Diana International Research Symposium 2008

Citation

Treanor, L. (2009), "Diana International Research Symposium 2008", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 1 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijge.2009.40901bac.001

Diana International Research Symposium 2008

Article Type: Conference report From: International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Volume 1, Issue 2

On 4 November 2008, scholars from over 21 countries including Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Central and Eastern European countries and the USA, gathered in Belfast, Northern Ireland to hold an international symposium on research into gender and entrepreneurship. The conference was hosted by the Centre for Entrepreneurship Research (CER) at Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland and the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship with the shared objective of advancing women’s entrepreneurship and supporting the growth of women owned businesses.

The conference was attended by three of the original five “Dianas” – those being: Professor Candida Brush, Babson College, USA, Professor Patricia Greene, Babson College, USA and Professor Elizabeth Gatewood, WakeForest University, USA. Professor Elizabeth Gatewood told delegates how the Diana project’s inception began with a newspaper article highlighting that women received less than 5 per cent of venture capital investment in the USA. The five friends and colleagues (including Professors Nancy Carter and Myra Hart) were interested in developing a project that would have impact, especially for women entrepreneurs. As a result, the original Diana Project, funded by the Kauffman Foundation, was established in 1999 to raise awareness and expectations of women business owners regarding the growth of their firms. Professor Brush then outlined the evolution of the original project into the DIANA International project, now associated with the biannual DIANA International Research Symposia.

A core belief of Diana has been that rigorous research provides a powerful base for influencing systems as information and knowledge emanating from solid data can have irrefutable effects on changing attitudes, opinions and practices. The contribution of the Diana project was recently recognised when the 5 “Dianas” were awarded the FSF-NUTEK Award (an international award for entrepreneurship and small business research) as a result of the importance of their theoretical contribution to policy makers and practitioners.

The DIANA International Project is committed to advancing knowledge about the status of women’s entrepreneurship around the world. Established in 2003 in partnership with Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research Institute (Sweden) the project involves leading researchers from over 20 different countries who collectively aim to provide a platform from which to develop, conduct and share a global research agenda dedicated to answering questions about women entrepreneurs and growth-oriented businesses.

Professor Patricia Greene then gave her presentation entitled “An international perspective on women’s entrepreneurship research” which examined the development of the field and its expansion into other theoretical domains such as sociology, psychology, organisational theory, etc. as a means of developing understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomena. Professor Greene discussed the main thematic research areas currently prevalent and emerging as future research streams.

In mapping the evolving research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship, Professor Greene began by looking at the Academy of Management’s main themes as revised in 1995 before examining the emergent themes from the Women’s Entrepreneurship Brain Trust project c. 2000 and then highlighting the main thematic areas highlighted by de Bruin et al. (2007) and the areas evident in the submissions for the current DIANA Symposium 2008.

Professor Greene highlighted that research in the area of business creation and management was now beginning to include studies on women in incubation, performance (growth) and outcomes (profitability). The importance of networking to small businesses and in particular to women-owned firms was still evident she said, however the focus seemed to be shifting towards examining the role of social capital in networks and the importance of role models. Whereas, almost ten years ago, women’s entrepreneurship research explored the importance of self-esteem and vision, the research agenda had shifted to explore individual characteristics and behaviours, human capital, growth aspirations, gender, leadership and the work-family interface.

Research exploring the ecological influences on venture creation has moved away from a singular focus on culture to a wider perspective that also incorporated groups (race/ethnicity and spousal partners), religion, environment (geography, industrial sector and institutional context) plus economic systems, social entrepreneurship and barriers to growth. Professor Greene concluded by highlighting that research in the area of entrepreneurship and economic development now embraced entrepreneurial propensity, job creation, gender-specific training programmes and entrepreneurship education in addition to the advocacy and policy focus witnessed at the start of this decade.

Delegates then heard from Dr Amanda Elam, a visiting scholar at Babson College, who discussed, “Using GEM data to understand women’s entrepreneurship and growth.” This interesting and informative presentation was followed by a panel discussion entitled, “Promoting Women’s Entrepreneurship: The Impact of Education and Enterprise Policy on Women’s Entrepreneurship.” The panel comprised NI Minister for Education, Catriona Ruane; Rotha Johnston, Invest NI and Member of the UK Women’s Enterprise Taskforce established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown; Anna Gethings, MD of the Irish high-growth business AG Services and Margaret Andrews Co-ordinator of the Women’s Business Network and self-employed economic development consultant.

The lively debate examined the shortcomings and limitations of policy development and the potential contribution to fostering an entrepreneurial culture that could be made through embedding entrepreneurial education from a young age in the school curriculum. Delegates agreed the importance of institutional structures and supports ranging from adequate childcare facilities, through to tax incentives for small businesses, availability of business start training and mentoring, the ongoing promotion of successful women entrepreneurs as role models, access to networks and information and measures to ensure that gender specific barriers were removed in areas such as access to finance and the gender pay gap. Minister Ruane highlighted the importance of ensuring that equality of opportunity was extended not only by virtue of gender but also by social class.

