CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of Corporate Governance: An International Review Corporate Governance Implications of New Methods of Entrepreneurial Firm Formation Guest editors: David Ahlstrom, CUHK Business School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Douglas J. Cumming, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada Silvio Vismara, University of Bergamo, Italy and University of Augsburg, Germany Workshop submission deadline: March 15, 2017 Background of the Special Issue From May 2016, small businesses and start-ups can sell shares to the American general public on crowdfunding portals. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has indeed finally defined the rules that make equity crowdfunding a legal means by which to raise seed capital online. The crowdfunding phenomenon is now likely to spread globally. Though an emerging field of study, a number of papers and special issues have already been dedicated to crowdfunding from different streams of research, including entrepreneurship, marketing and information systems. As in other entrepreneurial finance markets, information asymmetries between insiders and outsiders ingenerate agency concerns. As in IPOs, for instance, the ownership base of entrepreneurial ventures raising capital in crowdfunding is opened for the first time to external shareholders. Crowdfunding platforms allow fundraising from a pool of online backers, and will need to cope with collectiveaction problems as crowd-investors have neither the ability nor the incentive, due to the small investments, to devote substantial resources to due diligence. While the above mentioned collective action problems limit investors’ monitoring incentives, entrepreneurs can be tempted to shirk and engage in self-dealing. The perspective of corporate governance research is needed to address these questions. To this end, new research papers could be developed around the following themes: 1. How to treat agency conflicts arising from the separation between ownership and control (principal-agent) and between controlling and minority shareholders (principal-principal) in crowdfunding markets? 2. While most of recent IPOs are offered exclusively to institutional investors, crowdfunding investors are likely to be more diverse than shareholders of newly listed companies. How does this impact on corporate governance mechanisms? 3. Existing papers on crowdfunding focus on the success factors of the campaigns. The ultimate goal of crowdfunding, however, is to build an enduring business. What happens after the campaigns? 4. Globalization and technological innovation interact in their effect on crowdfunding, since the reduction in communications costs due to technological innovation have made crossborder investments easier (e.g. reduced costs of monitoring investments over long distances). Which are the implications for the governance of entrepreneurial ventures? 5. Corporate governance practices in crowdfunding differ across countries. Will recent trends and innovation in financing means reduce such differences? Why should these be persistent? How can we differentiate the role of legal institutions from that of the culture and the social capital in determining such differences?
Submissions and Review Process
A paper development workshop will be held at the University of Bergamo (Italy), on June 7-8, 2017. Attendance is encouraged but optional. Keynote speakers will be David Audretsch, Indiana University, and Erik Lehmann, University of Augsburg. The guest editors will be available at this conference to assist in the development of research. There will not be a conference fee. The deadline for submission to the workshop is March 15, 2017. Submissions should be sent to Silvio Vismara at
[email protected] with the subject line “CGIR Special Issue Conference”. Notifications about acceptance will be sent by March 30, 2017. Fully developed manuscripts should be submitted to CGIR by August 1, 2017. All manuscripts submitted to the special issue should be submitted through the CGIR Manuscript Central website http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/CGIR. Contributors should follow the CGIR Author Guidelines (which can be found at www.cgir.org). Final decisions on papers for the CGIR Special Issue will be made later in the year. Please note that acceptance to the workshop does not necessarily guarantee acceptance to the CGIR special issue.
Contacts David Ahlstrom, CUHK Business School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
[email protected] Douglas J. Cumming, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada
[email protected] Silvio Vismara, University of Bergamo, Italy and University of Augsburg, Germany
[email protected]
