Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM)

A Global Benefit for All ICSB Members

The Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM) is one of two official journals of the ICSB. Initially created as a platform for scholarly research publications in the fields of small business management and entrepreneurship, the JSBM is now recognized as a primary instrument for projecting and supporting the goals and objectives of ICSB. The JSBM is one of the ways that ICSB engages with a global research audience. Not only does it allow the organization to connect to reaches of life with which we have yet to create relationships, but however, it also spreads the greater ideals of small business and entrepreneurship research and information exchange.

A grand thank you to Dr. George Solomon, as he has captured the spirit of JSBM and created a flourishing foundation. Dr. Solomon has exemplified the potential of this journal, and it will be our duty to uphold and grow that potential. Therefore, without further ado, I am excited to announce our incoming Managing Co-Editors of the Journal of Small Business Management, Dr. Katia Passerini, and Dr. Eric Liguori.

Dr. Katia Passerini is not only the Provost and Executive Vice President of Seton Hall University and an accomplished researcher, but she has also been involved in ICSB for over 15 years. Dr. Passerini has greatly depicted her dedication to ICSB as she has attended, participated in, and hosted many local, national, and international events as an advisor, program director, and distinguished speaker. Additionally, her research has been published in the Journal of Small Business Management, International Journal of Innovation Studies, Annals of Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, and Journal of the International Council for Small Business. Dr. Passerini’s leadership experience will help take the JSBM to even greater levels. Her position will additionally help the greater ICSB organization in its work to be both more equitable and representative, as Dr. Katia Passerini will sit as the first-ever woman to work as Editor of JSBM.

Dr. Eric Liguori is a Full Professor and the William G. Rohrer Chair of Entrepreneurship at Rowan University. His research has been published in the Journal of Management, Journal of Small Business Management, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, and Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. While working as an Associate Editor of JSBM, Dr. Liguori oversaw more than 250 manuscripts, two special issues, and the integration of the Web of Science database used during the blind peer-review process. Having already integrated into the JSBM, Liguori understands both the journal and its greater audience, and therefore, he will be able to help focus our topics while amplifying the journal’s reach.

Dr. Katia Passerini and Dr. Eric Liguori, as JSBM Editors, will work in collaboration with Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy, Editor-in-Chief, and Ms. Hannah Gilroy, ICSB Journal Manager, to continue to move the editing and publishing processes along seamlessly so that we can expand the reach of the JSBM and ICSB at large.

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The primary purpose of JSBM is to publish scholarly research articles in the fields of small business management and entrepreneurship. As the one of the two official journal of the ICSB, JSBM is recognized as a primary instrument for projecting and supporting the goals and objectives of this organization, which include scholarly research and the free exchange of ideas. The Journal, which is circulated in 60 countries around the world, is a leader in the field of small business research.

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JSBM

Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM)
Deputy Chair, Department of Management, GW School of Business, The George Washington University (GWU)
President & CEO of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB)

Dr. El Tarabishy is the President & CEO of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), the oldest and largest international non-profit organization devoted to advancing small business research and practices. ICSB is a coalition of more than a dozen national organizations across the globe and represented in over eighty countries.

Through collaboration with the United Nations and the Permanent Mission of Argentina to the United Nations, Dr. El Tarabishy worked to create a United Nations International Name Day to be dedicated to Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs). UN Name Days are designated on specific dates, to mark particular events or topics, in order to consciously and actively promote the objectives an organization or idea. Thanks to his creativity and dedication, Dr. El Tarabishy managed to work closely with the Permanent Mission of Argentina to propose a resolution to dedicate a United Nations International Name Day to MSMEs. Approved by the United Nations General Assembly, the proposal was presented by the Permanent Mission of Argentina and 54 countries; thus, 5.5 billion people acted as co-signers on this resolution.

From that day forward, June 27th has been recognized as the official UN MSME Day.

Dr. El Tarabisy is an award-winning author and teacher. In 2019, the George Washington University New Venture Competition awarded Dr. El Tarabishy ‘Most Influential Faculty.’ Additionally, he is the only faculty member in the GW School of Business to teach in two nationally-ranked programs. Having developed the first Social Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Creativity courses offered to MBA and undergraduate students, El Tarabishy is constantly striving to find the perfect balance between tradition and modernization in his teaching pedagogy.

