INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP
SORBONNE NOUVELLE UNIVERSITE PARIS III – UFR DU MONDE ANGLOPHONE
ORGANISED BY CERVEPAS/CREW (EA 4399)
16th, 17th, 18h September 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS

Entrepreneurial Societies and the English-speaking World:

Cultures, Contexts, Perspectives

Entrepreneurship is broadening its horizons. Defined as risk-taking, business venturing, value creation, emergence and development of organizations and projects, and recognition and exploitation of opportunity, the entrepreneurial process is widening its scope and blurring boundaries between the profit and nonprofit sectors. A new, largely entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism has developed in the English-speaking world and many other spheres as a proactive response to globalization and social fragmentation. Consonant with the transformations of the economic and political environment, this dynamic of innovation is not exclusively based on the Schumpeterian principle of “creative destruction.” It has led economics scholar David Audretsch to put forth the concept of “the entrepreneurial society” to account for this new, widely encompassing, network-based trend. Entrepreneurial activity may shape and structure the way people live together in society and share common values and representations. It may also be instrumental in the construction of specific forms of social ties, which would be strongly embedded in cultural areas, political economies and diverse contexts.

Paradoxically, the crisis that managerial organisations and economies across the world are currently facing has given new lustre to the “heroic” figure of the individual entrepreneur. It has ascribed a more central role to the entrepreneur’s works and deeds, while strongly emphasising the societal dynamics driven by families, diasporas, cluster regions, and “social entrepreneurs”. The rise of entrepreneurship as an economic, social, and societal phenomenon thus reflects deep changes in behaviour, practices and discourses that are at play within business and social systems. Entrepreneurship appears to be a process of governance and an original form of agency that provides consistency, strength, and the driving force to the entrepreneurial societies of the second post-modern and post-communist era.

The conference, whose working language will be English, will set out to question the socioeconomic role and function of entrepreneurship from a transdisciplinary and transnational perspective. Are we heading towards entrepreneurial societies rooted in specific cultural areas and structured around common forms of social ties? Is a more global entrepreneurial paradigm emerging and giving birth to various, interconnected entrepreneurial societies? How sustainable is this socio-economic development model?

This international conference will be held on 16-17-18 September 2010 at the Institut du Monde Anglophone of the University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle. Entrepreneurship and area studies experts will have the opportunity to exchange and confront their viewpoints on the role of the entrepreneurial process and analyse how the rise of the entrepreneurial society provides a dynamic interface among multi-faceted cultures and contexts.

Proposals (300-500 words) and a short CV (5-10 lines) should be sent by 4 May 2010 to: Jacques-Henri.Coste@univ-paris3.fr

Selected contributions will be published by PSN (Sorbonne Nouvelle University Press) and by entrepreneurship journals.

For more information on the conference download the flyer or go to: http://cervepas.univ-paris3.fr