Abstract:
All entrepreneurship takes place in specific contexts. Successful entrepreneurs are
associated with financial wealth and economic value. Research into the success of
women entrepreneurs has centred around explaining why male entrepreneurs
outperform their female counterparts. This fails to recognise the contextually
embedded nature of women’s entrepreneurship and the contextual embedded
assumptions about gender. This study aims to establish how women entrepreneurs
perceive success and value creation for themselves and how these perceptions
shape their decisions to scale their businesses.
A qualitative, exploratory research method was adopted to gain new insights into
how women entrepreneurs perceive success. Thirteen semi-structure, in-depth
interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs who had owned their own
businesses for more than four years. Interviews were analysed using thematic
content analysis.
The key findings supported the literature that women entrepreneurship is
contextually embedded. It found that women view personal fulfilment in their work as
their key measure for success. It also found that the external context intersects with
the individual entrepreneur and her internal context. These contextual dimensions
influenced women with respect to their decisions to scale or not to scale their
businesses. An additional dimension of context, being the internal context of ‘Self’,
emerged as being critical to understanding the contextually embedded nature of
women’s entrepreneurship. A conceptual framework was developed to show the
intersectionality between the external and individual context of the entrepreneur.
Findings build on the extant literature on the contextual embeddedness of women
entrepreneurs
