What's Gender Got to Do with It? The Experiences of U.S. Women Entrepreneurship Students

The purpose of this case study was to understand the gendered experiences women students report while participating in a university entrepreneurship program. This qualitative study sought to shed light on some of the unanswered questions about women’s experiences by interviewing women entrepreneurship students and their faculty members at a university site. The data were analyzed through the lens of Acker’s theory of gendered organizations. From these data, themes were identified that can in turn help enrich entrepreneurship programs in the future.     

Entrepreneurship, developing countries, and development economics: new approaches and insights

This paper provides an introduction to this special issue of Small Business Economics dealing with the (long-postponed) integration of entrepreneurship into the discipline of development economics and casting a formal light on the role of entrepreneurship in developing countries. The paper departs from the premise that with more than a billion people living in absolute poverty, it is of great practical importance to understand if and when entrepreneurship is a binding constraint on economic development and catching up in developing countries. This in turn requires at least a deeper theoretical modeling of the entrepreneur in development economics. This special edition contains a number of contributions emanating from the UNU-WIDER project on Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity, which integrates the disciplines of entrepreneurship and development economics. These contributions model and explore the role of the entrepreneur in key areas of concern for development economics, such as structural change and economic growth, income and wealth inequalities, welfare, poverty traps, and market failures. This introduction discusses and contextualizes these various contributions and their implications for further theoretical and empirical work.     

The Diana Project: pioneering women studying pioneering women

The 2007 winner of the International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research is the Diana Project team (Candida Brush, Nancy Carter, Elizabeth Gatewood, Patricia Greene and Myra Hart). The Diana Project builds on the vast experience of the team in the field of entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship, business growth and venture capital in particular. The Diana Project has investigated the supply and demand side of growth capital for women entrepreneurs. The research contributes to entrepreneurship theory as well as to practice, filling a void in knowledge on growth-oriented women entrepreneurship. In this article we present and discuss the research contribution of the Diana Project, in the areas of entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship and venture capital. We specifically discuss the value of researching a specific group of women entrepreneurs, those who want to grow their businesses, that very clearly demonstrates the positive potential of female entrepreneurship. The Diana Project has also moved research on women’s entrepreneurship forward since its framework does not treat women entrepreneurs as “other,” i.e., the project does not presuppose that women’s entrepreneurship is similar to or different from men’s entrepreneurship. It assumes that women’s entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and studies it from that point of view. Carin Holmquist is professor at Stockholm School of Economics and member of the Prize Committee for The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. Sara Carter is professor at University of Strathclyde. Both have written extensively in several of the areas covered by the Diana Project. The prize is awarded by the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research (FSF) and the Swedish Board of Industrial and Technical Development (NUTEK). An important aim with this prize is to attract broader attention to this research field. A precondition for choosing the winner of the award is that the research for which the award has been granted is a significant contribution to the theory and empirical understanding of entrepreneurship and the importance of entrepreneurship, new firm formation and small businesses in economic development. Besides the honor, the prize consists of SEK 0.5 million (roughly USD 80,000). It has been awarded annually since 1996. More information about the prize and previous winners is available at .     

“Why Does all the Girls have to Buy Pink Stuff?” The Ethics and Science of the Gendered Toy Marketing Debate

The gendered marketing of children’s toys is under considerable scrutiny, as reflected by numerous consumer-led campaigns and vigorous media debates. This article seeks to assist stakeholders to better understand the ethical and scientific assumptions that underlie the two opposing positions in this debate, and assess their relative strength. There is apparent consensus in the underlying ethical foundations of the debate, with all commentators seeming to endorse the values of corporate social responsibility and gender equality. However, the debate splits over three critical points of empirical disagreement: whether gendered toy marketing influences children’s toy preferences or simply reflects boys’ and girls’ fundamentally different interests; whether the effects of gendered toy marketing are negative, neutral or beneficial; and whether a shift to gender-neutral marketing would be economically viable. We assess the three points of disagreement against the available evidence and shared ethical principles underlying the debate, and conclude that current defences of gendered toy marketing fail.     

