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The role of women in Pakistani society – largely embedded in its patriarchal socio–cultural environment – has important implications for women’s entrepreneurial activity in the country. This study aims to investigate and analyse the influence of informal institutional factors on women’s entry into entrepreneurship in Pakistan, and determine how women exercise agency to cope with the constraints posed by such factors.

A qualitative approach is used to explore the normative context and lived experiences of women entrepreneurs in relation to the influence of socio–cultural beliefs and attitudes on their entrepreneurial career choices.

The findings suggest that women’s entrepreneurial career choices both revolve around and are shaped by a complex interplay of socio–cultural influences. Pakistani women entrepreneurs exercise their agency as a means of negotiating gender roles within both household and society, using religious descriptions as a means to justify their entrepreneurial activity.

While every effort has been made to ensure that the data were objectively interpreted, and the derived findings were robustly analysed, the research team acknowledges the many difficulties associated with adopting a social constructionist approach. As articulated by Fletcher (2011), the key issues of contextual objectivity (i.e. where the researcher judges what is important), reflexive turn (the need for the researcher to constantly reconnect with the subject) and potential multiplicity of contexts (the various contextual and potentially conflicting influences on the researcher) presents ongoing challenges for researchers in this field.

This study offers valuable insights into the impact of the informal (socio–cultural) institutional factors on women’s entrepreneurial activity, opening up new avenues for further research. The study also contributes to the women’s entrepreneurship literature from the perspective of an Islamic developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of financial, monitoring and experiential expertise of audit committee chair (ACC) and HR, monitoring and experiential expertise of nomination committee chair (NCC) on the financial performance (FP) of the firm.

Quantitative approach was used in this study to collect data from 50 non-financial firms of Pakistan and to analyze the data through e-views for testing hypotheses.

The findings revealed that financial and monitoring expertise of ACC and experiential expertise of NCC positively influence return on assets, return on equity and the net profit margin of the firm. However, no significant influence of experiential expertise of ACC and monitoring and HR expertise of NCC on FP was found.

The findings of this study will help firms of Pakistan to understand what expertise of their ACC and NCC can contribute to the enhancement of their FP. However, the current study examined the non-financial firms of Pakistan only.

Past studies have never shown the particular focus on different types of expertise of “Chairs” of nomination and audit committees in a combined research to analyze their impact on FP of firms. The present study has abridged this gap in the field of expertise of chairs of board committees so, it will open new areas of discussion for future researchers in domains of “agency theory”, “human capital theory” and corporate governance.

This study aims to explain the relationship of employee voice and turnover intention with the mediating role of top management team (TMT) conflicts. Moreover, this study also aims to find the moderating influence of union instrumentality among employee voice and TMT conflicts.

The study was conducted by using a quantitative approach and data was collected from 300 employees of the manufacturing sector of Pakistan through questionnaires. Data were analyzed by applying different statistical tools and tests through SPSS-21 and AMOS.

Results demonstrate that employee voice has a significant negative impact on employee turnover intention; TMT conflicts significantly mediate employee voice and intention to quit. However, union instrumentality is only initiated to moderate the relationship between employee voice and cognitive conflict.

This research focuses on the manufacturing sector and data have been collected from manufacturing firms situated in Gujranwala, Pakistan only. Moreover, the sample size of the study is also small. Therefore, the current study is an addition to the knowledge and understanding of the studied variables.

This study is of great use for managerial level employees because the adequate implication of employee voice can reduce turnover intention.

This study aims to add value to the existing exit-voice theory and discuss the internal organizational factors that generate quitting intentions. Moreover, it provides insights about union instrumentality and its significant role as a moderator and the significant mediating role between employee voice and intention to quit paving new ways for future researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify barriers to financial product innovation in the Islamic banks (IBs) of Pakistan. This paper also aims to establish the relationship among the barriers and present them in a hierarchical model after classification.

This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. A total of ten experts from the IBs and from academia have been interviewed to collect data. Literature has also been reviewed to identify the barriers. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) analysis has been used to establish relationship among the barriers, to rank and to come up with a hierarchical model of barriers.

This research paper makes out, ranks and classifies the nine most important barriers to product innovation in the IBs in Pakistan, including high innovation cost; lack of customer awareness; difference of school of thoughts between members of Shari’ah board; non-compatibility between product design department and members of Shari’ah board; lack of research and development; non-acceptability of concept of Islamic banking; lack of training regarding a new product; imitation of a new product by competitors; and the limited use of new product development tools.

This study offers originality in its nature of being qualitative and the use of ISM technique. It is also the first research project regarding identification of barriers in the IBs in Pakistan.

This study explores the positive and negative factors influencing transformational learning experiences of female leaders in women’s leadership development programmes in sports and examines the differences in learning/change factors cited by those who successfully addressed them and those who failed.

The study adopted a qualitative research method, using phone interviews with women leaders in a sports setting.

The findings revealed that participants presented clear progress in terms of leadership skills, but they failed to report whether this progress can be achieved if the programme is running within a specific sports organisation, targeting a specific kind of sports leadership in the long term.

There were a number of limitations for this study, e.g. selection of participants, sample size, exploratory methodology, which affected generalising the findings to other sports organisations or other countries.

