To read this content please select one of the options below:

Trust-building processes in women’s entrepreneurship

Maria Bogren (Department of Business, Economics and Law, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden)
Yvonne von Friedrichs (Department of Business, Economics and Law, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden)

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy

ISSN: 1750-6204

Article publication date: 14 March 2016

600

Abstract

Purpose

Social capital is perceived as an important driver for entrepreneurship. To support development of social capital in women’s entrepreneurship, the Swedish government supports development projects with the aim of stimulating business growth. Recent studies show that trust is an essential ingredient when designing such projects. The purpose of this paper is to further develop a theoretical model of trust-building processes by developing and trying out questions regarding trust elements and to study how projects have addressed these various trust-building elements.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory approach was used, and a survey was conducted. A questionnaire about trust was sent to the project leaders of all 165 development projects in a Swedish government-funded programme with a response rate of 73 per cent. The data were analysed in SPSS.

Findings

The results show that contextual and relational aspects should be taken into account in the trust model, and that some of the questions regarding trust elements need to be elaborated more.

Originality/value

This paper further develops the construction of a proposed theoretical model of trust-building processes.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Figure 1 from the article “Entrepreneurship Education for Owner-Managers: The Process of Trust Building for an Effective Learning Community”, by Jing Zhang and Eleanor Hamilton, published in the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Vol 23:2, pp. 249-270 (2010) has been reprinted as Figure 1 in this article, by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com. The authors would like to thank the publisher and the authors for their inspiration to further develop the model. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for this special issue for their constructive comments that have helped improve the article.

Citation

Bogren, M. and von Friedrichs, Y. (2016), "Trust-building processes in women’s entrepreneurship", Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 70-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEC-08-2015-0043

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles