‘Embrace the masculine; attenuate the feminine’ – gender,identity work and entrepreneurial legitimation in the nascent context

This article critically analyses how gender bias impacts upon women’s efforts to legitimate nascent ventures. Given the importance of founder identity as a proxy for entrepreneurial legitimacy at nascency, we explore the identity work women undertake when seeking to claim legitimacy for their emerging ventures in a prevailing context of masculinity. In so doing, we challenge taken for granted norms pertaining to legitimacy and question the basis upon which that knowledge is claimed. In effect, debates regarding entrepreneurial legitimacy are presented as gender neutral yet, entrepreneurship is a gender biased activity. Thus, we argue it is essential to recognize how gendered assumptions impinge upon the quest for legitimacy. To illustrate our analysis, we use retrospective and real time empirical evidence evaluating legitimating strategies as they unfold, our findings reveal tensions between feminine identities such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and those of the prototypical entrepreneur. This dissonance prompted women to undertake specific forms of identity work to bridge the gap between femininity, legitimacy and entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that the pursuit of entrepreneurial legitimacy during nascency is a gendered process which disadvantages women and has the potential to negatively impact upon the future prospects of their fledgling ventures.     

The value of entrepreneurship by gender on regional behaviour

This paper examines how the value of entrepreneurship by gender is related to regional behaviour. Researchers have traditionally defined entrepreneurial organization as separate to gender and to economic growth. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) we complete a dataset of 50 countries using variables such as total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity (OPP). The methodology used proposes an analysis of regional convergence, comparing the evolution over time of both the rate of entrepreneurial activity and the ratios of opportunity-driven and need-driven entrepreneurial activity, distinguishing by gender. On the other hand, a regression model is proposed that explains the greater presence of female entrepreneurship. The results show that entrepreneurship by gender is an important factor to define different cluster of countries according to how men and women entrepreneurs create new economic opportunities.

     

Tracking precursors of entrepreneurial intention: the case of researchers involved in eco-label industry

This article is based on the adaptation of Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (TPB) to build an entrepreneurial intention framework tailored to the specific context of researchers involved in eco-label industry, who can be perceived as nascent entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial intention model is tested on a convenience sample of researchers involved in eco-label industry from a wide range of countries. The configurational effect of research experience, personal attitude, funding instruments and entrepreneurial education level is tested for causal condition related to entrepreneurial intention of 25 eco-label researchers. The qualitative approach of data reveals that research experience and personal attitude relate positively to entrepreneurial career intentions and that these relationships are mediated by entrepreneurial education level. A multi-sided online platform connecting innovators and potential investors is considered a suitable solution for funding respondents’ results of research and innovation activities. Stimulating entrepreneurial motivations and intentions may help researchers to better adapt to alternative career perspectives. Results of this study suggest several ways to stimulate entrepreneurial career choices among researchers involved in eco-label industry.

     

Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Propensity*

Using data from representative population surveys in 17 countries, we find that the lower rate of female business ownership is primarily due to women's lower propensity to start businesses rather than to differences in survival rates across genders. We show that women are less confident in their entrepreneurial skills, have different social networks and exhibit higher fear of failure than men. After controlling for endogeneity, we find that these variables explain a substantial part of the gender gap in entrepreneurial activity. Although, of course, their relative importance varies significantly across countries, these factors appear to have a universal effect.     

An Institutional Configurational Approach to Cross‐National Diversity in Corporate Governance

Corporate governance (CG) research has typically been studied from rather disparate disciplinary approaches, thereby offering myopic and often conflicting rationales. We develop an institutional configurational approach to integrate this ‘siloed’ field and explain CG patterns around the world. To do so, we draw on an inductive, theory‐building methodology based on fuzzy‐set logic to uncover the configurations across institutional actor‐centred domains and their impact on CG patterns. Empirically, we explore the necessary and sufficient causal conditions leading to different features of codes of good governance across 32 OECD countries. We generate propositions linking configurational institutional domains to code features. Our results show that a single institutional domain by itself is not sufficient to explain CG outcomes, and that these domains need to be considered in conjunction, leading, in turn, to the identification of four distinct configurational governance prototypes. Our study offers a comprehensive account of drivers of cross‐national differences in CG and yields useful insights for managing and regulating governance.     

