Haya Al-Dajani

Impact of women’s home-based enterprise on family dynamics: Evidence from Jordan

Within developing and disadvantaged economies, women’s self-employment has been identified as a tool to assist in alleviating poverty and empowering individual women. To explore these arguments, this article considers the experiences of Palestinian women who operate home-based enterprises within conservative patriarchal families. Empirically, we drew upon a study of 43 home-based female embroiderers, all members of the ‘1967 displaced Palestinian community’ now living in Amman, Jordan. From the evidence, it emerges that although these women make a critical contribution to family incomes, their entrepreneurial activities are constructed around the preservation of the traditional family form such that while some degree of empowerment is attained, challenges to embedded patriarchy are limited.

Empowerment and entrepreneurship: a theoretical framework

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically informed conceptual framework to analyse the gendered relationship between empowerment and entrepreneurship contextualised within the lives of displaced Palestinian migrant women operating home-based enterprises in Amman, Jordan. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal qualitative study was undertaken during which semi-structured in-depth interviews were regularly conducted with 43 women producing high-quality traditional embroidered goods within home-based enterprises. The empirical material was utilised to inform and illustrate the creation of an empowerment framework. Findings – Entrepreneurship is popularly presented as an individually focused economic undertaking. However, this paper demonstrates it is also a socio-politically situated activity; within this particular context, marginalised subordinated women were empowered through their home-based enterprises. Originality/value – This paper offers a gender informed conceptual frame...

Entrepreneurship Among the Displaced and Dispossessed: Exploring the Limits of Emancipatory Entrepreneuring

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurship, emancipation and gender within the international development arena. Through a longitudinal analysis of a micro‐enterprise development project in which intermediary organizations contract traditional handicrafts from female home‐based producers, we focus on the impact of contracting policies on the ability of the desperately poor to improve their disadvantaged position. Our critical analysis reveals how intermediaries who impose exclusive contracting conditions, supposedly to protect the womens interests, actually constrain the emancipatory potential of the womens entrepreneurial activities. However, such contractual limitations generate collaborative networks enabling the women to challenge these constraints in an effort to assert control over their activities. Accordingly, this paper contributes to contemporary debates concerning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship within the context of development. We advance this analysis through a gendered evaluation of the role of intermediary organizations on entrepreneurial emancipation and related empowerment.

Systems thinking and absorptive capacity in high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises from South Korea

This article develops and tests absorptive capacity’s relationship with one of its important forerunners – systems thinking – which, although postulated as an important element, has received little empirical attention in the absorptive capacity literature. Our contribution lies in the introduction of unique pathways through which systems thinking influences absorptive capacity and how it affects various interrelated dimensions of high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises’ performance, by examining evidence from South Korea’s semiconductor industry.

Gender and family business: new theoretical directions

Purpose – This editorial aims to investigate the interface between gendered processes and family business by exploring the extent to which gendered processes are reinforced (or not) in family business operations and dynamics. This approach will complement the agency and resource-based view theoretical bases that dominate family business research (Chrisman et al., 2009) and further contribute to extending gender theories. Design/methodology/approach – Acknowledging that gender is socially constructed, this editorial discusses the interface between gendered processes and family business within entrepreneurship research. Findings – Despite a growing interest in gender and family business, there is limited literature that explores gender theory within family business research. A gender theory approach embracing family business research contributes to a needed theoretical deconstruction of existing perspectives on the operations, sustainability and succession of family businesses in the twenty-first century. O...

Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubation Environments: A Framework of Key Success Factors.

The benchmarking framework developed in this study is specifically designed for higher education institutions to consider when developing environments to encourage entrepreneurship among their students, graduates and staff. The objective of the study was to identify key success factors of Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubator Environments (GEIEs) that nurture, encourage and promote entrepreneurship in higher education. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in five leading UK entrepreneurial universities were used to collect data on GEIEs. The framework is a non-prescriptive tool which can be used by universities as a practical mechanism for plotting and monitoring progress towards an enabling environment for entrepreneurial graduates.

Women empowering women : female entrepreneurs and home-based producers in Jordan

Womens entrepreneurship research and the understanding of factors influencing the growth of women-owned business have advanced significantly over the last decade. Yet, challenges remain. Women Entrepreneurs and the Global Environment for Growth provides wide-ranging insights on the challenges that women entrepreneurs face growing their businesses and how these may be addressed. This volume is rooted in research and considers growth challenges, both contextually and firm specific, provoking current thought and enriching the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship. Part I highlights how contextual factors, and especially social and familial settings of entrepreneurs, have a differential impact on men and women. Part II examines strategies, constraints and enablers of growth and performance. The authors aptly demonstrate that a well-focused gender lens is necessary to better explain the phenomenon of womens entrepreneurship. Extending previous studies about womens entrepreneurship, this volume is unique in its application of research from the Diana Project, a path-breaking initiative dating from 1999 to study female entrepreneurial success. Contributions from an international cast of authors make this a comprehensive and broadly appealing reference work. Lending a fresh perspective to the field, this book will serve not only as a learning tool and teaching implement but will cultivate further progress in womens entrepreneurship. As such, it is ideally suited for students and scholars of entrepreneurship and womens studies, policy-makers, economic development analysts and gender researchers.

Women’s Resourcefulness in the Informal Economy: Evidence from Jordan

In this chapter we explore the resourceful entrepreneurial activities of refugee and displaced women and thus contribute to enriching contemporary research about women and the resources they use to function in the work environment over their work lifespan. We also respond to calls for enhancing current understandings of entrepreneurship within the informal economy. Through a series of exploratory in-depth interviews undertaken in January 2013 with desperately poor, refugee and displaced women operating in Jordan’s informal economy, we uncover expansive resourcefulness in their entrepreneurial activities that helps them overcome the inadequacies and flawed strategies of international aid agencies that create turbulent competition among the ethnically diverse groups of refugee and displaced women. However, given that the women’s socio-political positioning remains unaltered, we question whether entrepreneurial action is a sustainable, long-term strategy for individual change.

Unilateral microfinance? The commercial roots of entrepreneurial diversity

Formal credit markets in developing countries are less advanced and therefore, obtaining external funding is difficult for entrepreneurs. As such, microfinance can be a viable alternative solution. This study demonstrates the diverse structure of the microfinance sector and the crucial role of commercial microfinance as a growth trigger in Kazakhstan. By drawing on data from six in-depth interviews with key microfinance industry informants and 155 structured interviews with entrepreneurial users of microfinance lending in Kazakhstan, we found that commercial and outreach microfinance organizations (MFOs) have differing capital structures and evaluation criteria and serve different types of entrepreneurs. Although commercial MFOs distance themselves from poor entrepreneurs, their role in supporting entrepreneurship is important as they provide ongoing funding access and, therefore, tackle entrepreneurs’ working capital dilemmas.