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1 – 10 of 312Constanza Reyes and Helle Neergaard
The objective of this article is to map and assess current evidence in women's technology entrepreneurship in business incubators with the aim of producing a conceptual framework…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this article is to map and assess current evidence in women's technology entrepreneurship in business incubators with the aim of producing a conceptual framework that will allow us to understand how gender shapes the life of women technology entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a systematic literature review. The data set comprises 49 publications, including peer-reviewed articles and prominent book chapters. These are first categorized according to their feminist approach and second analysed using an inductive thematic approach to map dominant concepts and research methods.
Findings
The authors develop a framework with four dimensions: (1) antecedents, (2) challenges, (3) outcomes and (4) solutions. The authors show that current literature mainly focuses on the challenges faced by women technology entrepreneurs in incubator settings. Although liberal feminist research is present, social feminist perspectives dominate, with poststructuralist research as a close second. Interestingly, current research has not focused much on individual characteristics; in other words, the baggage that women bring with them in terms of prior experiences is hardly investigated, even though there is general agreement that socialization shapes women's experiences of and responses to gender challenges.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to the literature in the following ways: The developed framework assists in understanding how gender is an overarching factor that shapes every facet of the life of a women technology entrepreneur, and how incubator environments intensify gender issues. Indeed, being in an incubator environment adds an extra layer of gendered conditions, thus intensifying the challenges that women meet, creating a “triple masculinity trap”. The review highlights that little is known about how early conditioning shapes women technology entrepreneurs' reactions to the gendered conditions they meet and that there is a lack of research on how women “do entrepreneurship”.
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Professor Ruth Simpson has been a key contributor to the field of gender and organization studies (GOS) over the past 25 years. She has influenced debates on women in management…
Abstract
Purpose
Professor Ruth Simpson has been a key contributor to the field of gender and organization studies (GOS) over the past 25 years. She has influenced debates on women in management, the gender of management education, masculinity and management and the “doing” of gender in organizational life. In this paper i review our joint work – informed by a poststructuralist feminist perspective – which considers the complex struggles around normativity in relation to management and entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
This review is based on a consideration of four pieces of work completed between 2005 and 2012, including (Simpson and Lewis, 2005, 2007) and (Lewis and Simpson, 2010, 2012).
Findings
Drawing on the concepts of voice and visibility, the research examines how the ability to exemplify the norm in relation to management and entrepreneurship must be constantly secured and how processes of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the norm are characterised by relentless agitation and turmoil.
Originality/value
We (Ruth and Patricia) developed the conceptual framework of the (In)visibility vortex as a means of connecting the individual to organizational processes, discourses and cultural norms
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This chapter addresses growing concerns that, despite being a radically intentioned community, Critical Management Studies (CMS) lacks an orientation to achieve pragmatic change…
Abstract
This chapter addresses growing concerns that, despite being a radically intentioned community, Critical Management Studies (CMS) lacks an orientation to achieve pragmatic change. In response I argue that the failure to address the continuing marginalisation of the subaltern is key to CMS being negatively represented as an elitist self-preoccupied endeavour. This state of affairs is linked to a legacy of the ‘postmodern’ turn, which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the nature of contemporary debates continuing to reflect the stylistic fetishes of that time. I contend that the ghost of postmodernism is evident in the continuing predilection to produce signification discourses marked by symbolic absences, which politically confine such texts to the level of epistemology. The lack of integration of ontological concerns means that corporeal aspects of daily life are neglected, resulting in an abstracted ‘subjectless’ mode of representation. To address these limitations, a feminist activist version of post-structuralism (PSF) of the time is revisited, which through its distinctive attention to community concerns, enabled the linking of epistemological and ontological representations; thereby facilitating the creation of a framework for pragmatic change. As the chapter demonstrates, by drawing attention to the integral relationship between the modes of representation, power relations and subsequent social effects, poststructuralist feminists were able to achieve praxis outcomes. Accordingly, I argue this treasure house of ideas needs to be reclaimed and provides illustrations of the design principles proffered to support my contentions.
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Avers that consumer research has been criticized for its preoccupation with empirical issues (Ryan, 1986) and its neglect of the experiential perspective of consumers as…
Abstract
Avers that consumer research has been criticized for its preoccupation with empirical issues (Ryan, 1986) and its neglect of the experiential perspective of consumers as individuals (Belk, 1984; Fennell, 1985). Additionally, alleges that consumer research has been traditionally subject to gender bias (e.g. Bristor and Fischer, 1993) and that dominant ideologies have been masculine in nature (Hirschman, 1993). Reviews developments in consumer research in the light of current thinking and explores ontological and methodological issues in the study of consumer behaviour. Develops a feminist framework which goes beyond the rejection of positivist approaches towards a holistic, experiential understanding of consumer behaviour.
