Suchergebnisse

Purpose
Business accelerators facilitate new venture creation, and most research on the subject focuses on the performance of accelerated ventures. This paper aims to understand what entrepreneurs value in business accelerators and how this differs for women- and men-led ventures. The authors suggest that venture growth stage may play a mediating role in these relationships.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors use the resource-based view perspective to develop models of women- and men-led ventures' valuation for business accelerator services. They also draw upon a database of 2,000 US entrepreneurs.


Findings
The authors found that, compared to men, women entrepreneurs place greater value on knowledge transfer benefits (i.e. business skills education) but lower value on networking benefits offered by accelerators. However, there are no significant differences in the valuations for these services between genders for high-growth ventures. Additionally, compared to men, women leading high-growth ventures place greater value on access to potential investors or funders.


Practical implications
This research serves as a practical guide for accelerator administrators and marketers who seek to adjust their business support offerings based on the value placed for the services by different populations of entrepreneurs.


Originality/value
The authors provide a business accelerator user's perspective and highlight differences in valuation of accelerator services by women- and men-led ventures at different stages of venture growth.

AbstractThe effect of minimum wages on employment is one of the most widely studied and most controversial topics in labor economics and public policy but its impact on early startups is poorly understood and under-researched. In this manuscript, we investigate whether minimum wage rates correlate with the probability that a nascent startup hires employees and achieves profitability, a topic that has never been addressed before. We found negative but not significant correlation between the minimum wage rates and a nascent venture's probability of hiring employees. However, female entrepreneurs were significantly less likely than male entrepreneurs to hire when faced with higher minimum wage rates. For ventures with employees, higher minimum wage rates were correlated with lower probability of achieving profitability vs. quitting the startup process.

AbstractDespite growth in the number of women pursuing business and entrepreneurship careers, dominance of masculine traits associated with these occupations persists. If business schools use language that subconsciously reinforces gendered stereotypes, students might perpetuate sexist expectations. Using a natural language text processing tool to analyze the written responses of 247 undergraduate students in a US‐based university, we found that student perceptions of entrepreneurs are associated with more masculine characteristics compared to student perceptions of business people. To some degree, female students were more likely to make these associations than male students. Our findings suggest that business schools must do their part to break the cycles that elevate masculine characteristics of entrepreneurship. The negative effects of this manifest in the persistent gender pay gap, rising but still minority numbers of women entrepreneurs, continued practices of rewarding masculine traits in organizations, and ongoing underrepresentation of women students in schools of business.