Participants at the conference noted its importance both politically and academically. The conference, sponsored by Babson College, Wake Forest University, Invest NI, Irish Network of Teachers and Researchers in Entrepreneurship and Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE), provided a platform for over 100 academics, researchers and practitioners to outline their research in key areas within the field of women’s entrepreneurship to their peers and policy makers. The topics ranged from examining the factors that influence women’s entrepreneurship such as empowerment and learning, entrepreneurship education and networks, family influences, entrepreneurial resources and social capital, through to institutional factors prevalent in society such as culture, attitudes and legal requirements. The policies and frameworks established within different cultures and economies were examined with papers discussing the impact of business incubation and exploring the experiences of women in transition economies with Western European and American national experiences and international comparisons. The conference also examined sector specific experiences and of particular relevance in the current economic climate, discussed growth strategies and pathways to business growth for women-owned businesses. The Diana Symposium marked the opening of a week of International entrepreneurship-focussed conferences for delegates in Belfast, with the prestigious ISBE Annual Conference directly following.

Whilst the contribution of the presentations to advancing effective policy development was widely acknowledged by delegates including policy-makers in attendance, the symposium also provided an excellent opportunity for academics to disseminate their research findings to a wider audience with several publication opportunities attached to the conference, maximising the potential impact of the studies undertaken. In the first instance, DIANA International project collaborators Candy Brush, Patricia Greene, Anne de Bruin and Colette Henry are editing the second research text from the DIANA International project. The call for chapters was widely issued and potential collaborators were invited to present their draft chapters at the symposium for discussion and feedback. The book, Women’s Entrepreneurship and Growth Influences: An International Perspective will be published by Edward Elgar in 2010.

The paper “Growth-facilitating versus growth-constraining work-family interface strategies: exploring male-female differences amongst Canadian entrepreneurs” written by Jennifer Jennings, P.D. Jennings and Karen Hughes from the University of Alberta was awarded the DIANA Award for the most outstanding contribution to women’s entrepreneurship research at the symposium. Research exploring the consistently reported performance gap between male- and female-headed firms has typically focused on individual differences in human and social capital, strategic choices with respect to business type, and/or external determinants such as barriers to financing. The authors contend in this study that these prevailing accounts do not provide an adequate explanation for this continuing performance gap and that family embeddedness is a key determinant.

This research provides an important first step in examining the argument that the commonly reported smaller size of female-owned firms may be partially explained by key differences in how female business owners deal with the “family embeddedness” of their entrepreneurial activities vis-à-vis their male counterparts. The study empirically tests part of Jennings and McDougald’s (2007) model, recently published in the Academy of Management Review. More specifically, two hypotheses derived from their model are examined that female business owners will be:The final refereed version of the paper will be one of the chapters in the forthcoming Edward Elgar book.

The Diana Symposium was also linked to a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal on the theme of entrepreneurship and economic development, with draft papers also presented and discussed prior to submission to the special issue for consideration. The special issue which was led by Dr Sarah Cooper and Professor Pauric McGowan is due to be published next year.

Finally, to mark the official launch of the new International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Emerald Publications offered a special prize based on papers presented at the symposium, along with the opportunity (subject to review) of being published in the inaugural volume of the journal. The Emerald Award for the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship – Best Paper Submission was awarded to the paper “Resource-seeking behaviour among small business owners: is gender an issue?” authored by Professor Sara Carter, University of Strathclyde and Dr Christina Díaz, Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Spain. The paper employed a social capital perspective in exploring the interaction between gender and resource-seeking behaviour through business-owner networks. To date, research in this area has focused on how actors connect as opposed to examining the resources that can potentially be accessed as a result of connections. The study found that male contacts provide more “units of support” within the business realm whereas female business owners rely significantly more on family provided supports and obtain fewer “units of support” from their business partners. The study concluded that resource-seeking behaviour of women and men does follow gendered lines. The findings also suggested that women’s networking behaviour may produce inherent disadvantages for them when establishing and building a business.

Further information including abstracts submitted for the 2008 conference and keynote speaker presentations can be accessed at the CER’s web site: www.entrepreneurshipresearch.com. The next DIANA conference, i.e. DIANA International Research Symposium 2010[1], will be hosted by the University of Alberta School of Business at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff Canada on 3-4 August 2010. The next ISBE Conference will be held in Liverpool on 3-6 November 2009 (see www.isbe.org.uk for details).

The DIANA 2010 Conference organisers are Professor Jennifer Jennings (e-mail: jennifer.jennings@ualberta.ca) and Dr Karen Hughes (e-mail: karen.hughes@ualberta.ca) from the University of Alberta School of Business.

Abbreviations: H1.; Less likely than male business owners to enact work-family interface strategies that facilitate business growth.; H2.; More likely than male business owners to enact work-family interface strategies that constrain business growth.

Lorna TreanorDepartment of Business Studies, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, Dundalk, Ireland

About the author

Lorna Treanor worked for several years in the economic development field prior to joining the CER in 2006 where she is now Research Manager. Her research interests include women’s entrepreneurship in emerging economies and the social economy sector, social enterprise and business incubation. Lorna Treanor can be contacted at: lorna.treanor@dkit.ie