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This study explores the relationship between economic freedom and gender ideologies on the allocation of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries. Opportunity entrepreneurship is typically understood as one’s best option for work, whereas necessity entrepreneurship describes the choice as driven by no better option for work. Specifically, we examine how economic freedom (i.e. each country’s policies that facilitate voluntary exchange) and gender ideologies (i.e. each country’s propensity for gendered separate spheres) affect the distribution of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries.

We construct our sample by matching data from the following country-level sources: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey (APS), the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), the European/World Value Survey’s Integrated Values Survey (IVS) gender equality index, and other covariates from the IVS, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) World Bank (WB) databases. Our final sample consists of 729 observations from 109 countries between 2006 and 2018. Entrepreneurial activity motivations are measured by the ratio of the percentage of women’s opportunity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship to the percentage of female necessity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship at the country level. Due to a first-order autoregressive process and heteroskedastic cross-sectional dependence in our panel, we estimate a fixed-effect regression with robust standard errors clustered by country.

After controlling for multiple macro-level factors, we find two interesting findings. First, economic freedom positively affects the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship. We find that the size of government, sound money, and business and credit regulations play the most important role in shaping the distribution of contextual motivations over time and between countries. However, this effect appears to benefit efficiency and innovation economies more than factor economies in our sub-sample analysis. Second, gender ideologies of political equality positively affect the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship, and this effect is most pronounced for efficiency economies.

This study offers one critical contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how economic freedom and gender ideologies shape the distribution of contextual motivation for women’s entrepreneurship cross-culturally. We answer calls to better understand the variation within women’s entrepreneurship instead of comparing women’s and men’s entrepreneurial activity. As a result, our study sheds light on how structural aspects of societies shape the allocation of women’s entrepreneurial motivations through their institutional arrangements.

This study aims to identify the main research development on board diversity and offers a quantitative synopsis of key themes and contributors, knowledge gaps and provides directions for further work.

Using a bibliometric analysis, the authors assess the patterns in global board diversity research based on co-occurrences of researchers’ keywords and publication outputs of 991 articles from the Scopus database. Also, the co-citation network analysis was performed to assess the intellectual structure of board diversity research.

According to the keyword analysis, the authors found that researchers focus on the gender diversity of the boardroom while ignoring the cognitive diversity and other aspects of demographic diversity such as educational, ethnic, age, nationality, experience, background and tenure, pointing to the need for further work to consider other diversity attributes and the interaction between them. Additionally, board diversity research related to (but not limited to) payout policy, cash holding, initial public offerings, small–medium enterprises and financial institutions is limited.

This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the development of board diversity research (using a large archival database) and identifies the common construct as well as the potential opportunities for future research directions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the under‐researched subject of the role of mentoring relationships within and outside of organizational boundaries as individuals make the career transition from being a corporate employee to becoming an entrepreneur.

Using structured interviews, the authors collected data from 24 men and women in the financial services industry in the UK about their experiences in making the transition from a corporate organization to a new venture work context. All interviews were transcribed and systematic Nvivo coding was used.

Developmental relationships with structural, relational, and cognitive embeddedness were most likely to transfer from the individual's corporate workplace to their new venture. Support for both the recent literature on multiple mentors and for gender differences in the patterns of these mentoring relationships was also found.

This is the first published study to examine whether mentor relationships from previous corporate employment transfer to the protégé's new entrepreneurial venture and whether other types of relationships (e.g. coworkers, clients) are transformed into mentor‐protégé relationships after the career transition to entrepreneurship. It is also among the few studies to examine mentoring of entrepreneurs and gender differences in mentoring within the entrepreneurial work context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how directors’ roles and social identities are shaped by gender and board life stage, using pre- and post-crisis Iceland as the setting. Recent theoretical work suggests the importance of directors’ monitoring and resource provision roles at certain board life stages; however, there is limited empirical evidence of directors’ identification with these roles as well as social role identification as a member of the board.

The authors contribute empirical evidence from interviews with 23 corporate directors in Iceland on individual identification with the director role of monitoring and resource provision, relational identification with the CEO role and social identification as a member of the board.

