Alignment with Previous Special Issues and Editorial Priorities 

The style and thematic profile of existing WJEMSD special issue calls offer further guidance for a suitable proposal. Recent calls emphasise a substantial overview or background section, clearly framed objectives, a thematic list of suggested topics, and an explicit target audience that includes scholars, practitioners, investors, regulators, and policy actors. For example, the WJEMSD special issue on sustainable entrepreneurship and technological innovation foregrounds digital and mobile technologies as enablers of resilient and inclusive business practices, while the special issue on social entrepreneurship and the SDGs highlights innovation, institutional support, and developmental impact in relation to global sustainability goals. Together, these calls suggest that WJEMSD favours special issues that combine conceptual relevance, applied significance, and broad international appeal.

Emergence and Distinctiveness of Agentic AI 

Within this editorial context, a special issue on agentic AI is both timely and intellectually distinctive. Recent scholarship indicates that agentic AI differs from traditional AI and even from most generative AI applications by incorporating autonomy, goal-directed reasoning, planning, memory, tool use, and adaptive multi-step action. Agentic AI has emerged as a rapidly expanding research field, with the overwhelming majority of relevant publications appearing in 2024, 2025, and 2026. This is not simply a technical shift; it marks a move from AI as a reactive assistant toward AI as a more autonomous collaborator capable of executing complex workflows under limited human supervision.

Entrepreneurial and Organisational Implications of Agentic AI 

The entrepreneurial relevance of this development is now beginning to crystallise in the scholarly literature. Agentic AI has been framed as a force that may reshape entrepreneurship through co-agency, innovation, and ecosystem transformation, suggesting that the field must now address how increasingly autonomous AI systems affect venture creation, entrepreneurial judgement, and the organisation of innovation itself. Parallel evidence from global enterprise research points in the same direction. McKinsey’s 2025 global survey reports that many organisations are already experimenting with AI agents, yet most remain in the early stages of scaling and capturing enterprise-level value, with workflow redesign emerging as a critical determinant of impact. Deloitte likewise argues that agentic AI creates a “reality check” for organisations: many firms are piloting agentic systems, but few have developed deployable solutions, and the most successful organisations are those that redesign operations rather than merely automating legacy processes. MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG go even further by observing that agentic AI increasingly behaves less like a passive tool and more like a coworker, thereby creating new tensions around decision rights, accountability, and the definition of work itself.

Gap in the Existing Literature and Need for the Special Issue 

This emerging body of research creates a strong and timely publication opportunity for WJEMSD. Existing WJEMSD special issue themes clearly address digital technologies, sustainable entrepreneurship, resilience, social entrepreneurship, and the SDGs, but the currently visible calls do not appear to provide a dedicated platform for examining the distinctive implications of agentic, goal-directed AI systems for entrepreneurship, management, and sustainable development. That gap matters because agentic AI raises questions that are not adequately captured by broader “digital transformation” or “AI adoption” narratives. These include human–AI co-agency in entrepreneurial decision-making, autonomous support for opportunity recognition and venture design, responsible governance of AI-enabled enterprises, regional inequalities in AI capability and infrastructure, and the developmental implications of intelligent systems for SMEs, inclusive enterprise, and sustainability transitions.

Aim and Contribution of the Proposed Special Issue 

The proposed special issue, therefore, seeks to fill a genuine editorial and scholarly gap by moving beyond generic enthusiasm for AI and focusing specifically on how agentic AI is transforming entrepreneurship, management, and sustainable development in theoretically meaningful and practically consequential ways. Its central contribution would be to connect recent advances in agentic AI to the kinds of issues WJEMSD is especially well placed to address sustainable business model innovation, SME transformation, entrepreneurial ecosystems, social and inclusive entrepreneurship, resilience, governance, and development-oriented policy. This is especially relevant for developing and emerging economies, including the MENA region and the broader Global South, where opportunities associated with intelligent systems are often accompanied by significant differences in infrastructure, capabilities, regulations, affordability, and institutional capacity.

Significance for Sustainable Development and Policy 

In this sense, the proposed special issue is not a generic technology call. Rather, it is an invitation to explore the conditions under which agentic AI can support responsible transformation, inclusive growth, and sustainable enterprise development, while also scrutinising the organisational, ethical, and policy risks that accompany greater autonomy in socio-technical systems. Such a framing aligns closely with WJEMSD’s mission to generate balanced, internationally relevant scholarship that informs both theory and practice in the service of sustainable development.

Potential Contribution to the SDGs

The proposed special issue is highly relevant to several Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). It will explore how agentic AI can foster innovation, entrepreneurship, productivity, and sustainable enterprise transformation while addressing challenges related to governance, inclusion, and digital inequalities. This focus aligns closely with WJEMSD’s commitment to advancing sustainable development through interdisciplinary research and practical impact.