The salient role of institutions in Women’s entrepreneurship: a critical review and agenda for future research

Institutions play an important role in women’s and men’s entrepreneurial behaviors. This article provides a systematic review of institutions and women’s entrepreneurship literature through an institutional lens, with a particular focus on informal and formal institutions. The article sets out to explore institutions for women’s entrepreneurship, illustrating why having an institutional perspective of women’s entrepreneurship contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. To reach this aim, we analyze and classify the scholarship by explanatory factors and type of informal and formal institutions. The article suggests that gender roles, as an informal institution, influence the creation of both informal and formal institutions, and in turn, the women’s entrepreneurial behaviors is based on gender roles. Finally, a theoretical model is developed, which allocates women’s entrepreneurship in the center and shows the role of institutional environment in their decision to start new ventures. Implications for future research are finally discussed.     

Entrepreneurial intention: the role of gender

There is general agreement in previous research, drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, that attitudes towards entrepreneurship are determining factors on entrepreneurial intention and gender also seems to play a key role. This study supports the core entrepreneurial intention model and focuses on the role of gender in this process, showing that men are more likely to think about creating a firm than being determined to do it. However, of those men, the ones who perceive higher congruence between masculine and entrepreneurial attributes are more likely to have a firm entrepreneurial intention. Also, both men and women with a firm entrepreneurial intention perceive successful entrepreneurs to have feminine attributes. This, together with the characteristics of the sample, may explain the lack of a gender difference in entrepreneurial intention.     

Packs,Troops and Herds: Prosocial Cooperatives and Innovation in the New Normal

Prosocial organizations are emerging to tackle the effects of a New Normal. As they navigate its fragile and liquid institutional membranes, they prioritize cooperative forms of governance. These forms allow for collaboration and democratic decision-making necessary for the development of innovative solutions in this new context. At the same time, the high coordination costs of cooperatives lead to significant market pressures. Therefore, understanding when and under what conditions these new cooperatives innovate and strive is important as it provides insight into whether and how these ventures can become a viable alternative in this changing landscape. Using configurational analyses of organizational enablers leading to innovation in 40 entrepreneurial cooperatives, we identify three approaches: Attentive Pack, Eclectic Troop, and Wandering Herd, showing that innovative outcomes can indeed emerge under traditional cooperative features emphasizing collectivism. However, the pursuit of higher novelty requires a shift to more individualistic, business-as-usual, approaches. The New Normal does indeed enhance entrepreneurial activity, but of a different kind comprising novel sets of antecedents and outcomes, which we show can easily become the new dominant form of venturing required in this new context.     

Does direct experience matter? Examining the consequences of current entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention

Entrepreneurial behavior research has used intention models to explain how an individual’s beliefs shape the attitudes and motivations that influence entrepreneurial intention. Nevertheless, as entrepreneurship promotion initiatives become global, it becomes relevant to explore the consequences of being engaged in entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention. We aim to shed light on whether the direct experience reinforces an individual’s entrepreneurial intention or reduces it. Building on an extended version of the planned behavior theory, we use the behavioral reasoning theory to propose a research design to study the influence of being currently engaged in entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention. We introduce individual’s age as an additional moderator of the effects of directly experiencing entrepreneurial behavior. We use PLS-MGA to complete a multi-group SEM analysis for different groups of individuals (from a sample of 430), comparing groups based on their entrepreneurial activity and age group. Results of this research work evidence that current engagement in entrepreneurship activities produces significant differences in the intention to start a new venture between older and younger participants. The results suggest that engagement in entrepreneurial activity modifies entrepreneurial intention and that these effects are contingent to the individual’s age. This research work contributes to the extant call to explore reverse causality between actual behavior and an individual’s intention by introducing behavioral reasoning theory. These results provide support to initiatives to adapt entrepreneurship promotion efforts to the specific characteristics of the participants.     

