In this study, we examine whether female entrepreneurs are held to a different standard than male entrepreneurs in obtaining financing from banks. To test this idea, we draw from the literature on signaling theory to propose that characteristics specific to the firm and the entrepreneur act as a means to communicate (i.e., signal) the inherent quality of the venture and thus impact the amount of capital the entrepreneur is able to obtain. We then explore the moderating role of gender based on gender role congruity theory to argue that capital providers reward the business characteristics of male and female entrepreneurs differently to the disadvantage of women.

We consider the role that gender-stereotyped behaviors play in investors’ evaluations of men- and women-owned ventures. Contrary to research suggesting that investors exhibit bias against women, we find that being a woman entrepreneur does not diminish interest by investors. Rather, our findings reveal that investors are biased against the display of feminine-stereotyped behaviors by entrepreneurs, men and women alike. Our study finds that investor decisions are driven in part by observations of gender-stereotyped behaviors and the implicit associations with the entrepreneur’s business competency, rather than the entrepreneur’s sex.

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This article theorizes how CEOs ‘do gender’ in management succession and how this impacts their legitimacy as successor CEOs. Drawing on the analysis of seven incumbent-successor dyads in a family business setting, we document the multiple masculine (entrepreneurial, authoritarian and paternalistic) and feminine (relational, individualized and maternal) gender identities that both men and women CEO successors enact. We contribute to the CEO succession literature by revealing the different ways that CEOs can ‘do masculinity’ in their pursuit of legitimacy and also expose how CEO successors ‘do femininity’. In particular, we show how men and women CEOs enact relational femininity to garner stakeholders’ support as well as build alliances to temper change initiatives. We contribute to the gender and organization literature by providing an understanding of how certain ways of doing gender in organizations facilitate or hinder the legitimacy of CEO successors.

Entrepreneurial firms such as professional service firms (PSFs) face constant challenges to acquire resources, one of the greatest of which is the challenge to win client engagements. Although rhetoric is at the center of the challenge to win client engagements, scholars have not identified what rhetorical strategies are the most persuasive to potential clients. By exploring one type of PSF, architecture firms, we argue that PSFs can compete for and legitimate themselves with clients by deploying institutional logics that provide symbolic frameworks and meaning. Since multiple institutional logics exist in society, a critical question for a PSF is which logic is most persuasive to clients. We analyze architecture firms' written pitches to predict which rhetoric strategies win the valuable resource of a client engagement for a multiclient state project. Our results identify that rhetoric deploying a ''profession'' logic was most effective