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This article examines the power relationships between researcher and participants, children and adults, drawing on the theories of transgressions and resistance in power, during a research project concerning children's experiences of the visual arts.

Data were gathered conducted in two Scottish primary schools by employing visual and arts-based methods, and the article discusses the role they played in revealing acts of power between participants as well as providing insight of a child's world.

The article concludes by emphasising how these methods revealed a network of power acts which supported children to transgress, resist and reveal their world to the adult.

The role of reflexion on the part of the researcher is key when undertaking research adopting participatory methods such as visual methods.

The article contributes to the ongoing discussions concerning visual methods research and their use in participatory research, and illustrates the complexities of power in this field.

The question of whether female‐owned firms underperform male‐owned firms has triggered much research and discussion. Klapper and Parker's review concluded that the majority of prior research suggests that female‐owned firms underperform relative to male‐owned firms. However, using performance measures that control for size and risk (and after controlling for demographic differences such as industry, experience and hours worked) Robb and Watson found no gender performance difference in their sample of newly established US firms. The aim of this study, therefore, is to replicate Robb and Watson's study to determine whether their findings can be generalized to another geographical location, Australia.

The authors test the female underperformance hypothesis using data from the CAUSEE project, a panel study which follows young firms over four years. They use three outcome variables: survival rates, return on assets and the Sharpe ratio.

Consistent with Robb and Watson the results indicate that female‐owned firms do not underperform male‐owned firms.

While replication studies are rare in entrepreneurship, they are an important tool for accumulating generalizable knowledge. The results suggest that while female‐owned firms differ from male‐owned firms in terms of many control variables (such as industry, owners' previous experience and hours worked) they are no less successful. This outcome should help dispel the female underperformance myth; which if left unchallenged could result in inappropriate policy decisions and, more importantly, could discourage women from establishing new ventures.

Entrepreneurship and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a pivotal role in the socio-economic development worldwide. They are, indeed, recognised as important economic drivers as their activities can boost economic growth in various ways, such as being source of employment, promoting equality among socio-economic groups, and fostering the development of new products. In line with this, SMEs contribution to innovation has been extensively investigated by researchers and policymakers. European Union, for example, has developed numerous programmes to foster innovation in and by SMEs, even identifying, categorizing, and periodically analysing the so-called ‘innovative SMEs’.

However, very scant is the attention, at the international level, devoted to the analysis of the role of gender in innovation per se and in innovative SMEs. This chapter fits into this underinvestigated stream of research by specifically analysing the impact, if any, of gender on Italian innovative SMEs’ performance.

This study compares the performance of female majority-owned new ventures (FNV) vs. male majority-owned new ventures (MNV). It analyzes the differences in levels of variables such as education, the same industry work experience of owners, and other venture level attributes between FNVs and MNVs. More importantly, this study employs decomposition techniques to determine the individual contribution from the intergender difference of each attribute on the performance of the new venture. For example, the study finds that, on average, the owners of an MNV possessed 3.4 years more of the same industry work experience than their FNV counterparts. This difference in work experience accounted for 47% of the “explained” gap [1] in Net Profits between the FNVs and MNVs.

This paper utilizes the Kauffman Firm Survey, a longitudinal dataset of 4,928 new ventures started in the USA in 2004. It employs Blinder-Oaxaca and Fairlie decomposition techniques in conjunction with OLS and Logit regressions. Both methods provide point estimates of contributions to the performance gap due to the heterogeneity in each attribute across the groups (FNV and MNV). This approach has a significant advantage over OLS or mediation analysis, which can only provide a directional analysis of the contributions of differences in attributes to performance.

The paper finds no performance gap between MNVs and FNVs. It further investigates whether the heterogeneous characteristics of MNVs vs FNVs are related to different effects on survival and performance. It finds that characteristics such as owners’ work experience in the same industry, average hours worked by owners in the new venture, the technology level of the venture, and its incorporation status are related with a differential impact on new venture survival and performance.

All firms in the dataset belonged to a single cohort (2004) of new ventures started in the US. Future studies are encouraged to develop a dataset from multiple geographies and founding over several years so that the results may be more generalizable.

The paper provides crucial practical guidance to policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs. In general, policies that enhance the work experience of women entrepreneurs and provide access to infrastructure such as daycares, which may allow them to work more hours, would probably improve the performance of FNVs.

The paper furthers the literature on women entrepreneurship by analyzing point estimates of differential contribution of disparate variables to performance. From a methodological perspective, the study reconciles the results between regression and decomposition analyses.

Women and men business owners are often thought to have different success criteria for their businesses, but there is little empirical research to support this. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of self-defined success factors, and to compare women and men’s success criteria.

This study surveyed 216 New Zealand business owners’ (78 women, 138 men) self-perceived success criteria for their businesses. Results are based primarily on an open-ended question on their interpretation of what success means to them. In total, 30 main categories of success factors were identified, and the four main factors analyzed in depth.

The four most frequently occurring success factors were financial success, personal satisfaction, work-life/work-family balance, and satisfied stakeholders. Women and men business owners described very similar success criteria, which were balanced across financial success and personal and relationship factors. No statistically significant gender differences were found in the incidence of these success factors, suggesting a movement of male business owners to a more holistic view of business success that incorporates financial success, alongside personal and relationship aspects.

Offers implications for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Highlights the need to be careful when designing research studies in multi-faceted areas such as business success, and also in gender comparative studies.

