Katerina Sarri and Anna Trihopoulou
The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of women entrepreneurs in Greece by looking into personal characteristics and motivation of female Greek entrepreneurs in order…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of women entrepreneurs in Greece by looking into personal characteristics and motivation of female Greek entrepreneurs in order to assist Greek policy makers in their future attempts to devise programs to support them in the start‐up phase.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a review of the entrepreneurial environment and female entrepreneurship in Greece, approached first through an analysis of the existing bibliography and then through the presentation and analysis of data exploring personal characteristics and motivation, drawn mainly from three similarly designed surveys (two of which were designed and carried out by the authors), covering the period 1990‐2000.
Findings
It is important that women entrepreneurs are not treated as a monolithic category: rather, policies and programs to support them should begin with a diagnosis of their personal characteristics and motives aimed at strengthening pull motives that comprise a base for more viable and innovative entrepreneurial activity.
Originality/value
The paper's originality lies in its review of the Greek situation, adding more evidence of the characteristics of women entrepreneurs in a different setting.
Details
Keywords
Marina Solesvik, Tatiana Iakovleva and Anna Trifilova
This paper focuses on the motivation of females to start businesses in developed and emerging economies. Although the issues related to the motivation of entrepreneurs have been…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper focuses on the motivation of females to start businesses in developed and emerging economies. Although the issues related to the motivation of entrepreneurs have been widely studied, there are a few studies focusing on the differences in women’s entrepreneurial motivation in countries with different levels of market economy development. Furthermore, existing studies on female founders mainly adapt the concepts that have often been developed in male-dominated paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to explore in depth motivations of female entrepreneurs in different contexts and discover the dissimilarities in women’s entrepreneurial motivations in countries with different levels of economic development.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative research approach is applied in this study to explore the social-driven and profit-driven motives of female entrepreneurs. The authors have employed purposeful sampling to select cases. The authors investigated the motivations of 45 female entrepreneurs in Norway (12), Russia (21) and Ukraine (12). Semi-structured interviews were used to collect primary data. The authors have also triangulated the data collected from interviews with the data available on the internet, company reports and newspaper publications.
Findings
The findings indicate that women often pursuit business opportunities to satisfy social needs, rather than focusing on traditional business outcomes such as growth or profit. However, different contexts – the emerging economies context of Russia and Ukraine and the developed one of Norway – seem to influence the motivation to establish new ventures differently. The study found a stronger desire to contribute to a society’s needs among female founders in Norway compared to their counterparts in Russia and Ukraine. This indicates that cultural and social context in developed countries, such as in Norway, probably provides more possibilities for female entrepreneurs for self-realisation elsewhere leaving more room for focusing on societal issues in business in comparison with emerging countries contexts.
Originality/value
A novel conceptual contribution is the exploration of links between the social-driven and profit-driven motives of female entrepreneurs in emerging and developed economises. The study also adds to debates relating to context embeddedness of smaller firms.
Leonidas A. Zampetakis and George Kanelakis
Although previous research acknowledges that the process of entrepreneurship is also a regional and a peripheral activity, empirical evidence concerning the personal and…
Abstract
Purpose
Although previous research acknowledges that the process of entrepreneurship is also a regional and a peripheral activity, empirical evidence concerning the personal and contextual factors affecting business start‐ups due to the identification of opportunities in rural contexts is limited. The purpose of the present research is to verify whether prior entrepreneurship theories conducted in urban contexts are useful for predicting entrepreneurial activities in rural contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
A short, self‐report questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 81 business owners located at a small town in southern Crete, Greece. Bayesian confirmatory factor analysis and logistic regression analysis were the main analytical tools used.
Findings
Results suggest that entrepreneurs' personality, prior knowledge, expectation of future social status, and level of education are significant predictors of opportunity entrepreneurship.
Research limitations/implications
The reported research relied on self‐reports and on a sample from the Greek public sector. Moreover, data are cross‐sectional. Future research should be multinational and longitudinal to test the assumptions of the present study.
Originality/value
The present study provides evidence about the utility of existing opportunity entrepreneurship theories in rural contexts. Results could be of value to policy makers focusing on the development of small businesses and entrepreneurship and the promotion of entrepreneurial and innovative capabilities in rural contexts.
Details
Keywords
Georgios Outsios and Seemab Ara Farooqi
Existing research highlights gender as an important dimension for entrepreneurship theory and practice. This study aims to explore the differences between female and male…
Abstract
Purpose
Existing research highlights gender as an important dimension for entrepreneurship theory and practice. This study aims to explore the differences between female and male sustainable entrepreneurs in the areas of previous professional experiences, their performance and growth, their use of financial resources and their overall attitude to risk.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a feminist perspective and on the basis of empirical evidence gathered through a series of 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with male and female sustainable entrepreneurs in the UK, thr authors analyse differences between male and female sustainable entrepreneurs.
Findings
The findings suggest that female role models play a significant role in the emergence of women sustainable entrepreneurs who start from the same experience levels as men, show strong feminist attitudes and are conscious of their contribution to global sustainability. Sustainable entrepreneurship offers women professional development and a limited flexibility to balance work and family commitments. Lack of funding appears to be a major constraint applying to both female and male participants, while the authors argue that business pragmatism in a difficult investment environment triggered women’s reluctance to take on debt. Nonetheless, female sustainable entrepreneurs were found to have developed and used their professional and social networks to a greater extent than their male counterparts.
Originality/value
This study offers a new gender perspective to the research of sustainable entrepreneurship and, at the same time, contributes with findings from research on sustainable entrepreneurs to the study of gender in management.