To scale or not to scale : contextualising women entrepreneurs perceptions of value and success

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