I am passing on the English translation of a call for book chapters issued by a friend and colleague in Dijon, France.  The book is international and has a broad business management focus.

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As the editor of a forthcoming book, it is my greatest pleasure to invite you to submit articles as chapters. The tentative title is: Strategic Managerial Approaches to Crowdfunding Online. The book will be published by IGI Global publishers in the USA, within the series “Advances in Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage (ABSCA).”

Please read carefully the following guidelines for submission:

The context

The emerging crowdfunding phenomenon is a collective effort by individuals who network and pool their money together, usually via the internet and without any specific conventional financial intermediation, in order to invest in and support for-profit, artistic, and cultural ventures initiative undertaken by other people or organizations. The spontaneous interactions and transactions between individuals allow relatively considerable fund raisings by drawing on small contributions from a relatively large number of individuals using the Internet, without standard financial intermediaries.

The advent of crowdfunding coincides with the democratization of information technologies that enable people to contact, interact, collaborate and exchange at lowest costs, if not for free. In fact, information technologies have allowed the drastic reduction of transaction costs and by the same the revival of ancient forms of transactions such as auctions, barter, tenders, recycling, and direct transactions between individuals.

Many platforms encourage crowdfunding such as Kiva, Babyloan, MyC4 in lending to the poor entrepreneurs, Prosper, Kapipal and Zopa in P2P social lending, Kickstarter, MyMajorCompany in entrepreneurial projects, SellaBand in music, etc.

Call for Papers

ITEM 6 – Tunis, Tunisia

Microfinance: Coaching, Counting, and Crowding

The Banque Populaire Chair in Microfinance of the Burgundy School of Business (France) and l’École supérieure du commerce de Tunis jointly organize the 6th edition of the annual conference “Institutional and Technological Environment of Microfinance” (ITEM) in March 2015 (17, 18, 19) in Tunis, Tunisia.

The 6th edition brings together–but not limited to-three major issues, which are shaping the sector of microfinance: Coaching, Counting, and Crowding.

Coaching in microfinance provides training in business and soft skills (attributes enhancing an individual’s interactions and self-performance) that the poor micro-entrepreneurs rarely have. Increasingly, microfinance academics and practitioners consider building the human capital of micro-entrepreneurs a critical ingredient of moving out of poverty.

Counting and tracking the microfinance clients and prospects with the information technologies not only lessen information asymmetry, but also lower the transaction cost of financial intermediation. Corollary: information technologies can open ways for offering financial services to the poor as a normal way of doing and extending normal business, and accelerate their social integration. 

Crowding, based on the Web 2.0 technologies, enables direct interactions between millions of lending and borrowing people. Through crowdfunding, micro and

Call for papers cosponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (http://www.unep.org/) – abstract deadline is Aug. 31 with the event in Dec.  The emphasis is on empirical work with clear policy proposals. 

Exerpts:
“The event is a research symposium that the Canadian-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is co-hosting with the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System in early December. The Convening is intended to address key pertinent theoretical and empirical questions that support the broader applied, policy research agenda concerning the contours of a sustainable financial system.

….The symposium will be for a limited number of people, primarily those who have submitted papers. We will be in a position to provide some support to attend the symposium, which will take place from 1-3 December 2014 in Waterloo, Ontario.”

Download CIGI – Inquiry – Research Convening_call_2014 

Anne Tucker

THE CENTER FOR LAW, ECONOMICS & FINANCE (C-LEAF)

AT

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

 

Fifth Annual JUNIOR FACULTY BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL LAW WORKSHOP

AND JUNIOR FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP PRIZES

 

Sponsored by Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Center for Law, Economics & Finance (C-LEAF) at The George Washington University Law School is pleased to announce its fifth annual Junior Faculty Business and Financial Law Workshop and Junior Faculty Scholarship Prizes.  The Workshop and Prizes are sponsored by Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP. The Workshop will be held on February 27-28, 2015 at GW Law School in Washington, DC.

The Workshop supports and recognizes the work of young legal scholars in accounting, banking, bankruptcy, corporations, economics, finance and securities, while promoting interaction among them and selected senior faculty and practitioners. By providing a forum for the exchange of creative ideas in these areas, C-LEAF also aims to encourage new and innovative scholarship.

Approximately ten papers will be chosen from those submitted for presentation at the Workshop pursuant to this Call for Papers. At the

Wharton

Below is a call for abstracts from Professor Amy Sepinwall (Wharton).

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Call for Abstracts for the Normative Business Ethics Workshop Series of the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research:

Over the 2014-2015 academic year, the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, will be convening a regular works-in-progress series for scholars working in normative business ethics (NBE).

Workshop Objectives:

The series is part of an effort to foster, and increase the prominence of, normative business ethics in the academy and the public sphere. This particular initiative has two key objectives: First, it endeavors to provide a regular forum for scholars working on business ethics from a normative perspective. The community of such scholars is relatively small, and dispersed across numerous institutions, and there are few opportunities for these individuals to convene and share work. This series is an effort to connect these scholars, and enrich their shared intellectual life. Second, the series aims to be especially valuable to junior faculty, by providing them with feedback from, and opportunities to interact with, more established members of the normative business ethics community. To that end, we hope to have one junior