Eileen Fischer

A theoretical overview and extension of research on sex, gender, and entrepreneurship

Abstract With the rising number of women-owned businesses has come a considerable amount of research, and even more speculation, on differences between male and female entrepreneurs and their businesses. To date, these findings and speculations have been largely atheoretical, and little progress has been made in understanding whether such differences are pervasive, let alone why they might exist. Thus public policy-makers have had little guidance on such difficult issues as whether or not unique training and support programs should be designed for women versus men. Moreover, lenders who finance new and growing firms have little to go on but their own “gut instinct” in assessing whether womens and mens businesses are likely to run in similar ways, or whether they might be run in different but equally effective ways. The lack of integrative frameworks for understanding the nature and implications of issues related to sex, gender, and entrepreneurship has been a major obstacle. Two perspectives that help to organize and interpret past research, and highlight avenues for future research, are liberal feminism and social feminism. Liberal feminist theory suggests that women are disadvantaged relative to men due to overt discrimination and/or to systemic factors that deprive them of vital resources like business education and experience. Previous studies that have investigated whether or not women are discriminated against by lenders and consultants, and whether or not women actually do have less relevant education and experience, are consistent with a liberal feminist perspective. Those empirical studies that have been conducted provide modest evidence that overt discrimination, or any systematic lack of access to resources that women may experience, impedes their ability to succeed in business. Social feminist theory suggests that, due to differences in early and ongoing socialization, women and men do differ inherently. However, it also suggests that this does not mean women are inferior to men, as women and men may develop different but equally effective traits. Previous entrepreneurship studies that have compared men and women on socialized traits and values are consistent with a social feminist perspective. These studies have documented few consistent gender differences, and have suggested that those differences that do exist may have little impact on business performance. While this interpretation of past findings is relevant to the question of if and how female and male entrepreneurs differ, there are still large gaps in our knowledge. In particular, only one study (Kalleberg and Leicht 1991) has systematically explored whether or not potential differences related to discrimination or socialization affect business performance; the study used limited measures of business performance, and assessed only a restricted range of male I female differences. This article reports on a study that explored other potential differences related to discrimination and to socialization (which are hypothesized based on liberal and social feminism) and looked at their relationship to a more comprehensive set of business performance measures. The study indicates that for a large, randomly selected sample of entrepreneurs in the manufacturing, retail, and service sectors, there were few differences in the education obtained by males and females, or in their business motivations. Women entrepreneurs were, however, found to have less experience in managing employees, in working in similar firms, or in helping to start-up new businesses. Womens firms also were found to be smaller than mens, to have lower growth in income over two years, and to have lower sales per employee. Regressions undertaken to examine predictors of a range of business performance indicators suggest that womens lesser experience in working in similar firms and in helping to start-up businesses may help to explain the smaller size, slower income growth, and lesser sales per employee of their firms. For policy-makers, this article suggests that systemic factors that afford women less access to experience must be addressed. Support for classroom training or related advisory activities may not be warranted; there is little evidence that women lack access to relevant classroom education. However, programs that help increase womens access to hands-on experience in starting firms or in working in the industry in which they hope to set up business does seem advisable. In-class education or counseling would not seem to compensate for lack of real-world experience, which suggests that any available funds should be directed more toward initiatives centered on apprenticeship programs than toward those centered on classroom teaching. Implications for lenders and investors are less clear cut, but suggest that whatever innate differences may exist between men and women are irrelevant to entrepreneurship. While womens businesses do not perform as well as mens on measures of size, they show fewer differences on other, arguably more critical business effectiveness measures-growth and productivity—and no differences on returns. Discrimination against women-owned businesses based on these findings would clearly be both unethical and unwarranted. The fact that women appear to obtain similar growth, productivity, and returns, in fact, suggests that they may be compensating for experience deficits in ways that current research does not illuminate. While more systematic inquiry is required to assist in understanding why mens and womens firms may differ in some predictable ways, this study would suggest that lenders and investors wishing to assist small businesses should focus on evaluating the amount and quality of the business and non-business experience of entrepreneurs, and consider sex an irrelevant variable. For entrepreneurs, this research reinforces the notion that acquiring relevant industry and entrepreneurial experience is of considerable importance if they seek to establish large firms and/or to achieve substantial firm productivity and returns. In particular, helping in the start-up of firms and spending extended periods of time in the industry of choice appear to yield subsequent rewards in the performance of any individuals firm. Future research is needed to investigate whether or not other types of business experience or non-business experience might bring additional benefits in terms of positive impact on future business performance, but the indication of the current work is that ones sex per se is neither a liability nor an asset.

Hermeneutics and Consumer Research

This article reviews the nature of hermeneutic philosophy and the assumptions and features of a textual interpretation consistent with this perspective. The relationship of hermeneutic philosophy to the interpretive and critical theory traditions in consumer research is also discussed. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Feminist Thought: Implications for Consumer Research

This article applies three distinct feminist perspectives to critique scientific objectivity, and the problematic, theories, methods of data collection, and methods of data analysis in consumer research. Each feminist perspective helps heighten sensitivity to gender biases in current research and offers insights on new directions for consumer scholarship. Copyright 1993 by the University of Chicago.