Uses self-perceived success criteria to assess gender differences.

Studies on women’s entrepreneurship in Morocco are scarce, despite the potential of women for the country’s economy. This research takes place in a socio-cultural environment searching for a compromise between tradition and modernity. Families occupy a prominent place in Morocco, directly influencing women’s activities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of family in Moroccan women’s entrepreneurial success.

The qualitative research is based on 60 interviews with women entrepreneurs in Morocco, including women business owners, women professionals and also women co-operators who have not been documented until now, due to data accessibility. It is diversified in terms of personal, family and professional characteristics. The analysis uses an intersectionality framework taking gender and social class into consideration.

The results highlight three categories of women entrepreneur: the “elite”, the “self-made women” and the “co-operators”. Each category is characterised by specific familial and professional realities, underpinned by differentiated dynamics in terms of gender and social class.

The study, from a practical point of view, contributes to a better understanding of the differentiated realities encountered in terms of women’s entrepreneurship, in the Moroccan context.

Studies in developing countries tend to consider women entrepreneurs as a homogeneous group. This research highlights the fact that family support, women entrepreneurs’ practices and their role in entrepreneurial success depend on the background situations in terms of gender and social class. It also contributes to the entrepreneurial success field, revealing different definitions and perceptions of success among women entrepreneurs.

Taking the entrepreneur’s perspective and a broad view of business advisory services, the purpose of this paper is to examine to what degree the need of business advisory services among Swedish start-ups, first-generation immigrants compared to non-immigrants, is fulfilled.

The sample data consist of a unique and comprehensive firm-level database and contain telephone interviews with 2,800 Swedish start-up entrepreneurs. The study examines 20 different kinds of business advice services, in terms of both need and use. Statistical methods such as Mann-Whitney test and regression analysis are used while controlling for entrepreneurial characteristics.

The findings suggest that immigrants’ compared to non-immigrants’ need for business advisory service was not fulfilled. Of the 20 different business advices, ten were fulfilled and ten were not fulfilled. Both strategic advice and operational advice were fulfilled as well as unfulfilled. Apart from ethnicity, other variables did influence the need of business advisory services.

The author was not able to make comparisons between different immigrant groups.

This study offers an explorative approach that contributes on how business advisory services are differentially tailored between start-ups by immigrants and those by non-immigrants. It illustrates to what extent public- and/or private-funded organizations contribute to fulfilment of the needs of immigrant and non-immigrant start-ups.

Few studies take the entrepreneur’s perspective and from such a perspective examine the fulfilment of needs of advice regarding both private and public organizations role in the area. Both the need and the use of business advisory services are studied as well as the kind of business advice that is needed.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to understand how children expand independence within instructional interactions with their teachers. To do so, the authors re-examine how scaffolding is understood and applied.

Approach – First, the authors consult websites and literature used by teachers and academics to examine how the notion of scaffolding is employed and explained. The authors analyze the roles, the intentions, the means, and the timing of scaffolding as used in popular literature to explain and support instruction. The authors then entertain a conceptual shift: What would the scaffolding process look like if learning were conceived as agentive? With this in mind, the authors interrogate descriptions of the tenets and functions of scaffolding to consider the process in relief.

Findings – The authors track the consequences of the inversion of scaffolding onto the understandings of the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model. Scaffolding is understood as sitting within a GRR model, wherein the learner gradually releases responsibility to a teacher at the point of need. Intersubjectivity remains a basis for the model. A Window for Examining Teaching–Learning Interactions is offered as a frame with which to analyze the theories of both the child and the teacher apparent within scaffolding interactions. An accurate teacher’s theory of the child’s current and changing theories is required for teaching to be honed to invite children to efficiently access personal and contextual resources and to seek assistance when needed within engaging tasks with scope.

Practical Implications – When children are positioned as initiators of their learning, they are able to use their vast repertoire of knowledge of the world, language/s and literacies, and familial, cultural, and community ways of knowing to create, interpret, and engage in tasks. In this agentive view, children are positioned as holding full responsibility at the onset of any task and gradually releasing their responsibility to access support, when needed. Within tasks that are sufficiently wide for engagement at varied entry points, learners are the catalyst of the functions that were formerly initiated by teachers. Teachers invite children to access personal and contextual resources and to seek assistance, as needed, through additional external, contextual resources. This inverted model of scaffolding, that is child-directed rather than teacher-initiated, requires teachers to go beyond theories of teaching and learning and develop a theory of an individual child.

Recent studies conducted in Europe and in the Middle East found growing interest of young entrepreneurs in using social media as a venue for business activities. The Digital Natives (DNs), young people who cannot recall their lives without the Internet and digital devices, are thought to be the most entrepreneurial generation so far.

In this chapter, the authors take a closer look at the role of gender in entrepreneurship and provide more insights for effective policy-shaping with the DNs in mind.

This study adopts a quantitative approach to compare the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) of DNs from two frontier markets, Serbia, and Kuwait and examines the gender differences in entrepreneurial intention (EI) and entrepreneurial capacity.

The study shows that female respondents demonstrate a positive attitude toward using social media for entrepreneurial activities. Although technology drives EI, female DNs should receive more guidance and encouragement to feel more confident to start a business. Extending previous studies, the authors discuss the prominent role of social approvals and expert guidance in driving the EM.