Special Issue Editor(s)

Michiel Verver, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
m.j.verver@vu.nl

Juliette Koning, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
j.koning@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Stefanie Mauksch, Leipzig University, Germany
stefanie.mauksch@uni-leipzig.de

Maud van Merriënboer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
m.van.merrienboer@vu.nl

Natalia Vershinina, Audencia Business School, France
nvershinina@audencia.com

We invite submissions for a special issue exploring how anthropology can deepen our understanding of entrepreneurship as a socially and culturally embedded practice. We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers engaging with anthropological insights and ethnographic approaches to entrepreneurship.

Topics of interest include:

• Anthropological theories and thinkers enriching entrepreneurship research
• Ethnographic and multimodal methods
• Critical perspectives on power, exclusion, and neoliberalism
• Contextual studies on religion, family, community, and identity
• Decolonization and inclusive entrepreneurship

An online Paper Development Workshop (PDW) will be held on 30 October 2025 15:00 – 17:00 CET to support authors in developing their work. Interested? Submit an abstract (max. 600 words) that outlines the argumentation of the manuscript, including its conceptual, contextual, empirical, and/or methodological bedding by 16 October 2025 to m.j.verver@vu.nl and vanmerrienboer@rsm.nl. Submitters will receive further information about the PDW.

Note: Participation in the PDW is not required nor a guarantee of paper acceptance for the special issue.

Full papers for the special issue are due by 1 July 2026.

For the full call for papers, please visit: https://shorturl.at/3UbDD

Join us in advancing interdisciplinary conversations at the intersection of entrepreneurship and anthropology!

Special Issue Editor(s)

Shuang Lu Frost, Aarhus University, Denmark
shuangfrost@cc.au.dk

Magdalena Markowska, King’s College London, UK & Umeå University, Sweden
magdalena.markowska@kcl.ac.uk

Kai Roland Green, Aarhus University, Denmark
kai@cc.au.dk

Kimberly Eddleston, Northeastern University, U.S.A.
k.eddleston@northeastern.edu

Alisa Jno-Charles, Babson College, U.S.A.
ajnocharles@babson.edu

Haibo Zhou, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China
haibo.zhou@nottingham.edu.cn

Ulla Hytti, University of Turku, Finland
ullhyt@utu.fi

Theoretical Perspectives

While the special issue remains theoretically open, we particularly welcome contributions drawing on one or more of the following lenses:

• Gender and Care: How do gendered expectations around caregiving shape access to entrepreneurial resources, legitimacy, and identity? Relevant frameworks include role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002), which illuminates the tension between communal expectations of parenthood and the agentic demands of entrepreneurship, and stereotype threat theory (Gupta et al., 2008; 2009), which helps explain how awareness of gender-based stereotypes can suppress entrepreneurial confidence and performance among both mothers and fathers. Moving beyond these classical gender theories, more recent doing gender theorizing and approaches invites scholars to novel understandings of how doing gender and enacting multiple masculinities and femininities might affect both men and women entrepreneurs, as well as their ventures and households.
• Embeddedness and Context: How do regional ecosystems, welfare regimes, and institutional environments mediate the relationship between parenthood and entrepreneurship? Contributions may draw on the family embeddedness perspective (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003), which positions the household as a critical unit shaping entrepreneurial resource mobilisation, as well as institutional theory (North, 1990; Scott, 1995) to examine how formal and informal rules govern the compatibility of parenting and venture creation across contexts. Stigma theory (Goffman, 1963) may also prove insightful in understanding how certain parental identities, including single parenthood, LGBTQ+ parenting, and other non-normative family structures, shape entrepreneurial legitimacy and identity management, as LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs in particular must navigate the compounding challenges of stigmatised identities across both family and business domains (Essers et al., 2023).
• Identity and Discourse: How do parent-entrepreneurs construct, negotiate, and communicate their identities? Useful lenses here include entrepreneurial identity (Radu-Lefebvre et al., 2021), social identity theory (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011), sensemaking frameworks (Weick, 1995), and family systems theory (Bowen, 1978), which together offer tools for examining how entrepreneurs integrate — or struggle to integrate — parental and entrepreneurial roles into a coherent self-concept.

Topics of Interest

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers addressing the following themes (not limited to):

Parental Roles and Identities

• How do parent-entrepreneurs negotiate entrepreneurial and parental identities across gender, culture, and sexuality?
• How do emerging models of fatherhood/motherhood shape entrepreneurship?
• What role does founder identity transformation play in the transition to entrepreneurial parenthood?
• How do single parents, LGBTQ+ parents, and individuals in non-normative family forms experience entrepreneurial entry and growth?
• How is role conflict or role enrichment experienced differently by mothers and fathers in entrepreneurial families?

Household Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission

• How do partner dynamics and household egalitarianism shape entrepreneurial decisions?
• What specific resources (cognitive, financial, human, social capital) are transmitted from entrepreneurial parents to children?
• What are the lived experiences and well-being outcomes of children growing up in entrepreneurial households?
• How do macro-level factors (e.g., economic instability, policy frameworks) interact with household dynamics to influence children’s outcomes and orientations?
• In what ways do interparental interactions and household role negotiations shape children’s perception of entrepreneurship?
• How do entrepreneurial households balance opportunity creation with potential stress or instability for children?