Entrepreneurial Intentions and Outcomes: a Comparative Causal Mapping Study

This paper uses a causal map methodology to consider the contrasts between entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes. In evaluating a series of propositions drawn from the extant literature the study finds that the elicited causal maps are consistent with contrasts in entrepreneurial intentions, but not outcomes. This suggests that the existing emphasis on entrepreneurial strategies being deliberate, conscious processes may be misplaced: non-deliberate, emergent strategies may be just as influential in producing entrepreneurial outcomes. The study develops a series of output propositions suggesting that entrepreneurial outcomes are associated with causal maps which connect the internal operations of the business with the external environment. This implies that entrepreneurial success may be a result of intuitive systems thinking in which connections are made between the environment and the internal operations of the business.     

Does entrepreneurial activity matter for economic growth in developing countries? The role of the institutional environment

The discussion on which institutions determine entrepreneurial activity – and the role of institutions in the aggregated output for developing countries – is as yet unresolved. The extant literature about entrepreneurship recognizes new ventures as potential mechanisms for long-term development. Yet, there is a consensus on the lack of evidence, particularly for these countries. Drawing on institutional economics, this article explores the interrelationships among institutional environment, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth. To this end, we use simultaneous-equation panel data models for a sample of 14 developing countries (78 observations) over the period of 2004–2012. The main findings suggest a causal chain running from institutions to opportunity entrepreneurship, which is linked to the economic growth of emerging economies. In particular, we find that institutional factors – such as the number of procedures to start a new business, private credit coverage ,, and access to communication– influence entrepreneurial activity driven by opportunity. Policy implications for developing countries could be derived in order to enhance their economic performance through entrepreneurial activity.

     

Configuring innovative societies: The crossvergent role of cultural and institutional varieties

The study aims to explore why some societies are more innovative than others in high-technology sectors. Following a crossvergence perspective, we generate nine causal conditions by accommodating both cultural and institutional varieties: uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism and power distance as culture indicators, and union density, skill development, market capitalization to credit, prevalence of cluster and state dominance as institutional indicators. Applying the configurational approach, we conducted fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. We confirm the equal importance of both cultural and institutional mechanisms as contributors to national innovativeness, and identify equifinal configurations of cultural and institutional varieties as leading to a high-tech society. The implication is that a society can adjust or develop various cultural and/or institutional conditions to maintain or create leadership in innovation.     

Low Wage Returns to Schooling in a Developing Country: Evidence from a Major Policy Reform in Turkey

In this paper, we estimate returns to schooling for young men and women in Turkey using the exogenous and substantial variation in schooling across birth cohorts brought about by the 1997 reform of compulsory schooling within a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We estimate that the return from an extra year of schooling is about 7–8% for women and an imprecisely estimated 2–2.5% for men. The low level of the estimates for men contrasts starkly with those estimated for other developing countries. We identify several reasons why returns to schooling are low for men and why they are higher for women in our context. In particular, the policy alters the schooling distributions of men and women differently, thus the average causal effect puts a higher weight on the causal effect of schooling at higher grade levels for women than for men.     

Defying contextual embeddedness: evidence from displaced women entrepreneurs in Jordan

ABSTRACT

Although entrepreneurial practices and processes are evolving and changing globally, models of entrepreneurship remain masculinized, embedded in advanced economies and associated with notions of individual agency, heroism and control. Rarely is defiance considered. In this paper, we explore the defiance practices of displaced women operating in the Jordanian patriarchal economy and society and consider how this enabled their nurturing of entrepreneurship. Indeed, we argue that socially excluded women actually defy their contextual embeddedness through their entrepreneurial activities. In so doing, we respond to calls for research that explores the contextual embeddedness of women’s entrepreneurship, and contribute to shifting the focus towards the more silent feminine end of the entrepreneurial process. We consider the defiance of invisible displaced women entrepreneurs operating in the under-researched context of Jordan. Longitudinal, ethnographic investigation revealed the creation of a secret production network led by, and for, displaced women. This paper focuses on the five founders of this network, which they established to mobilize and manage the production of traditional crafts and, by so doing, to defy the stifling limitations imposed by their restrictive contractors, community and family members.     

