Gender inequality in the division of family work is vastly corroborated and work–family balance is an important topic in the female entrepreneurship field of research. Even if work–family balance should be a necessity indiscriminately perceived by all women and men who have a paid job, it is a particularly pertinent issue for women, called to find equilibrium between work and family. This study analyses the situation of men and women entrepreneurs in order to investigate how the economic crisis affected the work–family balance. A survey was conducted on a sample of 218 men and women sole-proprietors. Findings show that the work–family balance of women entrepreneurs does not seem to have been particularly affected by the crisis. However, some differences between men and women remain. Concerning balance, as expected, only women stated that they personally take care of the house and family. Different perceptions of the crisis between men and women also emerged, as a consequence of gender stereotypes. Women entrepreneurs have greater difficulty in having an internal psychological balance of the double role than men, who are more involved in the implementation of external balance and focus on corporate and social provisions.

PurposeThe paper analyses the influence of the decision-makers' overconfidence on the intuitive practices' adoption, as well as on the international performance during international strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, the study investigates the possible mediating effect of intuition on the relationship between overconfidence and international performance.Design/methodology/approachA semi-structured questionnaire based on a sample of 160 SMEs and a regression analysis have been employed.FindingsResults show a negative relationship between intuition and international performance and a positive one between overconfidence and international performance. Furthermore, a negative relation between overconfidence and intuition has been identified. Findings also highlight the mediating role of intuition in the relationship between overconfidence and international performance.Practical implicationsThe paper provides valuable implications related to the analysis of overconfidence as a critical decision-maker's character and intuition as a feature of the decision-making methodology. Moreover, the study offers indications for SMEs facing complex strategic decisions.Originality/valueThe paper adopts an original perspective by combining the SDMP analysis with that of international strategy within the SMEs context. Additionally, the study enriches the existing literature by (1) investigating overconfidence in the decision-making; (2) enhancing the examination of overconfidence and intuitive practices in the international SDMP; (3) deepening the research field focused on the identification of the intuitive processes' predictors that is still in its infancy.

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The paper compares psychoanalysis and non-cooperative Game Theory and asks if the concepts used in Game Theory are compatible with and add to the knowledge about human thinking and human actions provided by psychoanalysis. We propose a common and novel ground in which this interdisciplinary comparison can be articulated: both Game Theory and the unconscious posit a Law. Our main result is that the law of satisfaction describing the Freudian unconscious and the law of strategic interaction implied by Game Theory are not simply incompatible but in frontal opposition to each other; they create a crossroad at which the imputable individual has the possibility to choose either one law or the other.