Purpose -This paper studies female entrepreneurship in two post-Soviet countries -Russia and Ukraine. Employing institutional theory, the research aims to investigate the entrepreneurial environment, particularly government support programmes and the availability of financial resources, with a focus on women entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach -This research is a qualitative investigation that comprises 60 interviews with Russian and Ukrainian entrepreneurs, bank officers and representatives of government organisations supporting the development of entrepreneurship. Findings -The investigation provides evidence that these countries have overcome the transition from a command to a market economy and local people are gradually adjusting to the new environment. Concentrating on macro/meso and money elements from the 5M model suggested by Brush et al., the authors suggest an additional construct -"motherland" -to embed a context in a new model. Research limitations/implications -Only two factors of Brush et al.'s 5M model were considered -i.e. macro/meso environment and money (availability of financial resources). Discussion of management, marketing and motherhood is beyond the scope of the present paper. Practical implications -The study reveals a broad range of managerial information and empirical data on the development of female entrepreneurship in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. The findings are helpful for policymakers engaged with these two countries. Originality/value -The study is an attempt to capture the context dependency of research on female entrepreneurs, and suggests a new dimension for inclusion in Brush et al.'s 5M model -"motherland".
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.
Innovation is often presented as a survival issue and this provides a powerful metaphor to focus attention on the need to manage it effectively. But in the humanitarian context it takes on a very literal meaning. Crises, whether natural or man-made, require rapid problem solving if agencies and aid workers are to avoid the huge negative impacts of such disasters. That makes consideration of how innovation takes place in this sector an urgent challenge. How can the humanitarian sector best organise to enable innovation and what are the roles for key actors — donors, agencies, and most importantly ‘users’? Our paper summarises the nature of the challenge and reviews experience so far in humanitarian innovation (HI). There is a second issue which we also explore. Arguably crisis conditions provide a “laboratory” for exploring alternative approaches and generating novel innovation trajectories which might diffuse more widely — the concept of “reverse innovation.” Are there lessons which could be learned for mainstream innovation management? And if so, what are the mechanisms which might enable such learning and experience exchange to take place?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.