Policy, Welfare Regimes, and Regional Contexts

• How do regional policies, parental leave systems, and childcare infrastructure shape entrepreneurial entry, continuation, and exit among parents?
• How do parent-entrepreneurs’ experiences differ across welfare regimes (liberal, social-democratic, conservative, developing-country contexts)?
• What role do informal institutions and extended family networks play in enabling or constraining parental entrepreneurship?

Narratives, Representations, and Discourse

• How does the portrayal of parent-entrepreneurs in media, public discourse, and cultural narratives affect entrepreneurial motives and sources of satisfaction?
• How does the self-representation and identity work of parent-entrepreneurs on social media and in entrepreneurial communities contribute to their business success and well-being?
• How do discursive ideals of ‘good motherhood’ or ‘involved fatherhood’ constrain or enable entrepreneurial action?

Outcomes and Impacts

• What are the longitudinal effects of entrepreneurship on family well-being, and vice versa?
• How does parenthood influence innovation, creativity, or business performance?
• How do entrepreneurial career trajectories differ based on family status, parenting roles, and the timing of parenthood relative to venture creation?

Submission Instructions

Submission Information

• June 2026. Online Information Session will be held on June 24 14:00 pm CET, 2026. To participate in the online information session, please submit your article abstract here before June 1, 2026. You will be notified if your abstract is accepted.
• May-November 2026. Availability of guest editors at conferences to provide developmental feedback (e.g., FERC, NCSB, IFERA, AOM, EURAM, RENT).
• TBD. Authors are invited to submit a full paper to participate in an offline Paper Development Workshop (with hybrid participation option). More information will follow here (https://sites.google.com/view/parenthoodandentrepreneurship/home). 
• May-July, 2027. Submission deadline: July 1st, 2027. The submission window is open from May 15^th, 2027.

>> See the full call: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/parenthood-and-entrepreneurship-a-new-research-agenda/

Guest editors: Karin Berglund, Daniel Hjorth, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Karen Verduijn

Introduction

Europe has long been a fertile ground for critical perspectives on entrepreneurship, fostering scholarship that goes beyond the narrow confines of economic growth and individual success (Tedmanson et al., 2012; Verduijn et al., 2026). Rather than treating entrepreneurship as ideologically neutral, philosophically ungrounded, or universally beneficial, critical studies have examined its socio-economic, cultural, aesthetic and political dimensions (Ogbor, 2000; Hjorth & Steyaert, 2009; Farias et al., 2019; Lubinski & Tucker, 2025). Critical entrepreneurship research does not follow a single, unified approach; rather, it encompasses diverse perspectives and methodologies (Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003; Spicer, 2012; Verduijn et al., 2014; Fletcher & Seldon, 2016; Dey et al., 2023). This tradition values contextual understanding (Welter, 2011), embraces interdisciplinarity (Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003), and challenges dominant narratives that shape entrepreneurial discourse. 

While entrepreneurship is often portrayed as equally accessible to all, research demonstrates how initiatives can even exacerbate marginalization in a broader, intersectional sense – through gender, culture, ethnicity, and class – such as reinforcing the marginalization of women and femininities (Ahl, 2006; Ozkazanc-Pan and Clark Muntean, 2021), and how gendered and culturally stereotypical conceptions restrict opportunities for migrant women, ethnic minorities, and non-hegemonic men to gain legitimacy and access resources (Essers et al., 2017; Alkhaled & Sasaki, 2021; Ozkazanc-Pan, 2022; Essers et al., 2023).Beyond identifying problems, scholars have also explored constructive pathways to transform entrepreneurship to be more inclusive, for example, through rethinking and revitalizing entrepreneurship education (Berglund & Verduijn, 2018; Hytti, 2018) and highlighting actions for entrepreneur support organizations to support gender equity (Ozkazanc-Pan and Clark Muntean, 2018). 

It should also be acknowledged that entrepreneurship has been approached as deeply entangled with neoliberal processes and practices through which the entrepreneurial self is framed as a mode of self-work (Berglund, 2013; Pongratz & Voß, 2003). While entrepreneurship is often seen as empowering and joyful, this orientation shifts responsibility onto individuals, calling for critical reflection on its political dimensions, human limits, and the collective and relational conditions of entrepreneurial endeavours (e.g. Alkhaled and Berglund, 2018; Lewis, Rumens & Simpson, 2022). Against this backdrop, empirical research has increasingly turned to the lived consequences of entrepreneurial subjectivation, examining how these ideals materialise in entrepreneurs’ everyday experiences and well-being. No wonder, then, that studies have revealed how entrepreneurial activity may contribute to stress, burnout, stigmatisation and other health-related challenges (Delladio & Caputo, 2025), which further exacerbate exclusion. At the same time, however, critical research suggests that entrepreneurial discourses do not govern subjects in a totalising manner, but may also open up spaces for creativity, ambivalence, mutual relations and alternative forms of agency (Dey & Teasdale, 2016; Christiaens, 2020; Wettermark & Berglund, 2022).

