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Recent research on women business owners de‐emphasizes home‐based business ownership, despite the fact that home‐based ownership is on the rise. This study uses data from the Upstate New York Small Business Project to compare women engaged in home‐based businesses to their counterparts, who locate their businesses outside the home. The results indicate that the women engaged in home‐based business ownership experience less work to family conflict than their counterparts. Yet their businesses enjoy less economic success than those run by their non‐home‐based counterparts. This suggests that home‐based ownership may be a good option only for women who do not have strong financial needs.

This paper addresses the effects of a set of variables on sales performance of home‐based business in Dubai. The variables includes owner’s gender, private sources of funds, external sources of funds, usage of technology, business expenses, number of weekly hours an owner works, outsourcing or sub‐contracting, age of business, and number of the family members assisting the owner in running the business. The results showed significant positive effects for the average weekly hours an owner devotes to the business and mild effects for the use of technology. However, the remaining variables did not show any significant relationship with homebased business performance. Of particular importance is the lack of significant effects for gender. This indicates that business performance is not tied up to gender. Both men and women could do equally well in the field of home‐based business.

This paper seeks to explore self‐employment through home‐based business ownership as a potential solution to the inter‐role conflict experienced by women attempting to balance dual work and family roles.

Home‐based businesses (n = 626) were surveyed in Western Australia as part of a larger national study. Data were collected on operator and business characteristics, and specific home‐based business issues (e.g. reasons for preferring a home‐base, management and planning, growth facilitators and barriers). Four‐way comparisons investigating the dynamics of home‐based business ownership between male and female operators and operators with and without dependants were made.

The attraction of home‐based business ownership is driven predominantly by the flexibility afforded to lifestyle and the ability to balance work and family. While these advantages were more salient for women than for men, gender per se was not a determining factor in why operators started a home‐based business. The more significant determining factor was the issue of dependants.

Self‐employment, particularly through home‐based business ownership, may well solve some women's necessity to balance work and family. However, it may not be a viable solution for all women, particularly those seeking high financial and career rewards.

This paper contributes empirical findings regarding home‐based businesses which, as a distinct form of small business and self‐employment alternative, still remain very much under‐researched. The paper also addresses the issue of home‐based businesses being emancipatory vehicles for women juggling to manage work and family, and provides findings which question this increasingly populist notion.

This paper reports on the difference between men and women's motivations for going into business and why they choose to operate their business from home. Reports the views of the operators regarding community attitudes towards home‐based businesses. Data was collected from a self‐administered survey distributed by post, from home‐based business operators in two local government areas in Western Australia. Two focus groups verified the findings of the survey and investigated the home‐based business operator's perceptions of the communities attitude towards them. It was evident that some sections of the community felt that home‐based businesses are extended hobbies and not to be taken seriously. The paper argues that this view ignores the significant financial and social contributions that home‐based businesses make to the economy and society in general and is not a view that is held by home‐based business operators themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the growth barriers of women’s home-based businesses (HBBs) in Iran.

The qualitative approach was used by 22 in-depth interviews with Iranian female HBBs owners/mangers.

Business growth barriers of women were categorized in a multi-level framework of individual barriers (micro), business-related barriers (medium) and environmental barriers (macro). The most important micro-level barrier is lack of skills and experience, while the financial barriers identified as the most business-related one and, finally, the problems of having work interactions with men is the most important environmental barrier women-owned HBBs mentioned.

The results of this paper can help policy-makers better understand growth barriers for women-owned HBB and attenuate these barriers by developing purposeful supportive growth policies that are commensurate with the barriers. Also, HBB women owners themselves could better concentrate on removing barriers by deepening their understanding of their business growth barriers.

The paper contributes to the scarce knowledge about women-owned HBBs in Iran, a rapidly growing, developing country, which can provide better insights from a less explored context. Moreover, as there is only a limited understanding of HBB growth, especially in relation to women business owners, the paper results can prove helpful for researchers in the domain of female entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information on the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media for the development of informal home-based business (HBBs) community in Kuwait City.

This research is used as a qualitative methodology, which helps the researcher to come to original and direct quotations about the HBBs owners’ thoughts and experiences. In this paper, a multi case-based approach was used, respectively, we have used 14 cases, where 7 operate in the food sector and 7 in the entertainment/game sector. All these informal HBBs are located in Kuwait City.

The results of the research showed that the respondents use Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, email and websites to communicate with customers and cooperate with business partners. Banks’ applications, such as “Edfali”, are used for doing the payments related to the business. Home-based owners are usually motivated by passion and love for the business, independence, additional source of income, succeeding in a family business, hobby or not finding an appropriate job in other companies.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had the opportunity to interview only 14 HBBs and only from two sectors, the food and entertainment/game sector. Further research can be done with more cases and more sectors to see how ICTs and social media help these businesses to develop their activity and spread the business in different places.

