IMPORTANT DATES

December 16, 2019                       Abstract Submission Deadline                                             

December 20, 2019                       Notification of Acceptance

February 16, 2020                          Full Paper Submission Deadline 

March 1, 2020                                Registration Deadline 

March 31 - April 2 2020               Conference Dates

March 30 - April 3 2020               PhD Symposium

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ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The 5th version of this conference aims to advance our understanding of entrepreneurship-as-practice, foster network ties, facilitate collaborative writing relationships, and build a strong community of practice scholars. To do so, we have developed a Research Conference and PhD Symposium that educates interested scholars as well as develops empirical and conceptual papers regarding the ‘practice turn’ taking place in entrepreneurship studies. 

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Building on the first (February 2016 at VU Amsterdam), second (February 2017 at University College Dublin Quinn School of Business), third (April 2018 at Linnaeus University) and fourth (April 2019 at Nantes Business School) Entrepreneurship-as-Practice conferences, this conference and PhD symposium bring the growing community of researchers who embrace the “practice turn” back to Amsterdam.

 

INTRODUCTION

The practice tradition (also known as practice-based studies, the practice approach or the practice lens) in the social sciences forefronts the notion that practices and their connections are fundamental to the ontology of all social phenomena (Rouse, 2006; T. Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Savigny, 2001). Ventures, firms or startups, in this view, are not ontologically separate phenomena from the performance of everyday, materially accomplished and ordered practices (Chalmers & Shaw, 2017; Hill, 2018; Johannisson, 2011; Vincent & Pagan, 2019). This is to say that no description or explanation of features of entrepreneurial life—such as, recognizing, evaluating and exploiting opportunities—is possible without the ‘alternate’ description and explanation of how entrepreneurial life is actually lived in and through practices (Gross, Carson, & Jones, 2014; Keating, Geiger, & Mcloughlin, 2013). The term ‘practice’, therefore, does not refer to an ‘empty’ conceptual category of ‘what entrepreneurs think and do’ (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2019), but encompasses the meaning-making, identity-forming and order-producing interactions (Chia & Holt, 2006; Nicolini, 2009) enacted by multiple entrepreneurial practitioners and situated in specific (historical) conditions. Therefore, practice theories orient entrepreneurship scholars to take seriously the practices of entrepreneuring as they unfold and are experienced in real-time rather than as they are remembered. Simply put, practice scholars are concerned with the ‘nitty-gritty’ work of entrepreneuring—all the meetings, the talking, the selling, the form-filling and the number-crunching by which opportunities actually get enacted (Matthews, Chalmers, & Fraser, 2018; Whittington, 1996). This comes with considerable ontological, theoretical and methodological implications which will be addressed during the Conference and PhD Symposium.  

 

For background and information on EaP literature, prior conferences, media and other pertinent materials, please go to: https://www.entrepreneurshipaspractice.com.