Search results

The purpose of this study is to account for gender gaps owing to a lack of education and training. Gender gaps pervade human activity. But little is known about forces reshaping gaps across career phases, from education to running a business. Such gaps may accumulate over one’s entrepreneurial career and widen or narrow due both to environmental forces that reconfigure the gap across career phases and to the gendering of competencies and benefits from education and training.

A representative sample of 110,689 adults around the world was surveyed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Gender-related effects were ascertained by odds ratios estimated by hierarchical modelling, controlling for country and attributes of individuals.

Education and entrepreneurial training, both during and after formal schooling, are highly beneficial in developing competencies and during career phases – i.e. intending to start a business, starting a business, and running a business. Early gaps in human capital are reproduced as gaps in careers, and continuous disadvantages in the environment repeatedly widen gaps throughout a person’s entrepreneurial career. That said, gender gaps are reduced slightly over time as women gain greater benefit from training than men.

The cumulative effects of early gender gaps in education and training call for research on gendered learning, and recurrent gender effects across career phases call for research on gendering in micro-level contexts such as networks and macro-level contexts such as institutions.

Understanding the gendering of human capital and careers has implications for policy and education aimed at developing human resources, especially for mobilising women. The finding that women gain greater benefit than men from training is informative for policies that foster gender equality and empower women pursuing careers.

Conceptualising the entrepreneurial career as a sequence of several stages enables the assessment of gender gaps owing to initial disadvantages in education and to recurrent disadvantages on the career path.

Innovation differs among individuals and societies and changes over time. The question is whether female entrepreneurs in China are becoming more prominent in innovation? Are women entrepreneurs' participation, education, competence, opportunity-motivation and innovativeness increasing in China, perhaps faster than elsewhere around the world? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

These questions are addressed by analyzing the data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on nascent entrepreneurs in the countries surveyed in at least two years since 2001 with at least five years between first and most recent survey. The sample is 129,465 nascent entrepreneurs in 58 countries, including 4,433 entrepreneurs starting an enterprise in China. These entrepreneurs reported on their innovativeness, comprising newness of technology used in production, absence of competitors producing the same products, and three newness of the product to customers. The data are analyzed by multivariate statistics, especially regressions and hierarchical models.

First, among the entrepreneurs starting enterprises in China, the proportion of women has increased dramatically over the years, approaching equality with the men. Second, women entrepreneurs compared to male entrepreneurs in China have increased in education, competences, opportunity motive and innovativeness. The increasing prominence of women in innovation in China is unsurpassed by any other country in the sample and thus seems unique in the world.

This study is valuable by exploring the changing participation of women in entrepreneurship and especially in the entrepreneurship that is innovative.

The purpose of this paper is to direct attention to recent research on women’s entrepreneurship with a focus on university education. A literature review and a summary of authors’ selected papers provide both a context for and an introduction to the articles in this special issue.

This introduction provides an overview of the literature on female entrepreneurship with specific reference to the context of university education. Searches on Web of Science and in this journal were conducted to provide a systematic overview of the area of research. This introductory article ends with a set of propositions for future research engagement.

This paper finds that the quantum of past research endeavours remains limited despite the growing significance of the subject. This paper also finds that developing a focused approach that is based on a female ontology of entrepreneurship, and one that identifies specific contexts, and appropriate methodological considerations that enable enquiry at different levels, are of value to future research. This paper offers four different propositions that address key areas or fields of entrepreneurship research.

This paper provides a unique set of propositions together with a framework which helps to both explore new knowledge creation and locate new research within the main fields of entrepreneurship while providing room for extending those fields.

This overview provides a framework for universities and policymakers to enable them to take into consideration the critical issues of entrepreneurship in general, and female entrepreneurship in particular, when developing programmes and tools for university education.

This paper provides a summary of the trends in research on women’s entrepreneurship with reference to university education. This leads to the development of a set of propositions and a framework for identifying and exploring new research questions that need to be addressed to close important research gaps in the field of entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the planned pre-electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) family teaching on depression, anxiety and stress of caregivers of patients with mental disorders receiving ECT.

In this quasi-experimental study, 130 participants were randomized allocated into intervention or control groups. The planned family teaching program consisted of four 90 min sessions held during four weeks. Assessments occurred at pre-intervention (one week before the first session), and post-intervention (one months after the four session). Data were collected using demographic questionnaire and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Mean comparisons were performed using Student’s t-test while effect sizes were estimated by Cohen’s d coefficient. The significance level was considered less than 0.05.

The mean scores of the depression, anxiety and stress levels in the intervention group were significantly reduced compared to the control group (p=0.001).

The family pre-ECT teaching intervention and counseling decreased the depression, anxiety and stress level of family caregivers of patients with mental disorders receiving ECT and the maintenance of other favorable conditions at baseline. These results suggest that even a short-term educational intervention for family members of patients received ECT can improve emotional outcomes of treatment in the family.

Supplier selection (SS) is one of the prime competencies in a sourcing decision. Taking into account the key role played by suppliers in facilitating the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM), it is somewhat surprising that very little research attention has been imparted to the development of a strategic sourcing model for GSCM. This research aims to develop a strategic sourcing framework in which supplier organizations are prioritized and ranked based on their GSCM performance. Accordingly, the benchmark organization is identified and its strategy is explored for GSCM performance improvement.

The research develops an innovative GSCM performance evaluation framework using six parameters, namely, investment in corporate social responsibility, investment in research and development, utilization of renewable energy, total energy consumption, total carbon-di-oxide emissions and total waste generation. An integrated multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is proposed in which the entropy method calculates criteria weights. The Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) and the Grey relational analysis (GRA) methods are used to rank supplier organizations based on their performance scores. A real-world case of green supplier selection (GSS) is considered in which five leading India-based automobile manufacturing organizations (Supplier 1, Supplier 2, Supplier 3, Supplier 4 and Supplier 5) are selected. Surveys with industry experts at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels are carried out to collect relevant data.

The results reveal that total carbon dioxide emission is the most influential parameter, as it gains the highest weight. On the contrary, investment in research and development, and total waste generation have no significant impact on GSCM performance. Results show that Supplier 5 secures the top rank. Hence, it is the benchmark organization.

The proposed methodology offers an easy and comprehensive approach to sourcing decisions in the field of GSCM. The entropy weight-based COPRAS and GRA methods offer an error-free channel of decision-making and can be proficiently used to outrank various industrial sectors based on their GSCM performances. This research is specific to the automobile manufacturing supply chain. Therefore, research outcomes may vary across supply chains with distinct characteristics.

The basic propositions of this research are based on a real-world case. Hence, the research findings are practically feasible. The less significant parameters identified in this study would enable managers to impart more attention to vulnerable areas for improvement. This research may help policymakers identify the influential parameters for effective GSCM implementation. As this research considers all aspects of sustainability, the strategies of the benchmark supplier have a direct impact on organizations' overall sustainability. The study would enable practitioners to make various strategies for GSCM performance improvement and to develop a cleaner production system.

The originality of this research lies in the consideration of both economic, social, environmental and operational aspects of sustainability for assessing the GSCM performance of supplier organizations. Quantitative criteria are considered so that vagueness can be removed from the decision. The use of an integrated grey-based approach for developing a strategic sourcing model is another unique feature of this study.