Prior to the crisis, male directors identified more strongly with resource provision and with their social roles and less strongly with monitoring roles. Compared to their male counterparts, pre-crisis female directors identified more strongly with monitoring and did not identify with their social roles. After the crisis, mature boards’ male director role identities were little changed; male directors continued to identify with resource provision and social identification, rather than monitoring, roles. Compared to pre-crisis, post-crisis female directors described greater identity with their resource provision roles and reported that male directors resented their attempts to fulfill their monitoring roles. In post-crisis, newly formed diverse boards, male and female directors reported very similar role identities which reflected balanced monitoring and resource provision roles, for example providing the board with ethical individual identities and unblemished reputations. The findings of this paper indicate that board composition and life cycle stage might have more impact on director identity than a pre- or post-crisis setting. These findings suggest implications for theory, practice and future research.

This paper provides further empirical evidence of the roles male and female directors identify with on corporate boards. Its originality lies in the context of the board work in terms of newly formed and mature boards, before and after the financial crisis, with differing gender composition (male-dominated and gender-balanced boards).

The purpose of this paper is to explore gender differences in the composition of entrepreneurs' networks at four new venture stages: discovery, emergence, young, and established.

The study used ANOVA and linear regression on a sample of 134 female and 266 male entrepreneurs.

Female entrepreneurs have significantly lower proportions of males in their social networks in early venture development stages, but similar levels at later stages.

Taken together, the findings suggest that, just as women in traditional organizations adapt social networks similar to men in order to succeed, their entrepreneurial counterparts build more “male‐oriented” networks as they proceed through venture phases.

This study uses a representative sample of male and female entrepreneurs to explore network composition at four distinct stages. The findings suggest that female entrepreneurs who are able to persist in the new venture process develop networks similar to their male counterparts.

Firms face uncertain environments characterized by shifting demographics, disruptive technologies, new industries and competitors, and other challenges. To survive the tumultuous landscape, firm managers “make strategy” by assessing the organization's internal and external environments, questioning assumptions about how the world works and deciding how the firm should operate. We refer to this activity as “forecasting the future” and provide insights from our recent study of 394 senior managers.

We review the history of scenario planning, from military strategies to Royal Dutch/Shell's analysis of the oil crisis in 1974 and the scenario planning process. From our survey of managers, we identify the major perceived benefits and weaknesses of scenario planning, and how managers forecast the future. We identify two dimensions of forecasting – formality and breadth – and review three modes of forecasting – formal, focused and intuitive – and compare to complexity and costs of formal scenario planning. We conclude with key learning points from our survey.

When making strategy through scenario planning and forecasting methods, managers need to: examine the validity of current market assumptions used to guide forecasting efforts; involve key stakeholders in a debate about and assessment of these assumptions; update strategic plans with forecasting process outcomes; and regularly review key hypotheses about market events and their performance impacts.

Senior managers must understand the biases in managerial forecasting behavior and to work with these, to support a mix of forecasting behaviors in an organization, to deliberately allocate forecasting resources to cover environmental sectors, to selectively use managers external to the organization, to utilize a variety of sources, and to align forecasting activities with the organizational strategy process.

The paper presents a succinct summary of existing research, including findings from the authors' recent research, for both researchers and practising managers.

Building on person‐organisation fit and gender self‐schema, this research aims to examine UK university final year students' perception of the importance of organisational attributes and their presence in three major graduate employers. This study also seeks to explore which organisational attributes attract Generation Y men and women to apply to a management trainee position.

In phase one, 32 repertory grid interviews identify 84 common constructs in undergraduates' organisational choice. A short list of 20 organisational attributes was carried forward to the phase two survey of 862 undergraduates in their final year at 22 UK universities. The respondents rate the attributes in terms of importance and then evaluate three employers in terms of perceived presence of these attributes. The students also provide the likelihood that they would apply. T‐tests, correlation and multiple regression are used to test hypotheses.

Among university students, the five most important organisational attributes are: “invest heavily in the training and development of their employees” “care about their employees as individuals” “clear opportunities for long‐term career progression” “variety in daily work” and “dynamic, forward‐looking approach to their business”. Sex differences exist in both the importance of organisational attributes and the perceived extent of their presence in three organisations. In describing an ideal employer, women rate eight attributes as more important than do their male counterparts: “really care about their employees as individuals” “variety in your daily work” “friendly, informal culture” “employ people with whom you feel you will have things in common” “use your degree skills” “relatively stress‐free working environment” “internationally diverse mix of colleagues” “require you to work standard working hours only”. Compared to women, men rate just one attribute as more important: “a very high starting salary”. The perception of presence of these important attributes is significantly linked to likelihood to apply.

Recruiting firms can better understand how Generation Y men and women graduates perceive the importance of organisational attributes and their presence in firms.

The paper represents a seminal study relating organisational attributes to likely applicant behaviour across a large number of UK university undergraduates.