Entrepreneurs’ networks and the success of start-ups

The network success hypothesis assumes a positive relation between the networking activities of founders and their start-up’s success. The rationale behind this hypothesis is the theory of socially embedded ties that allow entrepreneurs to get resources cheaper than they could be obtained on markets and to secure resources that would not be available on markets at all, e.g. reputation, customer contacts, etc.

This paper clarifies how entrepreneurial network activities can be measured and which indicators exist to quantify start-up success. It then reviews empirical studies on the network success hypothesis. The studies have rarely come up with significant results. This surprising evidence can be explained by large differences in the way that the dependent and the independent variables were defined and by effects of unobserved variables such as the networking expertise of the founders and the entrepreneurs’ level of existing know-how in the areas of co-operation and networking (‘absorptive capacity’). The major shortcomings of existing network studies are found to be the neglect of different starting conditions, the focus on individual founders’ networks instead of multiple networks in start-ups with an entrepreneurial team, and the assumption of a linear causal relation between networking and start-up success. Accordingly, the paper develops a new, extended model for the relation between entrepreneurial networks and start-up success. Finally, we make some suggestions for the further development of entrepreneurial network theory.     

Refining the linkage between perceived capability and entrepreneurial intention: roles of perceived opportunity,fear of failure,and gender

This study refines the relationship between perceived capability and entrepreneurial intention by considering the mediating roles of perceived opportunity and fear of failure and the moderating role of gender. A moderated mediation framework is developed on the basis of perspectives of the cognitive phenomenon of categorization and the social role theory. Two samples of Taiwan and China obtained from the database released by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor were used to test the hypotheses. A logistic regression analysis followed by a bootstrap approach reveals several interesting results. First, perceived capability positively affects entrepreneurial intention through perceived opportunity; this indirect linkage is stronger in China than in Taiwan. Second, compared with the fear of failure, perceived opportunity has a stronger mediating effect in linking perceived capability and entrepreneurial intention. This difference is more remarkable in China than in Taiwan. Third, gender partially moderates the mediating effect of perceived opportunity. Specifically, perceived capability has a stronger indirect effect on entrepreneurial intention through perceived opportunity among men than among women in Taiwan; however, the difference is not significant between men and women in China. In addition, age negatively affects perceived opportunity and entrepreneurial intention.     

Innovation performance and the role of clustering at the local enterprise level: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach

ABSTRACT

This study, utilizes an innovative methodological approach, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), investigating the drivers of heterogeneous geographies characterizing English Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs). The fsQCA technique offers a novel configurational alternative to regression-based approaches investigating the effects of clustering in conjunction with firm-level innovation, university third-sector activity (TSA) and entrepreneurship, on LEPs innovation performance. The findings, offer contributions to the theories of industrial clusters and innovation, regional innovation systems, knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurial university innovation within LEPs. First, supporting fsQCAs, no individual variable generates either a positive/negative innovation outcome. Second, while all positive innovation recipes include presence of the cluster variable, for negative innovation recipes, only one does not identify absence of clustering as relevant. Given that the cluster variable does not appear in any recipes without at least one of the other variables suggests activity concentration does not exist in isolation to generate innovation outcomes without other localized conditions existing, e.g. firm-level innovation. Third, there is evidence for the non-cluster-based aspects of knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship with respect to university activity and the entrepreneurial university concept. Instead, roles of entrepreneurship and university TSA, while important, appear to be more peripheral and geographically context specific.     

Does entrepreneurship pay for women and immigrants? A 30 year assessment of the socio-economic impact of entrepreneurial activity in Germany

Abstract

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984 to 2012, we explore income effects of self-employment for females and migrants. Controlling for the selection into self-employment, we differentiate the overall earnings differential between the self-employed and the wage-employed into an endowment effect (they are equipped with characteristics that positively affect earnings in either occupation) and a treatment effect (the income effect solely due to the decision for self-employment). We find that women exhibit both a lower treatment effect and a lower endowment effect than men. Migrants benefit much more from entrepreneurial activities than Germans, having a significantly higher treatment effect. Among the countries of origin, Turkish migrants benefit the most from their self-employment decision, while southern Europeans exhibit the lowest income relevant skills.