5th Interdisciplinary Conference on Business Failure

28 & 29 of april 2022

At université de Sherbrooke - Longueuil campus - Québec, Canada

« Entrepreneurial failure: preventing, healing, rebounding »

Every entrepreneur knows that he/she will have to face obstacles throughout his/her career as a creator, but the fact remains that, for each individual, the ultimate goal is the success of his/her project. Despite numerous efforts and a clear involvement, however, failure can happen and, it is necessary to make a decision: To keep on looking for new opportunities or to stop. In both cases, the same questions arise: why this failure? Is it due to personal errors or is it an integral part of the life cycle of entrepreneurs and businesses? Is it a step toward successful development and innovation? How to get out of it and possibly rebound from it?

Around the world, entrepreneurial failure is one of the risks faced by businesses. A theory on entrepreneurial failure, strictly speaking, does not exist, but the scale of the phenomenon and its consequences on many economic actors justify the numerous scientific works dedicated to it. In recent years, many researchers have investigated this issue, highlighting its importance in the field of entrepreneurship and the need to better conceptualize (Shepherd et al., 2016 ; Jenkins et Mckelvie, 2016; Khelil, 2016 ; Corner et al., 2017; Eberhart et al., 2017; Hsu et al., 2017; Shepherd et Patzelt, 2017 ; Brédart et Levratto, 2018 ; Eklund et al. 2018). 

This phenomenon is no longer perceived as a sensitive subject whose responsibility would be the sole responsibility of the entrepreneur. It is rather seen as an essential step, one would argue mandatory, to the success and deserves to be studied in depth. A quote attributed to Winston Churchill " Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm " perfectly illustrates the process of entrepreneurial failure. Entrepreneurs can freely talk about their failure to say that it is part of the learning process.

Activities set up to give entrepreneurs a voice in order to communicate their experience, such as the Camp Fail initiative in Quebec, specific conferences on entrepreneurial failure in France and other initiatives attest to this. The work of De Hoe et al. (2018), Nielsen and Sarasvathy (2011) show that entrepreneurs who have experienced entrepreneurial failure are more likely to set up a new business. This entrepreneurial dynamic can be linked to a territorial dynamic allowing entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities in order to set out on a new entrepreneurial adventure. To date, few studies examine the context of entrepreneurial reentry after failure. Our understanding is limited with regard to the contextual factors that may facilitate or impede reentry. Various contextual factors possibly moderate the reentry-related processes. These factors may include ecosystems (Simmons et al., 2019), pre-existing social structures (Giddens, 1984), dynamic and competitive environment (Raisch and Birkinshaw, 2008) and institutional constraints (Amankwah-Amoah et al., 2019). In general, obstacles and barriers prevalent in any territory adversely affect entrepreneurial activities (Agarwal et al., 2007; Acs et al., 2013). Therefore, it is pertinent to examine the effects of contextual factors on failed entrepreneurs who wish to start again, and according to Guerrero and Pena-Legazkue (2019), to identify the favorable spatial contexts to the initiation of a repeated and accelerated entrepreneurial activity. Hence the importance of the territorial dimension in the renewal of entrepreneurial activities, especially after a case of failure.

The mission of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a given territory will be to prevent, to provide help in order to heal, and finally, to help entrepreneurs rebound. This is the framework for the 5th Interdisciplinary Conference on Business Failure (CIDE). The previous topics of the conference were articulated around four main themes: CIDE 1 addressed the failure of the company from the legal angle, CIDE 2 was devoted to the relationship between the SME and failure, CIDE 3 was dedicated to the analysis of failure as a multidimensional process and CIDE 4 has focused on the failure process.

The next CIDE will place the companies / entrepreneur-territory relationship at the heart of the reflection on entrepreneurial failure.

How to rethink this relationship to help companies face the risk of failure based on different scales (local, regional, national)? How to get the "stakeholders" to realize the need to reconcile failure and rebound in their territorial strategies?

The entrepreneur goes through this experience of failure, he/she develops a learning process and it is he who is able to rebound on a new adventure. But the notion of territory is represented in many ways. Geographical, of course, but also by actors operating there, giving a more complex dimension to this concept, for example, in the case of entrepreneurial ecosystems where public and private stakeholders are involved, which combine different levels of government (municipal, provincial, etc.) and host producers, policy makers as well as stakeholders in research and higher education.

All contributions with an empirical or theoretical dimension, quantitative or qualitative, on the theme of entrepreneurial failure (small, medium or large) and / or about the actors having experienced failure, are welcome. Communications relating to the experiences of entrepreneurs in regard to entrepreneurial failure will be much appreciated, as well as, the experiences of public, private actors, associations, municipalities and cities forming a specific territory to prevent but also to catch up with entrepreneurial failure and give the opportunity for entrepreneurs to rebound.

The following themes can be cited (non-exhaustive list)

• Failure as a learning process
• Entrepreneurial failure and support
• Forms and consequences of failure according to entrepreneurial forms (cooperatives, family businesses, etc.)
• Failure and health of the entrepreneur
• Territorial vision of failure
• Local initiatives to fight against entrepreneurial failure
• Entrepreneurial reentry after failure
• The role of spatial/territory context in the entrepreneurial reentry after failure
• Theoretical approaches to entrepreneurial failure
• Etc.

Deadlines

December 20, 2021 (deadline): submission of communication proposals in the form of a summary of approximately 500 words accompanied by three to five keywords and JEL code (s).

January 10, 2022: Decision to accept or refuse the proposal

March 31, 2022: Sending of the final version of the article 

April 20, 2022: Registration ends

Inscription

Registration is open until April 20, 2022. The registration fee includes the speakers briefcase, coffee breaks and lunches. They apply to all participants whether or not they submit an article. 

Amount of registration fees:

Before April 1, 2022: 250 Canadian dollars (around 160 euros)

Between April 2 and April 16, 2022: 320 Canadian dollars (around 205 euros)

Online registration (online payment, purchase order) will soon be available on the conference website.

Instructions to authors

The texts will not exceed 15 pages (8,000 words), excluding appendices and list of references, in A4 format (210 mm x 297 mm), single spacing and margins of 2.5 cm everywhere. The pages composing the text will be numbered in the bottom center from the number 1. The body of the text will use a Times New Roman font of size 12, while the tables, graphs and list of references will be written in size of 10. The first page will present the title, the names of the authors and their contact details, the summary and keywords; these elements with the exception of those concerning the authors will be included on the second page. The texts will be submitted in Word version (.docx or .doc).

The best articles presented will be published in the special issue of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences(http://cjas-rcsa.ca ) in French or in English.

Organizing Committee

Maarouf Ramadan (University of Sherbrooke), Xavier Brédart (humanOrg) and Éric Severin (University Lille). For further information, please contact:

maarouf.ramadan@usherbrooke.ca ; xavier.bredart@umons.ac.be ; eric.severin@univ-lille.fr