RMPI is a track about Research Methods, Practice and Inquiry/Impact. It aims to be a space to energise discussion and innovate thinking and practice around how we inquire, in order to develop the skills, confidence and impact of researchers and the ISBE community. This track encompasses all aspects of the entrepreneurship/small business research spectrum, and all related issues such as education, training, business support, teaching and learning.
Call for Papers: https://www.isbe.org.uk/isbe-2025-research-methods-practice-and-inquiry-impact-rmpi/ ,
Please note the Abstract window closes on the 23rd of May 2025
This year’s conference theme is “Collaborating across Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: opportunities for inclusion, innovation, sustainability, resilience and growth”. This theme may prompt us to look to the entrepreneurial world with a sense of urgency hoping to find answers to the grand challenges we face in our social, political, economic and technical and natural worlds. There is increasing realisation about the inter-connectedness of these worlds – and related crises - as social and ecological decline and breakdown combine, are compounded by, systemic discrimination, exploitation, extraction, poverty and inequality. Given this, how we develop, pursue, express and innovate methods of inquiry, and the very assumptions that underpin these methods, is critical. Challenging the old and establishing the new, in relation to research methods and practice and modes of inquiry is important. Can research go beyond representing and explaining? Can research innovate and transform?
Speaking into the conference theme of Collaborating across Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, the RMPI track seeks to stimulate debate and promote impact around all aspects of academic scholarship and research, from its conception to its application, through the support of theoretical insight and development and modes of dissemination and knowledge creation. We aim to draw inspiration from the entrepreneurship community we seek to serve, sharing novel approaches and advancing the purposefulness of the methodologies and perspectives we use. In this context, RMPI aims to stimulate discussion where all contributors and attendees to the track feel valued and challenged to think.
As a track we seek to raise the profile of uncommon approaches to inquiry and related issues. In relation to the conference call, we are interested in how inquiry can innovate and transform, not just represent, inclusion, innovation, sustainability and resilience and the sort of growth which connects these different interests and needs.
More broadly, the track invites participants to develop (but does not limit itself to):
- Contributions which go beyond describing the research process but critically engage with inquiry/methodological issues and concerns as they relate to doing social research.
- Reflect on the purposefulness/appropriateness of specific approaches to provide robust arguments/challenge in relation to a particular method or methodology.
- Critically review new and innovative methodological approaches and research design alternatives.
- Critique aspects of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods of data collection and analysis.
- Review the wide variety of epistemological and ontological assumptions and their use/implications re different theories and logics in any entrepreneurship/SME discipline
- Positive impacts for scholarship and practitioners utilising different languages when conversing with research populations and audiences.
- Facilitate the expression of ‘the voice’ of those normally excluded from entrepreneurship/SME research.
- Develop format and style of presenting research and findings, for example, embracing writing differently, and/or other approaches which embrace methodological plurality and diversity.
- Purposeful and exciting possibilities for disseminating the knowledge produced by scholars beyond the academic milieu.
The track offers an opportunity to gain insight and inspiration about (and challenge) research practice. We are particularly interested, given the nature of the conference theme, how contributors may consider and re/think RMPI dimensions in thoughtful and creative ways.
We would also like to draw you attention to - Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: Special Issue on - Entrepreneurship Education in a Time Between Worlds: Transforming Theory, Practice and Scholarship