Innovations, Stakeholders & Entrepreneurship

In modern societies entrepreneurship and innovation are widely seen as key sources of economic growth and welfare increases. Yet entrepreneurial innovation has also meant losses and hardships for some members of society: it is destructive of some stakeholders’ wellbeing even as it creates new wellbeing among other stakeholders. Both the positive benefits and negative externalities of innovation are problematic because entrepreneurs initiate new ventures before their private profitability and/or social costs can be fully recognized. In this paper we consider three analytical frameworks within which these issues might be examined: pre-commitments, contractarianism, and an entrepreneurial framework. We conclude that the intersection of stakeholder theory and entrepreneurial innovation is a potentially rich arena for research. Nicholas Dew, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He teaches strategic management in private and public sector organizations. His research interests include entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation. He has published in several scholarly journals, including Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Business Venturing, Industrial and Corporate Change and the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. Saras D. Sarasvathy, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. She teaches courses in entrepreneurship and ethics in Darden's MBA and doctoral programs. Her research focuses on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship. She has published in various scholarly journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Businesss Venturing and the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. Her first book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise was recently published by Edward Elgar.     

Relationship between individualist–collectivist culture and entrepreneurial activity: evidence from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data

This paper examines how one dimension of national culture (an individualist–collectivist orientation) is related to Total Entrepreneurial Activity, depending on the level of economic development, measured by GDP per capita. Researchers have traditionally associated individualism with high rates of firm creation, arguing that an orientation towards achievement and the pursuit of personal objectives (dominant aspects in individualist cultures) are determinants of entrepreneurial activity. The current analysis shows that a country’s culture correlates to entrepreneurship, but cannot uphold the idea that higher levels of individualism mean higher rates of entrepreneurship. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on 52 countries, the results show that a country’s entrepreneurship rate is negatively related to individualism when development is medium or low, and positively related to individualism when the level of development is high. Thus, individualism is not related to entrepreneurship in the same way in countries with differing levels of development.     

Asian Entrepreneurship in the International Business World

This review will focus on the role of Asian entrepreneurship in the international business world. As we are now considered to be in the Asian century, it is important to see how business grows, develops, and changes based on entrepreneurship. Asian entrepreneurship is unique to the geographic area but also encompasses people, business, and government that has a focus on Asia and is part of the global community. The continuing rapid evolution of Asian economies over the next decade will require a focus on entrepreneurship as it incorporates technology and innovation change. More countries in Asia need to focus on entrepreneurship as a way to achieve global best practice and to make breakthroughs in science and technology. A focus on the role of entrepreneurship in Asia in order to meet social and sustainable needs is a particular key concern of many governments and trade organizations around the world. This article will focus on the book Asian Entrepreneurship as a key reference for understanding and improving the social, environmental, and economic conditions for international business. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Scott A. Shane: winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Scott A. Shane is the 2009 winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. In this article we discuss and analyze Shane’s most important contributions to the field of entrepreneurship. His contribution is extraordinarily broad in scope, which makes it difficult to pinpoint one or a few specifics that we associate with Shane’s scholarship. Instead, they can be summarized in the following three points. First, he has influenced what we view as central aspects of entrepreneurship. Shane has been a leading figure in redirecting the focus on entrepreneurship research itself. Second, he has influenced how we view entrepreneurship. Shane’s research is arguably theory driven and it applies and develops theoretical lenses that greatly improve our understanding of entrepreneurship. Third, he has contributed to how we conduct entrepreneurship research. Shane has been a forerunner in examining relevant units of analysis that are difficult to sample; research designs and databases specifically designed for studying entrepreneurial processes; and sophisticated analytical methods. This has contributed to advancing the methodological rigor of the field. Summing them up, the contributions are very impressive indeed.

The role of gender identity in explaining sex differences in business owners' career satisfier preferences

This study examines how gender identity explains what male and female business owners look for from their careers. Results suggest that gender identity, represented by the dimensions of masculinity and femininity, serves as a cognitive mechanism that contributes to sex differences in business owners' career satisfier preferences. Masculinity mediates the relationship between sex and preferences for status-based satisfiers. Femininity mediates the relationships between sex and preferences for employee relationship satisfiers and contribution to society satisfiers. These results support the view that entrepreneurship is a gendered process and that incorporation of a feminine perspective into entrepreneurial theories and research is needed.     