Sitting as the President and CEO of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), Dr. El Tarabishy works to uphold the standards and initiatives of the oldest and largest non-profit organization across the globe. ICSB promotes the advancement of small business research and practices. The Council stands as a coalition of over a dozen national organizations, being represented in over eighty countries.

Dr. El Tarabishy created and managed the Global Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference (GWOctober.org), which is hosted at George Washington University. This conference combines the latest and most cutting-edge entrepreneurial research with the most pressing and important intra- and international policies to promote entrepreneurship and SMEs. This modern intersection has pushed this conference to high importance in global development efforts.

JSBM Managing Editor

Dr. Katia Passerini

Editor, Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM)
Provost and Executive Vice President of Seton Hall University
Contact Email: Katia.Passerini@icsb.org

Prior to Seton Hall University, Passerini served as the Lesley H. and William L. Collins Distinguished Chair and Dean of the Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies at St. John’s University. As the chief academic officer of the Collins College, the largest undergraduate college at St. John’s, Passerini was responsible for strategic and operational planning, faculty and staff recruitment, academic program and curriculum development, and fundraising. During her tenure as dean, she grew enrollment at the College, launched an array of new academic programs, and raised student retention and success to new heights. She also served on several senior-level committees, including the President’s Advisory Committee; Provost Committee on Academic Prioritization; the Academic Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Committee; and the Academic Technology Governance Committee.

Passerini also served as the interim dean and dean of the Albert Dorman Honors College at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and was a full professor and the Hurlburt Chair of Management Information Systems in the Martin Tuchman School of Management. Her professional background includes multi-industry projects at Booz Allen Hamilton (now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers) and the World Bank where she focused on information technology projects in Europe, North America, and the South Pacific.

She earned a doctoral degree in Information and Decision Systems from George Washington University, a master’s degree in economics (equivalent) from the University of Rome II -Tor Vergata, a master’s degree in business administration from George Washington University, where she was a Fulbright and Bank of Rome Scholar, and a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in political science from LUISS University in Rome.

JSBM Managing Editor

Dr. Eric Liguori

Editor, Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM)
Professor; Rohrer Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship and Executive Director m Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Contact Email: Liguori@icsb.org

Dr. Eric Liguori is the Rohrer Professorial Chair of Entrepreneurship and Executive Director of the Rowan Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His research interests include entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial competency development, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Liguori has authored or co-authored 4 books and 36 peer-reviewed journal articles, all of which have been published in leading outlets, including Journal of Management, Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, and International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research. Liguori and/or his work have also been featured in major media outlets including Forbes, USA Today, and U.S. News and World Report. Presently, Liguori serves as President of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), the largest professional association in the world dedicated to advancing the discipline of entrepreneurship education through bold teaching, scholarship, and practice. Liguori is the Executive Editor of Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, Co-Editor of the Annals of Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Small Business Management. In 2017, USASBE awarded him “Special Recognition for Innovative Entrepreneurship Education” and the “Ray Smilor Distinguished Service Award.” Liguori holds a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship from the E.J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University.

ICSB Journal Manager

Hannah Gilroy

Contact Email: hannah@icsb.org

Hannah Gilroy recently began working with ICSB as their Journal Manager. Having studied International Relations and Public Health, Hannah has a strong interest in the intersections of culture and communication and how those, in turn, affect the health and wellbeing of communities. Hannah currently works as a Communications Manager for multiple organizations in the domains of business, non-profit organizations, and wellness.

