Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship

Despite the increasing interest in researching female entrepreneurship, little is known about gender differences in pre-venture process and the variables that mediate the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual framework for understanding gender differences in entrepreneurial intentions. Using this framework, we explore gender effects on entrepreneurial intentions and identify factors that may account for the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions in a sample of Bulgarian university students. Our results show that women have lower entrepreneurial intentions than men. The gender effect on entrepreneurial intentions is fully mediated by perceived behavioral control and partially mediated by perceived subjective norms and attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Policy measures designed to encourage female start-ups should be directed at attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and the link between entrepreneurial intentions and behavior among women.

This study investigates the effects of the following factors on established business owners' success. First, the human capital of the entrepreneur is examined (education, experience, locus of internal control, need for achievement and resilience). Second, the characteristics of the firm with reference to the initial financial resources, number of partners, frequency and breadth of external communication are taken into consideration, and finally, factors relevant to the conception and development of the firm are studied. To achieve our objective, we have used a structural equation modeling technique (Partial Least Squares -PLS-) to estimate a path model with latent variables. Although all the latent variables have a positive impact on established business owners' success, our findings show clearly that the size of the company is an important moderating factor when explaining established business owners' success. The variables in which this effect is most evident are that of education and resilience. If we do not take the size of the company into consideration, the variables that help explain the success of established business owners are, in order of decreasing importance, experience, a favorable perception of the business environment and the resilience of the entrepreneur.

This study explores African-American (AA) entrepreneurship through the lens of social capital. Using a foundation of social capital theory, this study attempts to validate the hypothesis that social capital is a determinant of whether AA entrepreneurs choose to function in the formal or informal economies. One hundred and sixteen African American entrepreneurs participated in the study, which utilized respondent driven sampling, a technique for studying hidden populations. Although the results for the study failed to confirm the hypothesis, they do offer some insight into the relationship between the informal and formal economies and minority entrepreneurship.

Since the 1990s, interest in the role of small and microenterprises (SMMEs) in economic development has garnered considerable attention throughout academic and practioner circles. Widely known for their potential to help stimulate economic growth and as a potential avenue for poverty alleviation, the purpose and promise of small businesses have been widely publicized. However, to date, little research exists that adequately documents the specific capital needs of very small businesses (those with less than 20 employees) and microenterprises (those with less than 5 employees) and their owners at specific points in a business's development and growth. Using data from the 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, the 2002 Survey of Business Owners and the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances, we analyze the different types of firms in the United States, the amount of capital used by firms of different size and the sources of capital used by firms of different sizes to assess how capital needs and sources differ for those businesses with less than 20 employees. Paying particular attention to businesses owned by women and minorities, we argue that the path of SMMEs differs substantially from the typical path of larger small businesses. In addition, we highlight the implications of our findings and provide our policy recommendations to address them.

This article addresses three questions: (1) How has entrepreneurial outcome been measured? (2) How can these measurements be categorized? (3) What measures are most appropriate and when? It provides an inventory of the measures that have been used, and presents two frameworks through which to understand how they can be organized. The first framework organizes the various measures along the dimensions of time and performance. The second borrows the lifecycle approach to defining different outcomes as transition points between the stages in the lifecycle. Each framework is discussed in terms of its relevance to entrepreneurship researchers and policy makers.

Until now, few studies have evaluated whether there are geographical variations in the extent and character of off-the-books entrepreneurship. The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether and how the prevalence and nature of off-the-books entrepreneurship varies across deprived and affluent neighborhoods in an advanced economy. To do this, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 511 households in English affluent and deprived urban neighborhoods, and are reported here. The finding in both communities surveyed is that wholly legitimate enterprises represent just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface in all areas is a large hidden enterprise culture composed of both registered businesses trading off-the-books as well as unregistered wholly off-the-books enterprises. However, the preponderance of both early-stage entrepreneurs as well as the established self-employed to trade off-the-books is greater in deprived than affluent urban communities, as is the tendency for entrepreneurs to operate business on a wholly off-the-books basis, intimating that deprived urban communities are perhaps relatively more enterprising and entrepreneurial than is currently recognized. The paper thus concludes by contending that across all localities, but especially in deprived urban neighborhoods, legitimizing the hidden enterprise culture could be an important but so far untapped means of promoting enterprise and economic development.