Factors affecting the success of women’s entrepreneurship: a review of literature

Abstract

Purpose-Women entrepreneurship has grown significantly all over the world, and it is widely established that entrepreneurship is important for economic growth and wealth. Despite those facts, women's participation in entrepreneurship is lower than men's in almost all societies. Those phenomena get the attention of scholars from diverse disciplines, all of them interested in the behaviour and profile of female entrepreneurs and their business success rates. Several isolated factors were studied, with positive and negative effects on each stage of the entrepreneur process, for women entrepreneurs, so the purpose of this research is identify, classify by their impact and organise those factors in relation to the stages of the entrepreneur process. Design/methodology/approach-The literature on factors affecting female entrepreneurship produced since January 2010 until October 2015 is analysed to define entrepreneurial success, identify factors affecting success at each stage of the entrepreneurial process and propose and organise those factors at individual and environment levels. Findings-Several factors affecting female entrepreneurial success at each stage of the entrepreneurship process were found and organised at the internal (individual), micro, meso and macro environment level. In the literature reviewed, the most considered factors are: at the internal level, human capital, education and experience, with effects on the opportunity identification stage of the entrepreneurial process, and at the micro environment level, access to resources with effects on the opportunity recognition, acquiring resources and entrepreneurial performance stages, both with influence on quantitative and qualitative indicators of success. Originality/value-This paper proposes an integrated classification and an array for all those factors that have an influence on women's entrepreneurship and its success, relating those to the entrepreneurship process.

Nascent Women Entrepreneurs and the Influence of Social Networks on Small Business Outcomes

“…Early research by Granovetter (1973)and more recent work by Kuhn, Galloway and Collins-Williams (2016), Kuhn and Galloway (2015) and Sharafizad and Coetzer (2016) Suggests that social networks are critically important to the entrepreneurial process and are central to business venture success and for women in particular (Cabrera and Mauricio 2017). Social network characteristics include network size, network density, network diversity, the balance of strong and weak ties, and network redundancy (Licht & Siegel 2006).…”

“…In the context of entrepreneurship, social networks provide the channels through which private information flows and facilitate information exchange that is beneficial, even essential, to the entrepreneurial process (Stuart &Sorenson 2005, Sharafizad andCoetzer 2016).Following recent reviews of the literature too, social networks act as aspects of the micro-environment in which nascent entrepreneurs operate and grow (Cabrera and Mauricio 2017). Greve and Salaff (2003) demonstrate that entrepreneurs talk with more people during the planning phase than all other phases of business development.…”

Blind Spots of Women's Entrepreneurship: Case of Adana

“…Çekme faktörleri arasında kadın girişimcinin bağımsızlığı, kendini ifade etme ihtiyaçları, finansal fırsatlar ve kendini ifade etme sayılabilir (Cabrera ve Mauricio, 2017). Bu faktörler kadınları girişimciliğe çekmektedir.…”

Women’s entrepreneurship: discussing legal perspectives in light of individual and institutional drivers

“…This feature can deter some women from obtaining a loan or credit or from considering business growth (Carter, Shaw, Lam, & Wilson, 2007). The access to money sustains an entrepreneurial intention (Cabrera & Mauricio, 2017).…”

“…Access to money sustains the entrepreneurial intention (Cabrera & Mauricio, 2017). Legislations designed to support and fund certain women's entrepreneurship can exclude other women from being funded (Ozurumba, 2013).…”