular notions of development while obscuring or foreclosing others?
How do myths, narratives, and “success stories” around entrepreneurship shape public policy and individual aspirations?
How does entrepreneurialism reconfigure power, inequality, and exclusion across gender, race, class, and region?
How do infrastructures of entrepreneurialism (e.g., incubators, universities, youth programmes) shape what counts as “development”?
What counter‑ideologies and alternative imaginaries challenge entrepreneurialism’s dominance, and what new forms of development do they open up?
Submission Formats
The special issue welcomes both traditional and unconventional formats, reflecting the journal’s orientation toward insight‑driven, practice‑oriented, and pedagogically innovative work:
Traditional research articles
Videos with reflective essays on their scholarly and teaching value
Paired debates on provocative or unresolved issues in entrepreneurialism
Dialogues or roundtables with academics, practitioners, and activists
Critical reviews or visual essays on entrepreneurialism’s cultural representations, myths, and artefacts
If you have ideas for non‑traditional formats, you are encouraged to contact the guest editors in advance.
Submission Details
When submitting, select article type: “VSI: Entrepreneurialism”.
All submissions follow the journal’s author guidelines:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-business-venturing-insights/publish/guide-for-authorsSubmission window: 1 January – 31 October 2026.
Editorial acceptance deadline: 31 May 2027.
Papers will undergo the journal’s standard peer‑review process. Participation in the Paper Development Workshop (9 April 2026) does not guarantee acceptance.
Guest Editors
Léna Prouchet, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Seungah Lee, HEC Paris, Doha, Qatar
Arun Kumar, King’s College London, UK
Christina Lubinski, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Pablo Muñoz (JBVI Editor), Durham University Business School, UK
Why This Issue Matters
Entrepreneurialism is now a taken‑for‑granted lens through which careers, policy, education, and whole societies are imagined.
By critically examining its ideological foundations, historical trajectories, and distributive effects, this issue helps scholars and practitioners rethink what “development” should look like and open space for more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures.
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