Editorial

Citation

Rae, D. (2014), "Editorial", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-11-2013-0204

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Volume 20, Issue 1

This issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research opens the 20th volume of its publication, which prompts one to reflect on how far entrepreneurship research, and especially the study of the human and social dynamics of entrepreneurship, has developed since the first issues appeared in 1995. Yet, looking back to the first volume, it is interesting to note that some of the topics explored remain evergreen, and that a number of the authors are still very active in the field of study.

This issue was prepared immediately after the Institute for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (ISBE) annual conference in Cardiff in November 2013. There were many presentations of high-quality research papers and we hope to welcome several of these for publication in due course. A recurring debate during the conference was on the relevance of entrepreneurship research to policy and practice, and the danger of its irrelevance and marginalisation. It was perhaps noteworthy that very few representatives of policy-making organisations, and almost as few practitioners, were in attendance at the conference. Addressing this discontinuity between academic research and its application remains a continuing challenge, although it was significant that one author who appeared in the very first issue of IJEBR, Professor Monder Ram, presented an energetic and compelling account of how research by his team engages with policy and entrepreneurial business owners’ concerns.

It is perhaps significant that the conference took place in November 2013, the month in which UK Universities finalised their submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which will be assessed in 2014. One has heard many concerns from researchers about decisions made by their institutions on the criteria for their inclusion in REF submissions, and the use made of academic journal rankings in doing this. The continued use (and in some instances, misuse) of the Association of Business Schools journal ranking, last revised as long ago as 2010, has also been a factor. It is fair to say that this journal has not been favoured by this process, and that the esteem it has achieved is not matched by its position in such rankings. Our response is to continue with our ambitions to grow the quality, impact and distinctiveness of this journal, with our eyes firmly set on the international arena, rather than the UK sector alone.

This issue features four papers which extend knowledge of entrepreneurial behaviour, growth and innovation. As is often the case in this journal, their starting points and data sets are diverse, but the conclusions and contributions they offer have some important points of connection.

The first paper, by Colin Williams, is the first to examine whether men and women starting a business use the informal economy, and do so as an incubator to test the viability of their venture. Finding that just over one in six small businesses started by men and one in 14 started by women, or one in eight overall, traded in the informal economy when starting up in order to test the viability of the business, it offers useful conclusions for research and policy in this area.

The next paper, by Furlan, Grandinetti and Paggiaro, addresses the relationship between firm growth and resource consumption. Based on a sample of Italian firms, it indicates that rather than external resources being an input of firm growth, and external resources being an output of firm growth, entrepreneurial growth is a process that needs external relationships in order to flourish over time, in which highly entrepreneurial firms excel in relational capabilities such as networking and collaboration.

Our third and fourth papers explore innovation at national and regional levels. Claude Marcotte addresses the question of the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging economies. Based on a review of the Schumpeterian and Kirznerian conceptions of entrepreneurship, it measures the two views within the economic and institutional contexts of 16 emerging economies by means of exploratory cluster analysis from secondary data, and identifies a range of conceptual, methodological and contextual issues.

In an interesting comparison, McAdam, Reid and Shevlin assess the determinants for innovation implementation among SMEs in peripheral and “challenging” regions, seek to implement innovation from a path perspective. They examine the contributions from antecedent and mediator variables, using a cross-sectional survey of Scottish SMEs at firm level, and explore how these path model constructs and relationships contribute to innovation implementation.

In this issue of IJEBR, we wish to thank Dr Dilani Jayawarna, who has been a most capable Co-Editor of IJEBR, and who has brought a number of these papers to fruition as well as many before. Dilani has decided to step down from her editorial role in the journal to enable her to progress to other projects. We wish her every success with these, and look forward to introducing a new Co-Editor in the next issue.

Finally, we open a call for papers for a Special Issue on Entrepreneurial Learning within the small business experience: a context for change, which builds on the growing interest in this topic evidenced from the recent ISBE conference track and Special Interest Group. We invite readers to submit contributions for this issue, as well as mentioning again the call for papers for the special issue on Trust, Social Capital and Competitive Advantages of Family Businesses, which remains open.

David Rae