Support for Rapid-Growth Firms: A Comparison of the Views of Founders, Government Policymakers, and Private Sector Resource Providers

The paper contrasts the perspectives of firm owners, government policy advisers, and external resource providers on how rapid‐growth firms should be supported. Qualitative data were analyzed to identify similarities and differences in groups’ perspectives. The research indicates that each group sees its roles as critical. Policymakers and external resources providers have incentives to interact with rapid‐growth firms. Rapid‐growth firms have incentives to obtain advice from government sources and external resource providers but prefer to obtain advice from their peers. These findings suggest a network‐based approach to the support of rapid growth that is consistent with a new Ontario‐based program, the Innovators Alliance.

Frustrated Fatshionistas: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Consumer Quests for Greater Choice in Mainstream Markets

Why and how do marginalized consumers mobilize to seek greater inclusion in and more choice from mainstream markets? We develop answers to these questions drawing on institutional theory and a qualitative investigation of Fatshionistas, plus-sized consumers who want more options from mainstream fashion marketers. Three triggers for mobilization are posited: development of a collective identity, identification of inspiring institutional entrepreneurs, and access to mobilizing institutional logics from adjacent fields. Several change strategies that reinforce institutional logics while unsettling specific institutionalized practices are identified. Our discussion highlights diverse market change dynamics that are likely when consumers are more versus less legitimate in the eyes of mainstream marketers and in instances where the changes consumers seek are more versus less consistent with prevailing institutions and logics.

An Examination of the Effects of Activating Persuasion Knowledge on Consumer Response to Brands Engaging in Covert Marketing

Both marketers who use covert marketing tactics and those who seek to help consumers deal with them assume that people will be less amenable to covert marketing appeals if they are alerted to such appeals because their theories and beliefs about persuasion tactics—that is, their persuasion knowledge—will be activated. However, there has been little direct examination of the extent to which activating persuasion knowledge actually affects consumer responses to brands that engage in covert marketing. Building on prior research on covert marketing and marketplace persuasion knowledge, the authors investigate the effects of activating persuasion knowledge and explore potential moderating factors. The findings from three experimental studies indicate that activation can negatively affect consumer evaluations of embedded brands; however, negative effects are qualified by perceived appropriateness of covert marketing tactics and by brand familiarity. Further evidence indicates a condition under which activation can actually have a positive effect on consumer evaluations.

The Good, the Bad, and the Unfamiliar: The Challenges of Reputation Formation Facing New Firms

How do new firms first develop reputations among their stakeholders? Past studies offer insights on positive signals that a new firm can send, but say little about how stakeholder group members process such signals and come to share beliefs that a new firm possesses a desirable set of attributes. This process is particularly important to understand given that both negative and positive signals are often received about new firms. Our article draws on social cognition theories to develop insights regarding the process by which stakeholder groups develop reputational beliefs about new firms and to identify factors that facilitate or impede the development of reputations.

Foreign Sales and Small Firm Growth: The Moderating Role of the Management Team

The premise of this article is that the management team of a small firm plays a key role in internationalization outcomes. Specifically, it is hypothesized that a greater degree of behavioral integration within a small firms management team enables it to manage the complexity of foreign sales growth more effectively, leading to greater overall firm growth. Findings, based on data collected from two different industries (software products, food processing), support the hypothesis and indicate that the behavioral integration of the management team moderates the relationship between foreign sales growth and overall firm growth.

The Company You Keep: How Young Firms in Different Competitive Contexts Signal Reputation through Their Customers

This article explores how young firms, across different competitive contexts, signal reputation through their customers. Four distinct competitive contexts were differentiated based on whether the complexity of the customers purchase process was high or low and whether the product/service was customized or standardized. CEOs of young firms operating in each of the four contexts were interviewed to discern patterns, both within and across contexts, in the reputational signals conferred by customers. Analysis of the interview data yields suggestions for how current theory on the exchange partners of young firms can be refined and extended, as well as propositions related to customer–derived reputation in different competitive contexts.

The Role of Socially Constructed Temporal Perspectives in the Emergence of Rapid-Growth Firms

This study examined how owners and top management team members in firms that are growing very rapidly socially construct time so as to facilitate rapid growth. A blend of interview and text-based qualitative methods was used to study some firms that have achieved rapid growth and some that have yet to do so. Analysis led to the identification of several thematic patterns regarding the enactment of time. The first was simultaneity: informants appeared to sustain a simultaneous focus on the events actually occurring in the present and the outcomes desired in the future, so that strategies to deal with the present are emergent but the goals and time-frames for obtaining them remain relatively fixed. The second was selectivity: rather than passively accepting the time-frames of key customers or employees, these firms sought out customers and staff who shared a pace and movability of enacted time in congruence with the firms’ goals. The third theme was shaping: top managers in rapid-growth firms adopted or developed systems and procedures that allow them to shape the enactment of time throughout their organizations. The paper concludes with some propositions about the nature of enacted time in firms that are more versus less successful in growing rapidly.