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Call for Book Chapters: Stakeholder Management and Entrepreneurship in Africa

  • 1.  Call for Book Chapters: Stakeholder Management and Entrepreneurship in Africa

    Posted 05-11-2022 12:02
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    Call for Book Chapters
    Stakeholder Management and Entrepreneurship in Africa 

    Overview
    It is well-recognized that stakeholder management is important for new ventures and family businesses (Cennamo et al., 2012; Pollack, Barr, & Hanson, 2017) as well as corporate entrepreneurship (Kuratko, Hornsby, & Goldsby, 2007). In recent years, stakeholder management has attracted increasing attention in entrepreneurship scholarship as evident by the recent special issue call in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and in-depth analysis of the literature (Leonidou et al., 2020; Shams et al., 2020). Scholars argue that stakeholder management can enable the identification of new business opportunities (Vandekerckhove & Dentchev, 2005), enhance resource allocation process (Harrison, Bosse, & Phillips, 2010), and facilitate market entry (Pollack et al., 2017). Relatedly, scholars note that entrepreneurship could have a positive impact on stakeholders such as employees and local communities by eliminating "value anomalies" (Venkatraman, 2002).

    Motivation for this Book
    Despite the advances in stakeholder management literature, our understanding of stakeholder management is limited, particularly in the context of Africa. The African continent is home to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world (Brookings Institute, 2019) and it is conjectured to be the next frontier for growth and development. Furthermore, empirical evidence indicates that entrepreneurship plays an influential role in the economic growth of African countries (Adusei, 2016). However, African countries are fraught with weak institutional environments, and this heightens the adversity entrepreneurs face. The weak institutional environments create hurdles for firms engaging in entrepreneurial and innovation activities, which the entrepreneurs must overcome to achieve success (Ahsan, Adomako, & Mole, 2020; Adomako et al., 2021).

    In the context of Africa, a diverse range of stakeholders such as employees, local communities, national or local government officials, politicians, chiefs, religious leaders, customers, non-government/non-profit entities, civil society organizations, groups with special interests, and suppliers are affected by or affect the actions of entrepreneurial firms. Two streams of research are especially pertinent for gaining deeper insights on stakeholder management in African countries. The first stream of research focuses on the actions entrepreneurs undertake in weak institutional environments to acquire necessary resources, reduce time to market, and establish venture legitimacy. For instance, strategic relationships with stakeholders such as politicians and government officials could provide access to valuable information and resources (Acquaah, 2007), enhance the firm's "speed to market" by reducing bureaucratic hurdles (Marquis & Raynard, 2015), and create favorable "rules of the game" (Brown & Huang, 2020), which could lead to competitive advantage. Likewise, astutely managing relationships with non-government organizations and local communities could bestow legitimacy to new ventures (Ritchie, 2016).

