Abstract
As evidenced by its impact on the entrepreneur, the family, the firm, the industry, and society, entrepreneurial exit has emerged as a critical component of the entrepreneurial process and a distinctive domain of entrepreneurship researchers. Exit is complex because it is both multi-level and multi-faceted. It is multi-level in that exit can refer to exit of the founder or exit of the firm from the market or both. Each of these has varying impact upon existing institutions. It is multi-faceted in that it can be applied to both low and high performing founders and firms and its impact on institutions varies depending upon the context.
Despite its importance, the academic research in entrepreneurial exit is relatively sparse compared to other components of the entrepreneurial process, such as opportunity identification, new venture creation, or growth. Yet the exit is the culmination of all that the firm is and a reflection of all previous goals, decisions, activities, and influence. Entrepreneurial exit research has the capacity to make significant contributions to leading theoretical perspectives including (but not limited to) population ecology, resource-based view, theory of planned behaviour, threshold theory, psychological ownership, and theories of leadership, change, affect, and cognition.
There exists a large body of literature which examines business and market exit; however, this research primarily focuses upon large, publicly traded companies leaving a gap in our understanding of how the majority of firms and firm founders across the world develop exit strategies, complete the exit process, and what the ramifications of exit are to both internal and external stakeholders. Further, additional research is needed to disentangle the various dimensions of exit including ‘failure’ from ‘successful’ exit, ‘deliberate’ from ‘unplanned’ exit and ‘honest’ from ‘dishonest’ closure.
We welcome submissions from disciplinary oriented research in strategy, finance, accounting, sociology, psychology, organization theory, economic geography, etc., as well as interdisciplinary studies of entrepreneurial exit. Both conceptual and empirical work will be considered. We would like this special issue to offer a set of papers that encourages theoretical development and empirical examination of the myriad of important topics within entrepreneurial exit. Examples of themes, topics, and problems:
The development of exit strategies and processes
An examination of psychological / cognitive barriers to exit both internal and external to the firm
Studies of founder succession
International / comparative studies
Studies that disentangle exit from failure
Studies that examine exit differences among industries, countries, and cultures
Understanding valuation from both seller’s and acquirers’ perspective
The impact and implications of exit on institutions, philanthropic infrastructure or economic development
Studies which explore unique methods and data for studying entrepreneurial exit
The Guest Editors would also like to draw attention to a related conference on Entrepreneurial Exit, organized in conjunction with The Ratio Institute in Stockholm, Sweden scheduled for September 27th–28th, 2013. The website is http://ratio.se/. The scientific committee invites submissions specific to the conference, related to the indicative list above. Presentations at the conference will be considered for the Special Issue; thus, the conference is intended to aid the development of papers. However, final acceptances will be drawn from all submissions, and will be subject to an anonymous double blind review process
Full papers for submission to the Special Issue of the International Small Business Journal must be submitted via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/isbj and must comply with ISBJ guidelines
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/ISB_Manuscript_Guidelines.pdf
Final Special Issue Submission Deadline: Friday, 29th November 2013. Publication is scheduled for late 2015 or early 2016.