This paper provides useful information on the role of ICTs and social media for the informal HBBs, especially during the crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It might help business owners to prepare adequate strategies to cope with difficult situations and create better conditions for their businesses.

This paper is the first research that treats the informal HBB community in Kuwait City. It could serve as a good base for further studies related to the impact of ICTs and social media on the business performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the growth motivations of women owning and managing home-based businesses (HBBs) in Iran.

The qualitative approach was used by 20 in-depth interviews with Iranian female HBBs owners/mangers.

The business growth motivations of women owning and managing HBBs were categorized in intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Results show that women owning and managing HBBs are motivated to growth their businesses by intrinsic motivations including need for achievement, need for independence, proving competency and socio-cultural concerns. Also, they are motivated by some extrinsic motivations including financial issues, fame, positive feedback from others and the problems of working at home.

Given the importance of entrepreneurial growth, the findings provide additional insight into growth motivations of women entrepreneurs.

The results of this study can help policymakers to develop purposeful growth policies for women’s HBBs that are commensurate with the motivations.

Also, women owning and managing HBBs themselves could better concentrate on enhancing business growth by deepening their understanding of their business growth motivations.

The paper contributes to the scarce knowledge about women-owned HBBs in Iran, a rapidly growing, developing country, which can provide better insights from a less explored context. Moreover, as there is only a limited understanding of HBB growth, especially in relation to women business owners, the study results can prove helpful for researchers in the domain of female entrepreneurs. Also, this paper contributes to theory on the motivation for entrepreneurship and to research on growth motivation.

A nonemployer business is one that has no paid employees.The number and revenues of nonemployer businesses are increasing at a faster rate than other businesses, and they are an increasingly important alternative to other forms of entrepreneurship.Yet very little is known about these businesses. This study uses a survey of 1,600 MBA alumni to compare the entrepreneurial motivations of nonemployer entrepreneurs to conventional entrepreneurs and no entrepreneurs. The findings indicate that nonemployer entrepreneurs differ in important ways, and future research is needed to understand more fully this large and important group of entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that examines an under-researched area, the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in Australian home-based businesses (HBB).

HBB constitute a large part of the economy, yet little is known of how they use ICT to improve their business operations. The study involved a case study comprising interviews with 30 business operators in the Western region of Melbourne, a major Australian city. The findings were analysed using a unique approach to Rogers’ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations, employing the innovation-decision process as a lens for the analysis.

The study findings suggest that ICT application adoption in HBB participants is not uniform, with adoption of applications such as e-mail differing from adoption of newer applications, such as social networking. ICT use needs to be considered according to individual ICT applications and explained in the context of particular HBB. The study contributes to studies of innovation adoption, particularly in relation to the use of ICT applications in HBB.

It should be remembered that this study involved interviews with a broad selection of 30 HBB in the Western region of Melbourne, Australia. The results should be considered in the context of hypothesis generation in regards to HBB rather than hypothesis testing that can occur with larger samples. The authors feel that this study would be representative of the practices of ICT adoption in many such groupings of HBB in cities of major Western countries, but hesitate to claim that similar, specific uses of ICT applications would be matched elsewhere.

This study has a number of practical implications. The results suggest that researchers should consider adoption of individual ICT applications in HBB. Further, policy makers looking to support the use of ICT by HBB should consider that the HBB in this study had adopted different ICT applications and were at different stages of ICT adoption. This is worth considering when deciding upon policies relating to how to suppzort the HBB sector (such as provision of training support and so forth).

The paper introduces a unique means to assess the adoption of ICT applications by examining their level of penetration, level of maturity and usefulness to HBB.

Research investigating female entrepreneurs and their networking relationships has developed considerably over the past two decades. There are, however, few Sri Lankan studies that have specifically focussed on female entrepreneurs in terms of their social networks. This paper aims to examine the important influences on these female entrepreneurs’ networking behaviour within small businesses in the tourism sector.

Having established that the social constructionist approach is most suitable for this study, in-depth narrative interviews and observations were deemed a particularly suitable research tool. In total, 14 female entrepreneurs were purposively approached and interviewed. Narrative analysis was used to analyze and interpret qualitative data, which were organized with the assistance of QSR NVivo 10, a software programme.

Competing family responsibilities and business matters (being a good mum and dutiful wife), culture and societal expectations, running home-based business and building trust were found as main influences on female entrepreneurial networking behaviours. The majority revealed stressful times trying to combine the business with multiple roles and societal expectations.

Applications of the model in female entrepreneurial networking behaviour are suggested, within and beyond the context of the small business tourism industry in Sri Lanka.

This study enriches the understanding of social networks and social capital based on the experience of Sri Lankan female entrepreneurs, which is influenced by contextual factors of identity, gender and culture.