Entrepreneurship research has not simply multiplied subfields but has progressively problematised the very coherence of entrepreneurship as a singular concept. The emergence of social (e.g. Mair & Martí, 2006), institutional (e.g. Thornton, Ocasio & Lounsbury, 2012), community (Johannisson & Nilsson, 1989; Buratti, Sillig & Albanese, 2022), team (Stewart, 1989), entrepreneurial leadership (Hensellek et al., 2023), and corporate entrepreneurship (Burgelman, 1983) reflects sustained attempts to situate entrepreneurial phenomena within specific social, political, and organisational contexts. Each of these perspectives carries its own assumptions, norms, and exclusions, shaping what becomes visible, valued, or marginalised as entrepreneurial. Taken together, these examples illustrate how the meaning of entrepreneurship is continuously redefined rather than stabilised. The exhaustion of such a list is, of course, neither possible nor needed; the point being to remind us of the ongoing work of knowledge to both describe phenomena that have been silenced and to invent new ways of understanding and practicing entrepreneurship. We need a continued, research-based, critical knowledge-creation process for entrepreneurship to be understood, taught, and practiced across diverse organizational and societal contexts. 

The above-mentioned genealogy of entrepreneurship has also brought us new and important insights due to the development of approaches, methods (Higgins et al, 2015), and interdisciplinary framings of the phenomena we as entrepreneurship scholars have come to study (Ripsas, 1998; Acs & Audretsch, 2010; Gartner, 2017). We have seen constructionist, poststructuralist, feminist, processual, posthumanist, and new materialist perspectives being used in the study, analysis, and knowledge-creation process as part of entrepreneurship research. In the European research tradition, these are all critical approaches, reflecting on how the concepts, methods, and interdisciplinary influences are part of what ends up in focus, directs the analysis and gets offered as new knowledge (Verduijn et al., 2026). Such reflexive uses of knowledge are fundamental to research and need to be continuously challenged, questioned, and critiqued in order to remain renewed and imaginatively practiced.

Acknowledging the longstanding presence of critique in the field, we position this special issue as an invitation to dialogue across academic generations. Such an exchange can help us continue to question today’s entrepreneurial cultures, not as unprecedented, but as reappearances of older debates in new guises. This is the reflexive, cross-generational engagement we invite contributions to this special issue to pursue. Within this context, European scholarship, in particular, has played an important role in cultivating spaces of openness, creativity, and methodological experimentation that have been vital to the development of critical approaches in entrepreneurship research. Building on this tradition, we see a responsibility not to delimit the conversation, but to invite scholars across geographies and generations to partake in, extend, and challenge these critical conversations.

This special issue, which will be introduced at RENT in Antwerp in 2026 to mark the conference’s 40th anniversary, aims to celebrate and build upon this legacy by inviting contributions that critically examine and reimagine entrepreneurship from diverse theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives, advancing both theory and practice.

List of Topic Areas

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers that engage with critical perspectives on entrepreneurship, including but not limited to:

• Alternative, inclusive, forms of organizing and entrepreneurial value creation, such as cooperatives, social enterprises, and grassroots initiatives;
• Critical analyses of entrepreneurial narratives and discourses, deconstructing cultural myths around success and failure;
• Critical entrepreneurship education, critical perspectives of entrepreneurial pedagogy and transformation of entrepreneurship education;
• Critical inquiry on entrepreneurial well-being, burnout, stress, and health;  
• Critical perspectives on migrant entrepreneurship and transnational networks;
• Entrepreneurship and ethics, moral dilemmas, and the commodification of social good, social entrepreneurship;
• Entrepreneurship and neoliberalism, neoliberal ideologies, power, inequality, and exclusion in entrepreneurship;
• Entrepreneurship and policy critique, the role of policies in constructing entrepreneurial subjects and shaping inequalities;
• Entrepreneurship and societal challenges: climate change, poverty, social justice;
• Gendered and racialized entrepreneurship, such as intersectional analyses of identities;
• Historical and institutional analyses of entrepreneurship in Europe and beyond;
• Precarity, gig work, platform economies, and entrepreneurialism;
• Critical interrogation of new technologies, such as Gen AI and AI, and their role in entrepreneurialism and (in)equalities;
• The rise of technofascism at the intersection of new technologies, populism, and start-ups;
• Spatial inequalities and the politics of place in entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Submission Information

Submissions of full manuscripts are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:

Submit via ScholarOne

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:

Author guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Abstract Submissions

Abstract submissions must be emailed to Guest Editor Karin Berglund at karin.berglund@oru.se by 15th January 2027.

Key Dates

Closing date for abstract submissions: 15th January 2027

(Virtual) Paper development workshop: Spring/Summer 2027

Opening date for manuscript submissions: 1 November 2027

Closing date for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2027

>> See: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/calls-for-papers/critical-perspectives-entrepreneurship-celebrating-european-research-tradition