Stéphanie Chasserio

When entrepreneurial identity meets multiple social identities

Purpose – This paper aims at exploring the dynamics of multiple identities of women entrepreneurs (WE). The paper analyse how WE do identity work in relation to specific identity regulations in the particular French cultural context. The objective is to understand how the entrepreneurial identity process of women is built through both confrontation and synergy with other social identities. Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for a qualitative and abductive methodological design. In total, 41 French WE from diverse business activities were interviewed. The empirical material was subject to thematic analysis. Findings – The findings reveal the ability of these WE to deal with numerous and various identities. Their daily strategies to accommodate different roles depict how their entrepreneurial activity is intertwined with their personal and social life. The paper are far away from the picture of a monolithic entrepreneur without social dimensions. Given that, the findings broaden the too simplisti...

Strategic Human Resources management is irrelevant when it comes to highly skilled professionals in the new economy

The goal of this paper is to explain the commitment behaviour of highly skilled professionals in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies that do not have a formal and explicit managerial commitment strategy and to emphasize the need to take the organizational context into consideration when developing a theory that seeks to account for differences in employees organizational commitment. Our contribution is to reappraise the relevance of the traditional organizational commitment definition in this organizational context, a new organizational form. We demonstrate that in the companies which are different from the traditional bureaucratic organizational forms and which employ highly qualified professionals, the employment relationship is based on a psychological contract that is not accounted for in the strategic HRM theory. Indeed, the basic principles of strategic HRM dictate that an organizations most valuable asset is its employees; it is therefore incumbent on management to do whatever is necessary to retain its workforce, readily described as a key resource, and to use human resources management (HRM) practices as tools to elicit commitment. In a study of highly skilled workers in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies belonging to the so-called ‘new economy’, we observed that although the competitive advantage enjoyed by these companies depends to a large degree on the creativity and innovativeness of their workforce, these companies barely have any official HRM policies, and the HR department plays a very unobtrusive role. Yet, no one could say that the employees in these firms are not committed – on the contrary! This situation has several implications in terms of career for these professionals, in terms of HR practices for the employers. Nevertheless, until now, existing theoretical models of organizational commitment have shown little interest in highly skilled workers in general and even less in new economy professionals.

French Women Entrepreneurs’ Leadership Practices and Well-Being in a High-Growth Context

Entrepreneurial track is a source of innovation for women’s leadership (Bel 2009). What about the women who have spent many years as the head of growth companies that they created or acquired? In order to measure up to what point these women defy the canon, we wanted to examine the managerial and strategic postures that they assume. We conducted interviews in 2012 with six women leaders of growth companies. We observed that these women’s leadership reveals not only strategically transgressive attitudes, but also a radical rupture with a system of thought that tends to define leadership as an institutionalizing dynamic. This challenging posture does not intend to create a new type of leadership, but it highlights a trend towards a more authentic, shared and distributed leadership. Moreover, this type of leadership contributes to the well-being of these women entrepreneurs and their teams at work.