ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

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More information coming soon

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​The traditional aims of Entrepreneurship as Practice Conferences are to advance our understanding of entrepreneurship-as-practice, foster network ties, facilitate collaborative writing relationships, and build a strong community of practice scholars.

 

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

To be announced

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CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (PRELIMINARY)​

To be announced

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LOCATION

The 11th edition of this Conference will be hosted by ISM University of Management and Economics at Vilnius, Lithuania.  If you are not able to join in person, we have an online symposium every year in the autumn, please see events page.

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HOW TO JOIN 

There are three routes for you to join the Conference:

 

Submit paper to Paper Development Workshop. We welcome submissions to our popular PDW sessions. The abstract is due on TBA. The abstract is a maximum of 500 words. Upon acceptance, please notify us if you plan to join. Early bird registration and final registration deadline are below. The deadline for the full paper is TBA. Full papers are 10,000 words maximum including references. 

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Submit an abstract to the Emerging Paper Session. The Emerging Paper Session (EPS) allows scholars to give and receive feedback on developing ideas or ongoing work that still needs to be developed into a full paper. Early bird registration and final registration deadline are below. The submission deadline for the Emerging Paper Session is TBA. The abstract is a maximum of 500 words. Upon acceptance, we will communicate the date and time for your presentation.

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No paper, no problem. We welcome scholars of all levels who are interested in EAP. The conference includes many opportunities to learn from keynote speakers, participate in roundtable discussions, and network with EAP scholars. You can also participate as an audience member in the presentations and give feedback on PDW papers. We will have special breakfast mentoring sessions for PhD students and early-career scholars. See registration deadlines below.

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KEY DATES

TBA 

March 31 – 2nd April, 2027                   Conference Dates

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CONFERENCE COSTS AND REGISTRATION

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TBA

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Travel and accommodation are not included. For hotel discounts, see below.

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ACCOMMODATION

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TBA

 

TRANSPORTATION

Getting to Vilnius TBA

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PLEASE SEND ALL INQUIRIES TO: TBA

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BACKGROUND OF THE CONFERENCE

​The practice-theory tradition (also known as practice-based studies, the practice-theory approach or the practice-theory lens) forefronts the notion that practices and their connections are fundamental to all social phenomena (Rouse, 2006; Gherardi, 2019; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Savigny, 2001). For entrepreneurship it means that people together “perform” ventures, startups and firms on an everyday basis through materially accomplished and ordered practices (Chalmers & Shaw, 2017; Hill, 2018; Johannisson, 2011; Vincent & Pagan, 2019). This is to say that descriptions and explanations of entrepreneurship—such as, recognizing, evaluating and exploiting opportunities—are incomplete without the ‘alternate’ description and explanation of how entrepreneurship is actually lived in and through practices (Gross, Carson, & Jones, 2014; Keating, Geiger, & Mcloughlin, 2013). The term ‘practice’, therefore, does not refer to an ‘empty’ conceptual category of ‘what entrepreneurs think and do’ (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2019), but encompasses the collective meaning-making, identity-forming and order-producing interactions (Chia & Holt, 2006; Nicolini, 2009; Thompson et al., 2022) enacted by multiple entrepreneurial practitioners and situated in specific (historical) conditions. Therefore, practice theories orient entrepreneurship scholars to take seriously the practices of entrepreneuring as they unfold and are experienced in real-time (Bell, 2025; Gherardi, 2022). Simply put, practice-theory scholars are concerned with the ‘nitty-gritty’ work of entrepreneuring—all the meetings, the talking, the selling, the form-filling and the number-crunching by which opportunities actually get enacted (Ge et al., 2024; Hill et al., 2025; Matthews, Chalmers, & Fraser, 2018).

For background and information on EaP literature, prior conferences, media and other pertinent materials, please go to: https://www.entrepreneurshipaspractice.com.

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​​​​The Conference aims at educating interested scholars as well as helps to develop empirical and conceptual papers regarding the ‘practice turn’ taking place in entrepreneurship studies. Building on the 

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• First (February 2016 at VU Amsterdam), 

• Second (February 2017 at University College Dublin Quinn School of Business), 

• Third (April 2018 at Linnaeus University), 

• Fourth (April 2019 at Nantes Business School), 

• Fifth and sixth (virtual events), 

• Seventh (April 2022 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), 

• Eighth (Leuphana University), 

• Ninth (University of Leeds) and 

• Tenth (Jönköping International Business School) 

• Eleventh (University of Liverpool)

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REFERENCES​

Bell, E., 2025. Fermenting alternatives through the more-than-human relations of craft entrepreneuring. Human Relations, 78(6), pp. 820-841.

Burgelman, R. A. et al., 2018. Strategy processes and practices: Dialogues and intersections. Strategic Management Journal, Volume 39, p. 531–558.

Champenois, C., Lefebvre, V. & Ronteau, S., 2020. Entrepreneurship as practice: systematic literature. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 32(3-4), p. 281–312.

Dimov, D., Schaefer, R. & Pistrui, J., 2021. Look Who Is Talking … and Who Is Listening: Finding an Integrative “We” Voice in Entrepreneurial Scholarship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(5), p. 1176–1196.

Ge, B., E. Hamilton, and K. Haag. 2023. An Entrepreneurship-As-Practice Perspective of Next-Generation Becoming Family Businesses Successors: The Role of Discursive Artefacts. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 36, 489–515. 

Gherardi, S. 2019. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods Second Edition. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Gherardi, S. 2022. Under What Conditions is a Domain-Specific Practice Theory of Entrepreneurship Possible? In: Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship as Practice, edited by N. Thompson, O. Byrne, A. Jenkins, and B. Teague, pp. 29–39. London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hill, I. 2018. How Did You Get Up and Running? Taking a Bourdieuan Perspective Towards a Framework for Negotiating Strategic Fit. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 30 (5–6), 662–696. 

Hill, I., Wishart, M. and Merrell, I. 2025. Fanning the flame - a process-relational view on creative hub practices for rural development. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, pp. 1-28. 

Hjorth, D., Holt, R. & Steyaert, C., 2015. Entrepreneurship and process studies. International Small Business Journal, 33(6), p. 599–611.

Ingold, T., 2022. Knowing from the inside. In: T. Ingold , ed. Knowing from the inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. xi-xii.

McMullen, J. S. & Dimov, D., 2013. Time and the Entrepreneurial Journey: The Problems and Promise of Studying Entrepreneurship as a Process. Journal of Management Studies, 50(8), pp. 1481-1512.

Steyaert, C., 2007. 'Entrepreneuring' as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 19(November), pp. 453-477.

Thompson, N. A. & Byrne, O., 2022. Imagining Futures: Theorizing the Practical Knowledge of Future-making. Organization Studies, 43(2), p. 247–268.

Thompson NA, Byrne O, Jenkins A, et al. (2022) Introduction to the research handbook on entrepreneurship as practice. In: Thompson NA, Byrne O, Jenkins A, et al. (eds) Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship as Practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1–19.

Thompson, N. A., Verduijn, K. & Gartner, W. B., 2020. Entrepreneurship-as-practice: grounding contemporary theories of practice into entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 32(3-4), pp. 247-256.

Vogel, P., 2017. From Venture Idea to Venture Opportunity. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(6), p. 943–971.