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Carly Drake and Scott K. Radford
This study aims to consider how research methodologies and methods can afford holistic inquiry into gendered embodied consumption. Noting the salience of gender in past and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to consider how research methodologies and methods can afford holistic inquiry into gendered embodied consumption. Noting the salience of gender in past and present discourse surrounding the body and building on poststructuralist feminist hermeneutic philosophy and practice, the authors introduce a novel methodological framework situated within three considerations borne of the current socio-cultural landscape: the politics of embodiment, embodied identity and intersectionality.
Design/methodology/approach
To assist scholars and practitioners in interpreting themes of gendered embodiment in textual data surrounding consumption topics, the authors orient the framework around three principles of listening, questioning and hospitality. This framework fosters embodied empathy by linking the researcher’s body to those of research participants. To illustrate the method, the authors interpret consumption narratives extracted from semi-structured interviews with 26 women-identified recreational runners on the topics of embodiment, sport and media.
Findings
The interpretations of gendered consumption narratives show that using the principles of listening, questioning and hospitality invites an understanding of consumers as multifaceted, contradictory and agentic. The authors argue that consumers’ everyday experiences are often simple and quiet but embedded in history wherein bodies are both biological and inescapably social.
Originality/value
The methodological framework allows both the researcher’s and research participants’ embodiment to play a role in the research process. It also illuminates the entanglement of embodiment and consumption in a fraught, politicized context. The authors show that by listening to consumers, questioning their narratives and traditional interpretations thereof and inviting consumers to feel comfortable and heard, researchers can see what other approaches may overlook.
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Fatemeh Sadrnabavi and Hanieh Daneshvar
This study aims to investigate the entrepreneurial actions of successful Iranian women entrepreneurs. It is an attempt to find the roots, motivations, challenges and strategies of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the entrepreneurial actions of successful Iranian women entrepreneurs. It is an attempt to find the roots, motivations, challenges and strategies of successful actions of these women, despite the unequal and masculine structure of the society.
Design/methodology/approach
This research was conducted through the theoretical framework of poststructuralist feminism and the qualitative method. By purposive sampling, the researchers selected 10 women entrepreneurs living in Khorasan Razavi province for in-depth interviews. These women have created many jobs based on local potential and become recognized as top entrepreneurs. The narratives of these women were analyzed phenomenologically.
Findings
The actions of these women are fertilized under the influence of family background and early socialization and in the combination of internal motivations and external stimuli. These women resist social barriers such as widespread patriarchy, gender division of labor in society and complex bureaucratic processes through the “strategic cycle” resulting from the interaction of “reliance on intertwined social networks,” “social entrepreneurship,” “gradual formation of social capital” and “reliance on local potentials.”
Social implications
The strategies to overcome gender inequalities at the micro (family) and macro (society) levels introduced in this research can inspire women entrepreneurs who seek success in their businesses.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative research that, by studying the actions of successful Iranian women entrepreneurs, describes how they overcome structural inequalities and their success strategies.
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Marta B Calás and Linda Smircich
In a paper written for a theory development forum (Calás & Smircich, 1999) we insisted that the postmodern moment, in its association with poststructuralist analyses, brought much…
Abstract
In a paper written for a theory development forum (Calás & Smircich, 1999) we insisted that the postmodern moment, in its association with poststructuralist analyses, brought much of value to organization and management studies. At the time we observed that although such a moment may have already passed, its traces continued to be seen and expressed in several important intellectual developments. In particular, we identified poststructuralist feminist theories, postcolonial theory, actor-network theory, and narrative approaches to theory as productive heirs of the postmodern moment in organization and management studies.
Career management research and literature has been slow to respond to the rise of the gig economy. Perhaps in part due to the temporal, flexible and shifting nature of the gig…
Abstract
Career management research and literature has been slow to respond to the rise of the gig economy. Perhaps in part due to the temporal, flexible and shifting nature of the gig economy, there could be an assumption that the boundaryless and protean career management models that have dominated careers thinking for nearly 30 years retain and extend their applicability. However, whilst there is clear resonance with discourses such as boundaryless, portfolio and protean careers within the gig economy, this chapter will argue these models cannot adequately address female career management experiences. Through a feminist poststructuralist and intersectional lens, the concept of the frayed career is advocated as a more useful approach for understanding the impact of gender and intersecting subject positions on career management experiences. With growing numbers of women employed in the gig economy and in addressing calls for a greater focus on gender and intersecting identities on the experiences of gig work, this chapter analyses the role of gender, ethnicity and class and career management outcomes in the gig economy amongst Human Resources professionals. The frayed career concept is used to demonstrate how gig work can be incorporated into the rhythmicity of a career and how shifting intersectional positions can reveal alternative discourses of privilege and precarity from the otherwise assumed position of multiple disadvantage. In doing so there is an opportunity to reflect on appropriate career management guidance for women in the gig economy beyond the dichotomous positions of privilege or disadvantage and career solutions based on Westernised linear career ideals.
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