    The second stream of research focuses on the well-being of the stakeholders. In contrast to the instrumental strand that treats stakeholders as "means to an end", the normative perspective adopts a moral and philosophical approach to stakeholder management (Reed, 2002) to ensure the well-being of stakeholders. For instance, firms could engage in practices that harm stakeholders under the guise of "promoting entrepreneurship" (Ahsan, 2020). Scholars suggest that entrepreneurship corrects such inequities existing in society through "fundamental rearrangements in how resources and stakeholders are combined" (Venkatraman, 2002). However, this might not occur in weak institutional environments as such environments typically lack effective mechanisms to correct inequities and provide little protection to employees and local communities. Scholars suggest that engaging in deeper relationships with stakeholders, irrespective of the institutional requirements, could benefit both firms and stakeholders. For instance, focusing on employees' welfare in environments that have fewer constraints on hiring and firing can improve employees' satisfaction and firms' financial performance (Edmans, Li, & Zhang, 2014). Likewise, Lumpkin and Bacq (2019) propose a civic value creation framework that involves stakeholders in the value creation process and leads to financial and non-financial benefits for them. These two streams provide rich opportunities for scholars to examine stakeholder management in the complex and heterogeneous African context (Amankwah‐Amoah, Danso, & Adomako, 2019). We believe this will not only help in improving the generalizability of stakeholder management findings but will also provide unique insights that can spur future research. We are seeking an eclectic mix of studies, both quantitative and qualitative, that focus on enhancing our understanding of the relationship between stakeholders and entrepreneurship in Africa. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following
    topics:
    • Which stakeholders are critical for the development and growth of entrepreneurial firms in Africa? Why? How does the importance of stakeholders vary according to the venture stage, firm types (e.g., family business vs. start-up), and institutional and industry contexts?
    • How do entrepreneurial firms in Africa overcome the challenges associated with lack of human capital and supporting organizations, including reliable suppliers? What strategies do they adopt to effectively manage stakeholders and overcome these issues?
    • In what situations do entrepreneurial firms in Africa engage with atypical stakeholders such as chiefs, religious leaders, and environmental organizations? What benefits/resources do they attain from such stakeholders? What strategies do they adopt to manage such stakeholders? What are the challenges associated with
    managing atypical stakeholders?
    • What strategies do entrepreneurial firms in Africa adopt to balance the "sanding effect" and "greasing effect" associated with managing stakeholders such as politicians and government officials in African countries?
    • What pressures do entrepreneurial firms in Africa experience from various stakeholders? How do they effectively manage their network of stakeholders to maximize outcomes for the firm as well as the various stakeholders?
    • What are some of the unique strategies that African firms have employed to enhance the well-being of their stakeholders? What are the short-term and long-term consequences of such approaches?
    • How do stakeholder management strategies vary at the intersection of gender and local culture in Africa? What strategies can women entrepreneurs adopt to effectively manage stakeholders and overcome additional hurdles they experience in such environments?
    • Who are the stakeholders that play a pivotal role in granting legitimacy to new ventures in Africa? How does the process of claiming and granting legitimacy in African countries vary from that in the developed countries (e.g., U.S., U.K.)?
    • How does stakeholder management affect outcomes of African firms beyond financial performance? Does it enhance innovation, new product development, and international market expansion?
    • How has the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the challenges of managing stakeholders in African countries? What strategies have firms employed to mitigate these challenges?

    Important Deadlines:
    Full chapter submission: July 1 and 30 September 2022
    Review process and feedback: November 2022
    Revised chapter submission: 2 January 2023
    Final notification: 1 March 2023

    Questions concerning submissions may be addressed to all the Editors of the book:

    Samuel Adomako, University of Birmingham, UK: S.Adomako@bham.ac.uk

    Michael Asiedu Gyensare, Edith Cowan University, Australia: m.gyensare@ecu.edu.au

    Mujtaba Ahsan, San Diego State University, USA: mahsan@sdsu.edu

    Short Biography of Editors:
    Dr. Samuel Adomako is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to joining the University of Birmingham, Dr. Adomako held teaching and research positions in King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, and the University of Bradford, UK. His research work has been published or forthcoming in leading scholarly journals such as British Journal of Management, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Business Research, International Business Review, Journal of International Management, R&D Management Journal, International Review of Financial Analysis, Business Strategy, and the Environment. He received his Ph.D. from Warwick Business School, University of Warwick (AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA Accredited) and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, United Kingdom.

    Mr. Michael A. Gyensare is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Management at Edith Cowan University, Australia. Prior to that Mr. Gyensare was a lecturer in Human Resource
    Management at the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. His research straddles the divide between Strategic HRM and Entrepreneurship fields. His research has been published in scholarly journals such as Journal of Business Research, Leadership and Organisational Development Journal, and Cogent Business & Management. He serves on the editorial advisory board of Industrial and Commercial Training under Emerald.

    Dr. Mujtaba Ahsan is an Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at San Diego State University, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Management from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, international business, and innovation. Dr. Ahsan's work has been
    published in several journals such as Academy of Management Review, Entrepreneurship Theory, and Practice, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Business Ethics,
    International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of Small Business Management, International Small Business Journal, Management International Review, and Journal of International Management among others. He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Small Business Management and Journal of the International Council for Small Business.

    Full-length chapter submission
    Please follow the instructions provided by Routledge guidelines

    Length of the chapter: 4500-6000 words, single-spaced, 12-point font size, Times New
    Roman. Pages should be numbered consecutively.

    Note. Authors are responsible for professional copy-editing of the submitted manuscript


    ------------------------------
    Michael Gyensare
    Doctoral Researcher
    School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan U.
    Joondalup WA
    +61426494810
    ------------------------------

    ------------------------------
    Michael Gyensare
    Doctoral Researcher
    School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan U.
    Joondalup WA
    +61426494810
    ------------------------------

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