High‐Growth Women’s Entrepreneurship: Fueling Social and Economic Development

High‐growth firms, often referred to as “gazelles,” are equated with entrepreneurial success and celebrated as the key to growing economies, and women’s entrepreneurship is a vehicle of economic and social development. This special issue publishes papers that address the general lack of research on high‐growth women’s entrepreneurship. In this introduction paper, we offer an adapted framework for the factors driving high growth across multiple levels: individual (entrepreneur and entrepreneurial team characteristics), venture (strategy, organizational structures, and systems), resources, location, and environment. We also introduce the papers in this special issue and present an overview of the contributions to this issue.     

THE IMPACT OF LOW‐PRIORITY LAWS ON CRIMINAL ACTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM CALIFORNIA

We examine the impact of low‐priority initiatives on criminal activity. Low‐priority initiatives mandate that minor marijuana possession offenses be the lowest enforcement priority for police. Localities pass these laws because they believe if officers devote fewer resources toward minor marijuana crimes, more resources will be available to deter more serious crimes. Using data from California, we find that jurisdictions that adopted low‐priority laws experienced a reduction in arrests for misdemeanor marijuana offenses. However, we do not find evidence of a consistent effect of enacting a low‐priority initiative on the crime or clearance rate of other felonies. (JEL H1, H4, K4)     

“China,why not?”: serious leisure and transmigrant runners’ stories from Beijing

The purpose of this study was to examine how amateur, serious distance runners negotiate their running practices upon transnational migration to China. Despite the extensive body of research into expatriate experiences and adaptation, serious leisure as a site where meaning-making occurs has not been studied in existing research. Through interviews with five female and two male expatriates, we studied the ways in which Western runners brought meaning to the transition experience and negotiated meanings and bodily practices associated with running. Through narrative analysis, we identified three core narratives of migration (possibility, necessity and growing up) and two emergent narratives (community and running to feel like oneself) about shifting meaning in running. We conclude with implications for future research in serious leisure and migration studies.     

The contours of employee voice in SMEs: the importance of context

This article develops a context‐sensitive approach to analyse how and why voice operates in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), an area that remains under‐theorised and under‐researched. By building on a priori frameworks with proven ability to unpack complexity and take account of the wider context of SMEs, this article explores how resources (human and social capital) and constraints (product market, labour market and strategic orientation) interact to shape voice practices. The article finds significant differences between ‘reported’ compared with ‘actual’ practices in situ, and identifies different types of firms (‘strategic market regulation’, ‘strategic market‐led’ and ‘non‐strategic market‐led’) along with the factors that influence the form and practice of voice. Overall, the article argues that researchers should further pursue research that appreciates the layered nature of ontology and the role played by firm context to explain complex organisational phenomena, if we are to advance our understanding of voice practices in SMEs and beyond.     

Benchmarking as a Tool for the Modernisation of Local Government

This paper examines benchmarking as a tool of the modernisation process in local government and the contradictory tensions in the Best Value scheme are explored. Benchmarking is shown to encapsulate the dichotomous nature of a modernising philosophy which espouses innovation and local solutions alongside the government's centralising tendencies. One consequence is the advancement of 'compulsory' and 'defensive' modes of benchmarking with local authorities benchmarking for external accountability reasons; issues of tangible improvement are secondary concerns. These tensions are viewed as irreconcilable, the implication is that local government will need to carefully manage and evaluate its benchmarking activities.     

Shareholder rights and share capital: the effect of the 1901 Russian Corporation Reform, 1890–1905

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, western European countries introduced general incorporation and additional flexible enterprise forms, but the Russian Empire left its concession system of incorporation in place. The Empire's only major corporation reform, the 1901 law, strengthened minority shareholder rights and removed bankers from boards of directors for certain corporations. The reform offers a rare opportunity to examine the financial effects of improving corporations’ principal–agent relationships through regulation, because the reform did not affect all corporations equally. Corporations affected by the reform had smaller total share capital, fewer shares, and higher par values for shares as observed in 1905. The new regulations may have increased the cost of having shareholders and hence disciplined corporations’ founders to be more conservative in raising capital by issuing stock. Removing bankers from boards of directors may have removed an important source of firms’ founding capital, though corporations could easily evade this provision. The results also show that, although the commercial code treated all corporations equally, there were two major groups of Russian corporations that behaved differently, and, despite the fact that corporate charters could grant individual exceptions to the commercial code, a revision in the commercial code changed corporations’ behaviour.     

Consumer multiculturation: consequences of multi-cultural identification for brand knowledge

Whilst there has been a sustained interest in ethnic migrants developing composite cultural identities in emerged multi-cultural contexts, considerations of identity transitions among mainstream consumers (i.e. the non-migrant, locally born majority in a given marketplace) have been so far limited to the local–global culture dichotomy. This paper argues that, in multi-cultural marketplaces, mainstream consumers are exposed to a diverse range of local, global and foreign cultural meanings and may deploy these meanings for identity construal in a more complex manner. The paper offers a conceptual framework of consumer multiculturation that (a) includes foreign cultures as other discrete influences in multi-cultural marketplaces; (b) constructs a more coherent conception of how, through interaction with foreign, global and local cultures, mainstream consumers' identities may diversify beyond local/global/glocal alternatives and (c) considers the impact of these transitions on consumers' perceptions, expectations of and behavioral responses to culture-based brand meanings.     

Communication essentials for female executives to develop leadership presence: Getting beyond the barriers of understating accomplishment

Statistics about women's presence as CEOs, directors, and board members show relative stagnation over the last few years. Many theories exist to explain this problem, but there is a paucity of specific suggestions targeted at individuals seeking to rise to the top of their organizations. In this article we propose that changing the way women talk about accomplishments can improve leadership presence and aid in promotion. We analyzed video interviews of 20 men and 20 women in leadership roles at Fortune 50 companies. Since leaders will inevitably confront this when interviewing for promotions, we chose to focus on the question: “In your career, what are the accomplishments you are most proud of?” We analyzed content, syntax, gestures, and facial expressions, and identified significant differences in the way men and women talked about accomplishment. Based upon our research, we identify six communication essentials that can help women project confidence: (1) starting strong, (2) staying succinct, (3) dimensionalizing content, (4) owning voice, (5) controlling movement, and (6) projecting warmth.