Gender and Inequality: Austerity and Alternatives

Gender equality policies aim to increase women’s participation in the market economy, but they do not always recognise that market societies reproduce inequalities at micro and macro levels. At the micro level, labour markets are gendered institutions, and at the macro level, austerity policies have inherent biases and negative impacts that fall disproportionately on women.     

Entrepreneurial orientation in long-lived family firms

We apply a key construct from the entrepreneurship field, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), in the context of long-lived family firms. Our qualitative in-depth case studies show that a permanently high level of the five EO dimensions is not a necessary condition for long-term success, as traditional entrepreneurship and EO literature implicitly suggest. Rather, we claim that the level of EO is dynamically adapted over time and that the original EO scales (autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness) do not sufficiently capture the full extent of entrepreneurial behaviors in long-lived family firms. Based on these considerations we suggest extending the existing EO scales to provide a more fine-grained depiction of firm-level corporate entrepreneurship in long-lived family firms.     

Gendered consumer competences in households with one vs. two adults1

Consumption is gendered. Some markets can be described as female‐dominated, while others can be described as male‐dominated consumer areas. The departure of this article is observed gender differences in consumer competences, measured by men and women's self‐reported efforts to stay informed on different markets. Three central gender research hypotheses are applied to investigate the observed gender differences in consumer competences. Nowadays, modern consumer markets are characterized by abundance, complexity and rapid changes, making it hardly possible for any consumer to master all markets he or she operates in. Because very much of the consumption takes place within the households, it should be convenient to live in a household with two adult persons who can share responsibilities and stay informed on the different segments of the markets. However, many households consist of only one adult person. Our main concern has been to investigate whether the observed gender differences in consumer competences could be explained by the specializing hypothesis, i.e. that the gendered pattern relies on a gendered division of consumer competences within couple households; in other words, that gender differences in consumer competences among single‐person households should be absent, or significantly lower, than among couple households. In case we would not find support for the specializing hypothesis, two other probable explanations are also put forward: the traditional gender difference hypothesis and the selection hypothesis. These three hypotheses are tested in a data material based on 2000 telephone interviews from the SIFO survey, collected in 2007.     

Realizing the Spirit and Impact of Adam Smith's Capitalism through Entrepreneurship

Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments that in order to create an effective and productive capitalist system, individuals must pursue interests of both the self and society. Despite this assertion, modern economic theory has become tightly focused on the pursuit of economic self-interests at the expense of other, higher order motives. This paper will argue that the tendency to employ such an egocentric strategy often generates externalities and inequalities that serve to detract from the greater welfare of society. However, by tempering these economic self-interests with non-economically motivated considerations, this paper will suggest that individuals may create tremendous benefits to society, precisely as Smith outlined more than two centuries ago. In defense of this assertion, this paper will review an array of theoretical arguments and empirical findings that suggest that today's entrepreneurs are not only seeking to satisfy both selfish and ethical motivations, but in so doing they are also contributing substantially to the overall welfare of society through job creation, wealth redistribution, and a lack of discrimination. As such, it appears that spirit and impact of the capitalist system that Smith envisioned is being realized through entrepreneurship.     

A process model of academic entrepreneurship

Innovations stemming from research conducted on university campuses are a growing source for the ideas and core technologies that drive entrepreneurial endeavors. This trend has led to development of the term academic entrepreneurship, which refers to the efforts and activities that universities and their industry partners undertake in hopes of commercializing the outcomes of faculty research. Because it is a relatively new phenomenon, the process of academic entrepreneurship has not been as well articulated as one might hope. As such, the objective of this article is to draw on a range of academic entrepreneurship literature to develop a multi-stage process model of academic entrepreneurship. This model is intended to guide potential stakeholders through the application of academic entrepreneurship, with a focus on improving the odds of success. The advantage of this approach is identification of the activities, actors, and key success factors associated with each stage of the academic entrepreneurship process. We conclude our discussion by highlighting the benefits of engaging in academic entrepreneurship for a variety of potential stakeholders.     