Special Issue

Humane Entrepreneurship from Research to Practice

The UN Declaration of the Micro and Small Business (MSMEs) Day, spearheaded by the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), has been a critical milestone in the fulfillment of ICSB’s mission to support entrepreneurs and small business is progressing towards inclusive economic growth. The Declaration, while highlighting the complexity and the multidimensionality of the entrepreneurial role, recognizes the role of MSMEs in the achievement of the UN – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The ICSB Forums held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, together with the organization of a broad portfolio of congresses and conferences all around the world, have been valuable opportunities to connect and celebrate organizations and individuals committed to helping MSMEs move in the direction of creating more decent jobs while protecting the environment as well as their local communities. This movement fostered a new type of research activity around the concept of the Humane Approach to Entrepreneurship. In particular, thanks to the pioneering work of Prof. Ki-Chan Kim and Ayman El Tarabishy, an international group of researchers was assembled to define the concept (humaneentrepreneurship.org) better. This was intended as a model for firms’ growth based on entrepreneurial orientation, leadership, and fair human resource management. Furthermore, in a pair of articles published by JSBM (56-S1, 2018), the Humane Entrepreneurship concept was at first defined as a means to create both financial wealth and new high-quality jobs (Ki Chan et al., 2018), and, subsequently, as a strategic posture defined by the capability to provide leverage on Entrepreneurial Orientation, and at the same time, on orientation towards executive and employees welfare and orientation towards social and environmental sustainability (Parente et al. 2018, Parente et al. 2020).

Today, management and entrepreneurship research is theory-driven to a much larger extent. A significant challenge for Humane Entrepreneurship research, therefore, is to prove the existence of Human Entrepreneurship Orientation (HumEnt) and define a measurement scale for performing analysis with a solid theoretical grounding. This special issue is a starting point to make suggestions as to exactly how this should be done. We do note, however, that strategy research increasingly deals with dynamic issues that are mostly entrepreneurial. Potentially, Humane Entrepreneurship research can find its ideal habitat within these proactive approaches in strategy research.

The focus on orientations is a well-grounded perspective from which to study entrepreneurship at the firm level (Miller and Friesen, 1982; Covin and Slavin, 1991; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996), and is in line with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TBP) (Ajzen, 1991), which states that behavioral intentions guide our decision pathways.

From this point of view, Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) can be viewed as a strategic posture that inspires new forms of entrepreneurial strategies for wealth creation (Ireland and Al, 2001). This can be compared to the triple bottom line approach that argues for jointly optimizing social, environmental, and economic returns (“people, planet, profits”). The inventor of that concept, John Elkington, recently noted that scholars and managers have struggled to operationalize it productively. Interestingly, his proposed operationalization looks much like the theme of humane entrepreneurship offered here (Kraaijenbrink, 2020 .) Another even older approach is from EF Schumacher’s classic Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered that argued that while humans enable any system, should systems also enable humans? One needs entrepreneurial thinking to make that happen. To Elkington’s point, how do we move from trade-offs between his 3 Ps toward synergies?

The concept of HumEnt as a new theoretical construct has its roots in well-established fields of studies in Management and Entrepreneurship. One of the primary inspirational sources can be found within Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a conceptualization that captures the idea that corporations have not only economical (and legal) obligations but some ethical and discretionary (philanthropic) responsibilities as well (Carroll, 1991). The CSR influence on the strategic entrepreneurship theory is not new at all; an example can be found in Hitt et al. (2011), where they argued that successful strategic entrepreneurial activity should create value for customers, stockholders, and other stakeholders.

From a broader perspective, the Humane Entrepreneurship concept is in line with a philosophical line of thought that argues over the influence of ethical dimensions in the emergence of orientations and behaviors of economic agents. Even if traces of this discourse can already be found in the works of enlightenment philosophers that defined the field of economy as a new scientific field in the 18th century, more recently, there has been a rising interest in the role of ethics in management. The ethics perspective has to lead to a fine-grain distinction between immoral, amoral, and moral orientations in management (Carroll, 2001), while more recent work introduced the difference between egotistic, altruistic, and biospheric orientation (De Groot and Steg, 2008). On a positive side, Humanistic Management emerged as a managerial (and possibly entrepreneurial) orientation characterized by “management which emphasizes the human condition and is oriented to the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent” (Melé 2003).

Humane Entrepreneurship, as a strategic posture, is still in its infancy state and, similar to concepts focusing on entrepreneurship at the firm-level, needs an effort of clarification about the epistemology of firm-level orientations, real entrepreneurial events, and organizational performances, and the structure of the links between them (Kantur, 2014).

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Special Issue Editor(s)

KiChan Kim, Catholic University
kckim.kckim@gmail.com

Roberto Parente, Salerno University
rparente@unisa.it

Alex DeNoble, San Diego State University
adenoble@sdsu.edu

Jeffrey Hornsby, The University of Missouri–Kansas City
hornsbyj@umkc.edu

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