The study provides a starting point for the exploration of the effectiveness of women leadership development programmes and how designers can evaluate the outcome of such initiatives in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship between customer-oriented strategy (COS) and financial performance (FP) of firm, to examine the role of supportive human resource management (HRM) in COS implementation and contribution toward FP of firm. It also examines the mediating role of innovation capability (IC) between COS and FP of firm.

The approach used for this study is quantitative. Data required for testing of hypothesis were gathered from the managers of manufacturing firms of Gujranwala, Pakistan. To conduct the data analysis, structural equation modeling was used.

Findings of this study showed that there is significantly positive relation between COS and FP with the significant positive mediating effects of supportive HRM and IC.

This research has been conducted in manufacturing sector only. So, it is suggested to future researchers to carry out this research in other sectors. Second, this research focused only on IC but there are many other organizational capabilities (OC) that can be used.

This research would be helpful for all firms adopting COS to understand that how to mobilize their HR to accomplish the purpose of strategy. It will enable manufacturing firms to understand and work on IC.

This study is anticipated to add value to the existing literature of strategy process and OC. This study is one of the first to examine IC as mediator between COS and organizational FP so it opens new areas for research.

Little attention has been given specifically to the experience of women social entrepreneurs despite the assumption they are prone to “care”, and even less to their motivations or their self-perception of success. This paper aims to provide an insight into the relationship between motivations and social and economic performance among women social entrepreneurs in ten European Union countries.

This paper classifies the motivations of women social entrepreneurs, drawing on the results of a survey conducted (n = 380) by the European Women’s Lobby. The paper then examines how these motivations relate to self-perceptions of social and economic performance.

In addition to being driven by self-interest and prosocial motivations, women social entrepreneurs also seek to develop alternative business models. Where a social mission is central, women are likely to feel successful in meeting their social aim; however, there is a strong negative relationship between self-interested motivations and revenue.

This analysis relies on perceptual and self-reported data; therefore, more objective measures should be considered for further research, possibly combined with a longitudinal design. Another limitation of this paper lies in the non-random sampling strategy used to identify a hard-to-reach population such as women social entrepreneurs.

The findings provide a better understanding of the motivations of women social entrepreneurs. This may be useful in assisting funding or support organisations, as well as social investors, evaluate where to best invest resources. In addition, a more nuanced understanding of motivations among women social entrepreneurs can inform policies aimed at supporting women social entrepreneurs, without necessarily being bound by the expectation to maximise economic and/or social outcomes.

This paper demonstrates the centrality of the social mission for women social entrepreneurs. The results also identify “seeking an alternative business model” as a key motivation among women social entrepreneurs, thereby breaking existing conceptualisations of entrepreneurial motivations on a binary spectrum as either “self-interested” or “prosocial”. The paper also shows that having other than prosocial motivations for becoming a social entrepreneur does not necessarily lead to higher economic revenue.

Increased participation of women in the labor force creates challenges for them to balance work and family obligations. The situation becomes more complicated in patriarchal societies such as Pakistan due to women's stereotypical domestic roles, religious prescriptions as well as cultural norms and values. This study aims to explore different influencing factors on women's work and family roles in the unique Pakistani socio‐economic and cultural environment.

Based on the interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA), this study explores different influencing factors on women's work and family roles in the unique Pakistani socio‐economic and cultural environment. The methodology helped to analyse data about challenges faced by women entrepreneurs to achieve work‐life balance as well as to have an insight about some of the techniques and effective strategies they use to balance work and family obligation.

The results show that among other motivational drivers to start their own businesses, achieving work‐life balance is one of the most significant ones. Their own businesses give them flexibility, control and freedom to juggle with their family and social responsibilities. Lack of sufficient time, gender bias, social and cultural norms as well as family responsibilities are the most significant challenges women face to achieve balance in a patriarchal Islamic society. Strategic planning, organising and delegating are the most effective strategies women use to cope with competing roles of work and family.

This ground‐breaking work in Pakistan on women entrepreneurs' work‐life balance may also inspire other women who want to start their entrepreneurial career.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the gender‐related challenges of Pakistani women entrepreneurs, to explore these women's particular capacity‐building needs, and to assess the impact of capacity‐building programs on the establishment and performance of the women's enterprises.

The paper begins with a review of various theoretical contexts through which to understand women's entrepreneurship in an Islamic socio‐cultural context. From this, the paper derived two working propositions: women in Islamic Pakistan face particular barriers to becoming entrepreneurs; these barriers can be reduced by women‐only training in entrepreneurial competences. These propositions are examined in a three‐part longitudinal process: a field survey to gather information about the training needs of current and potential women entrepreneurs, the design and delivery of a women‐only training module, a follow‐up survey with participants, 18 months later. Subjects and participants were randomly selected, and segmented according to entrepreneurial factors and characteristics.

Results confirm that the barriers perceived by women entrepreneurs in Islamic Pakistan can be alleviated through women‐only training that allows participants to develop capital and competences. Greater clarity about learning outcomes desired and achieved by women entrepreneurs in an Islamic socio‐cultural context can be a basis for designing improved training and education programmes, with a view to women's economic empowerment.

For women entrepreneurs living in an Islamic society, this analysis has implications for understanding the importance and effectiveness of entrepreneurial training especially in a women‐only setting. For policy makers, it turns the spotlight on the need for creating an environment conducive to female entrepreneurship consistent with socio‐cultural structures and gender asymmetries.

There are no comparable previous data on the learning preferences and outcomes of this particular demographic group.