Josh Lerner: recipient of the 2010 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

This article describes the academic contributions of the 2010 recipient of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, Professor Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School. Lerner’s empirical research on the inter-relationship between venture capital, innovation and entrepreneurship has greatly extended and improved our understanding of one of the major drivers of growth in modern economies. The first part of this article explains Lerner’s contributions as regards the structure and organization of the venture capital industry. Later, his most important publications on entrepreneurship, innovation and intellectual property rights are surveyed. Several aspects of Lerner’s policy-oriented work are then outlined, before the article closes with a brief conclusion.     

Entrepreneurship Education in a Poverty Context: An Empowerment Perspective

Empowerment is an important but understudied phenomenonExperiential Learning in entrepreneurship education. We integrate literatures on empowerment theory and experiential learning to propose a conceptual model of empowerment‐based entrepreneurship education. The concept of entrepreneurial empowerment is introduced as a cognitive state characterized by meaning, competence, self‐determination, and impact toward entrepreneurial activities. The model proposes that empowerment has a mediating role in the relationship between experiential learning approaches in a poverty context and the acquisition of learning outcomes. The model is illustrated using an entrepreneurship and adversity program that supports local low‐income individuals in starting and growing their ventures.     

William J. Baumol: An Entrepreneurial Economist on the Economics of Entrepreneurship

William J. Baumol is the 2003 winner of the International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. Throughout his career Baumol has urged the profession to pay attention to the instrumental role of entrepreneurship in economic renewal and growth. At the same time he has insisted that economists continue to use their usual tool box when the purview of analysis is extended to entrepreneurship. Hence, Baumol can be characterized as a revolutionary from within. In this article we present and discuss Baumol's research contribution in the areas of entrepreneurship and small business economics, notably from a growth perspective. In addition to placing his work in these areas into the wider context of his full contribution, we emphasize Baumol's findings that growth cannot be explained by the accumulation of various factors of production per se; human creativity and productive entrepreneurship are needed to combine the inputs in profitable ways. As a result, an institutional environment that encourages productive entrepreneurship and human experimentation becomes the ultimate determinant of economic growth.     

Institutions,entrepreneurship, and economic growth in Europe

Institutions have a decisive impact on the prevalence and nature of entrepreneurship. To date, the impact of institutions on (productive) entrepreneurship and the effects of entrepreneurship on economic growth have largely been investigated in isolation. In this paper, we bring together institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth using a parsimonious growth model in a 3SLS specification. In our first stage, we regress multiple measures of entrepreneurial activity on institutional proxies that are known to correlate with more productive forms of entrepreneurial activity. Using the fitted values of this first-stage regression as our proxy for productive entrepreneurship, we can then estimate a panel growth regression following Islam (1995) in a second stage. The third stage then optimizes the estimation of the two equations simultaneously. Our results show that productive entrepreneurship contributes to economic growth. In our set of proxies for institutional quality, financial stability, small government, and perceived start-up skills are the most important predictors of such productive entrepreneurship.     

Predictors and financial outcomes of corporate entrepreneurship: An exploratory study

Today, there is considerable scholarly and managerial interest in corporate entrepreneurship; that is, those activities that enhance a company's ability to innovate, take risk, and seize opportunities in its markets. Corporate entrepreneurship centers on creating new business by penetrating new markets, pursuing new business, or both.Despite the growing recognition and use of corporate entrepreneurship, little empirical research has been done on its antecedents and potential association with company financial performance. To fill this gap in the literature, this study proposes a model that identifies potential environmental, strategic, and organizational factors that may spur or stifle corporate entrepreneurship. The model also highlights the potential associations between corporate entrepreneurship and corporate financial performance.Building on the existing literature, the study advances five hypotheses that operationalize the model. The hypotheses are tested using data from 119 of the Fortune 500 industrial firms, covering the period 1986 to 1989. This exploratory study's results indicate that: (1) environmental dynamism, hostility, and heterogeneity (multiplicity and complexity of environmental components) intensify corporate entrepreneurship; (2) growth-oriented strategies are associated with increased corporate entrepreneurship, whereas a strategy of stability is not conducive to corporate entrepreneurship; (3) the scanning, formal communication, and integration components of formal organizational structure are positively related to corporate entrepreneurship—increased differentiation and extensive controls stifle corporate entrepreneurship; (4) clearly defined organizational values, whether relating to competitors or employees, are positively associated with corporate entrepreneurship; and (5) corporate entrepreneurship activities are associated with company financial performance and reduced systematic risk.